S1, Ep5 | Fun With Front Groups

Energy Voter Ad [00:00:00] It's simple supply and demand, more abundant energy means more affordable energy, producing more American oil and natural gas will help keep energy bills in check. Who doesn't want that? I'm Rick, and I'm an energy voter.

Ca advocacy ad [00:00:15] If you can afford a Tesla, then this message won't really matter to you.

WalMart Ad [00:00:22] Name is Dawn Smith. I've been with Wal-Mart for three years. Twenty eight years. Seventeen half years. Six and a half years. Seventeen years. Eleven years. And this love this love my job.

Amy Westervelt [00:00:39] If these commercials are to be believed, hundreds of Americans are out there rallying around the causes of protecting energy companies, automakers and big box retailers from regulation. Wow, those plucky little guys protecting those vulnerable behemoths of U.S. industry. Ads like this tend to appear when legislation or unions threaten the profits of big companies, they claim to be messages from grassroots groups like energy citizens or the California Drivers Alliance or from employees that just love Wal-Mart so much they want to sing it from the rooftops, but they're actually paid for by industry trade groups or specific companies.

Christine Arena [00:01:32] They give these fake front groups these names that sound their like perfectly innocuous names like the California Drivers Alliance or the Washington Consumers for Sound Fuel Policy.

Amy Westervelt [00:01:44] This is Christine Arena. She knows a lot about this tactic because she used to be a VP at a PR firm that's famous for using it.

Christine Arena [00:01:53] There are hundreds of them are usually secretly run by lobbying organizations like the two I just mentioned are actually run by the Western States Petroleum Association, which is a top lobbyist for the oil industry. Western States Betrayal Petroleum Association is in turn funded by members including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental, among others. So it's it's fake activism. It's corporate money posing as activism and and it's designed to undo all of the progress that real activism makes.

Amy Westervelt [00:02:33] Welcome back to Rigged, a podcast about the war for hearts and minds and activism right here on U.S. soil. I'm Amy Westervelt, and today's trick is astroturfing. Ah yes. Astroturfing When grassroots don't exist, a plastic version will do very nicely. One of the PR firms most associated with astroturfing is Arena's former employer, Edelman PR. It was started back in 1952 in Chicago by Daniel Edelman, a former journalist who had spent World War Two working in psychological warfare for the U.S. Army. Here he is much later in life, describing that gig.

Edelman archival [00:03:19] Working in a and doing the psychological warfare thing was fascinating because we were offsetting the claims made by the Germans that it all lies. I mean, we had to disclaim them.

Amy Westervelt [00:03:33] Yep. And then he came home and put those skills to work on behalf of U.S. industry against the American public. Edelman son Richard took over as CEO in 1996, and one of his first moves was to make a really big show of how the firm was no longer going to work with tobacco companies. A noble move after his dad had spent decades helping the industry pushed the idea that secondhand smoke was no big deal. It must be weird doing in the family business when the family business is propaganda and a strategy he crafted for R.J. Reynolds in 1977. Daniel Edelman, Dad. If you like, recommends a civility campaign for smokers as a way to push the idea that smokers care about nonsmokers, that they're not just trying to be assholes imposing their cigarets on the public, he writes.

Edelman archival [00:04:33] A program directed at our own constituency, the smoker makes the greatest sense to us. Example a code of conduct for smokers publicized and all the traditional ways are Smokers Etiquette Handbook distributed in smoking sections of trains, airplanes, etc. Restaurant Tabletops on Smoking Etiquette Awards to courtesy smokers contest to develop the do's and don'ts of civility and smoking. The possibilities are limitless. We need to develop various ways such a campaign can be pursued intelligently and effectively, but also seems to us that within the framework of a campaign of this sort, we have the best opportunity and the most congenial way of communicating our case that there is no real evidence that inhaling someone else's cigaret smoke causes any health problems.

Amy Westervelt [00:05:32] In 1998, after Big Tobacco had lost multiple lawsuits and been hauled in front of Congress and investigated by the Department of Justice, Richard Edelman said, No, sir, we will no longer work for these guys. Richard Edelman may have sworn off tobacco, but he made up for it with a voracious appetite for oil, or at least the money of oil companies who were more than eager to pay him for bringing that Edelman family magic to their industry. Christine Arena joined Edelman in 2012, leading the business and social practice. She thought she'd be helping the firm do good work for organizations that were doing genuinely good things for the environment. But she quickly realized that she'd just been hired to do greenwashing. In the summer of 2014, Edelman created an astroturfing master plan designed to sway public opinion on TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline. It did just not in the way they'd hoped. In November that year, the astroturfing plan was leaked to the press. Embarrassing, and Edelman enjoyed another moment in the spotlight. By the end of 2014, Arena knew she had to leave. In 2015, the Guardian caught wind of Arena's departure, along with three other Edelman executives who all left the firm over its work with Big Oil. The Guardian published an article on that, and it got quite a bit of attention. So once again, Edelman took a brave stand, promising to do better in the future. The firm vowed to stop promoting climate denial and to stop working with the coal industry. Period. It also committed to no more greenwashing or astroturfing, which is weird because in 2018, they said. An entry for a PR award for a campaign they created for Shell. That's well, it sure looks a lot like greenwashing. In their award submission, Adelman said There, campaign was meant to quote

Edelman archival [00:07:47] raise awareness of Shell's ambition in the UK to create more and cleaner energy solutions in a way that appeals to millennials. And in doing so, to build Shell's reputation in the UK as an innovative energy company,

Amy Westervelt [00:08:04] they claimed a 28 percent increase in people's belief that Shell quote works to provide a sustainable energy future as a key result of their campaign. Is that greenwashing, you say, persuading the public that a fossil fuel giant is a plucky investor in renewables? I say potato. So, yeah. One of the precursors to all of that was that ad you heard up top from energy. Citizen's Energy Citizens is a front group created by Edelman for the American Petroleum Institute. Way back in 2009. But creating groups like that is something Edelman has done over and over again for lots of clients in lots of different industries,

Speaker 6 [00:08:48] like that creation of fake grassroots support, which came to be known as like astroturfing. And Edelman was genius at doing that. And that's like rallying with the tobacco companies that was like, you know, doctors and academics and climate change scientists to take a contrarian perspective and anybody who would like to hear it, the propaganda they'll use that astroturf plan to then influence media to influence politicians, influence regulatory agencies.

Amy Westervelt [00:09:20] Edelman created all kinds of astroturfing groups to fight environmental regulations, but they didn't just work against environmental regulations. They worked against all kinds of other regulations, too. We're going to hear more about that after the break. The world of politics can certainly feel overwhelming, like right wing movements are gaining traction, and there's too much to do before the midterm elections next fall. Listening to season two of words to win by hosted by renowned communications researcher and campaign advisor a not Shenkar Rosario, each week was to win by takes listeners on a journey from Switzerland to Arizona to the Dominican Republic to unpack some of the fiercest fights and biggest come from behind victories for progressives. New episodes of words to win by premiere every Tuesday. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Examples of Edelman's astroturfing work for oil companies and other big polluters abound, but the most over-the-top example of astroturfing they ever did was for Wal-Mart. When I heard about it, I had to call up Mary Annaise Hagler writer and my frequent partner in crime.

[00:10:49] OK, I'm going to. I'm going to just I'm going to read you a little story and we can pause along the way for for your reactions to the song.

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:10:58] This is sweet, it's story time!

Amy Westervelt [00:11:00] It's story time with Mary! Here we go." In April 2006, Jim and I hiked the Grand Canyon price and slot canyons in Escalante. During our trip, we ended up in Page Arizona. At five a.m. We were up and ready to go. Although not much else is in page, except, of course, the Walmart Supercenter, we pulled into the parking lot and made at least a dozen RV is not sure what was up. We asked why, and we learned that Wal-Mart allows RVs to stay in store parking lots overnight for free. As we hiked up Bright Angel Trail from Phantom Ranch in the Grand Canyon, a new adventure was born. I started thinking about all the other amazing things there are to see in this vast country of ours. And then I started thinking about how Wal-Mart, one in every town, practically lets you park overnight for free. The idea just sort of came together. We would take vacation from our full time jobs and drive across the country in a rented RV from city to city, spending the night in a different Wal-Mart parking lot every night. And of course, I'd write an article about it and maybe and may be able to sell a story to an RV magazine with photos of RV in America and only staying at Wal-Marts. Given the litigious age we live in, we decided to get permission from Wal-Mart to do so. So I called my brother, who works at Edelman and whose clients include working families for Wal-Mart. In order to find out if we'd be allowed to talk to people and take pictures in Wal-Mart parking lots. As a freelance writer, I've learned over the years that it's always better to ask about stuff like that in advance. They didn't just give us permission. They said they would even sponsor the trip. Hmm. A blog seemed like the perfect medium to tell those stories and even more exciting. No editors. What writer could say? No to that? Oh dear. All in all, it was a perfect fit. Working families for Wal-Mart wants to get the word out about all the good things Walmart does for people. I wanted to make this trip and write about it. It just seemed to work.

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:13:17] Is that the end of that story?

Amy Westervelt [00:13:21] Have you ever heard about the blog Wal-Mart across America become?

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:13:26] I have not at all.

Amy Westervelt [00:13:29] OK. OK, so this is the final post in that blog. It was a project of Edelman PR company for Wal-Mart, and it was started amidst a push among Walmart employees to unionize. So Edelman helped them create this group called Working Families for Wal-Mart, which is one of the many, many, many examples of of astroturfing that Edelman has done for various companies. And it was kind of presented as like, you know, an employee group of of people who really didn't want to unionize and that they were just good old fashioned working class Americans who just loved Wal-Mart. And this blog came about as this whole, you know, fight about unionizing was happening and they would go to all these Wal-Marts, this woman and her husband and they would talk to employees and the employees would just go on and on about how much they loved working for what I'm

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:14:37] sure they did. Meanwhile, hair and makeup is like just out of the parking lot, right?

Amy Westervelt [00:14:50] Yes. Yes. You mean, at the time, at Wal-Mart and across America, they viewed Wal-Mart was paying Edelman some 10 million dollars a year to improve its reputation. That reputation, of course, was that it was cheap with its wages and its benefits. Nothing like paying a PR firm, millions to make you look generous instead of just paying your employees. In the aftermath of the Wal-Mart Across America debacle, Richard Edelman himself went to the press with a statement.

Edelman archival [00:15:24] We regret not being 100 percent transparent about the identity of the blogger. That was entirely our fault, not our clients.

Amy Westervelt [00:15:33] OK. Sure. But nowhere in there did he say anything about working families for Wal-Mart, which was just as big of a fake. The organization was set up by Wal-Mart, and most of its members were Wal-Mart executives, not the store clerks you might imagine. When you hear working families for Wal-Mart? Well, I mean, technically, those executives do work for Wal-Mart, and I guess those families must really like the sweet paycheck they bring home. Wal-Mart execs can earn a thousand times that of an average employee if I were in that family. I'd be very in favor of Wal-Mart. The sole goal of working families for Wal-Mart seemed to be to stop Wal-Mart workers from unionizing, which tracked with Wal-Mart's history when a handful of Wal-Mart butchers at one store in Texas came together to bargain with the store collectively in 2000. The company shut down not only the meat counter at that store, but all of its stores in Texas and five neighboring states, just in case any of those rogue butchers had it in mind to move to a nearby state, I guess. As a business practice, taking off and nuking the site from orbit is always an option. If you're Wal-Mart, of course, Edelman doesn't have a monopoly on astroturfing. The other absolute legend at it is Dr. Evil Doctor Who Doctor, a.k.a. Dick Evil Richard Berman, King of the Front Group. He's the Atai is a win guy from episode three. You don't need to get people to like you. All you have to do is create enough uncertainty that they won't act against you. Remember, back in episode one, when we heard from the doctor with the Center for Accountability and Science and he was talking about antibiotics in meat,

Energy Voter Ad [00:17:26] choosing a burrito or a footlong sub labeled antibiotic free might make you feel like you're making a healthier choice. But in reality, you're simply paying more for a label. To learn more, visit accountable science dot com.

Amy Westervelt [00:17:41] That's a Berman group. He also runs the perfectly innocuous sounding Environmental Policy Alliance, which is the official publisher of a site called Big Green Radicals that highlights the bad behavior of environmental groups some real eco extremists like the Sierra Club. The money for that site came from the right wing Bradley Foundation and initially went to another Berman group, the Center for Consumer Freedom. That group must have gotten too much bad press because in recent years, Berman scrapped it and renamed it the Center for Organizational Research and Education. Big Green Radicals was an environment focused spinoff of a previous project that Berman had done for Bradley called Activist Cash Dot Com. And then, of course, Berman also runs the Center for Union Facts. Surprise, surprise in the anti-union site. If you're getting lost in this maze of slightly boring sounding, innocuous names, guess what? That's the point. He's hoping you lose track of all the money he's throwing at these fake pressure groups. One of Berman's many claims to infamy is his work going after those radicals and mothers against drunk driving on behalf of the restaurant and bar industry and those hippies at the Humane Society on behalf of the industrial meat guys. Here's an ad for the website Humane Watch, a watchdog site that Berman runs to highlight the nefarious ways of the Humane Society.

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:19:28] What do you give money to a charity that was involved in a multimillion dollar racketeering lawsuit? Would you donate to a charity that was being investigated by an attorney general?

Energy Voter Ad [00:19:37] When you write a check to an animal charity that moves $50 million to offshore accounts instead of using it to help animals? Would you support a humane

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:19:44] society that actually ran zero pet shelters? Would you would you?

Amy Westervelt [00:19:49] Would you? Would you? But he's got more serious sounding groups to the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, for example. OK. Actually, the use of both institute and foundation there, in an attempt to sound serious and objective is goofy and hilarious. Classic Berman. The Department for Academic Study is it's amazing. He really can't help himself, but that organization looks on the face of it like a pretty standard DC policy think tank. And it is in fact part of a cluster of nonprofits funded by the Bradley Foundation. They're an ultra conservative group that spends more money than the Cokes. A huge funding source for anti environmental campaigns, the Bradley Foundation pushes very specific pro-business policies, and in this case, a group of Berman led efforts the Center for Union Facts and the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Employment Policies Institute Foundation all focused on one thing getting rid of labor unions. Here's Burman defending his right not to disclose who's funding which groups on Rachel Maddow. Back in 2009,

Energy Voter Ad [00:21:01] I started a lot of these myself because I believe in them, and then I go to people and I say, Listen, this is what I'm doing. If you are, if your beliefs are consistent with mine, will you help me get this thing right? So who? Who doesn't? Who does anything to put a website up,

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:21:13] but who on the acorn? So nobody ever, ever supported that. That was out of the goodness of your heart. Yeah, the problem with that is that I can't prove it one way or another because you don't have to disclose it. And so I have to take your word on that and I will. There's no reason not to. But in general, your strategy is not to say I, Rick Furman, am being paid to tell you that the efforts to stop you from eating fish or stop eating trans fats or or or or stop smoking cigarets, whatever they are, I'm being paid to tell you that these things are a bad idea.

Energy Voter Ad [00:21:45] I don't want things that I don't believe.

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:21:47] OK, but you are being paid to say them as well by people who have a vested interest, if you admitted that. But of course, nobody would call you Dr. Evil anymore. They just call you a PR guy. No reason that you're on the show is because you don't disclose who's paying you to say the things that you're saying. Well, then you

Energy Voter Ad [00:21:59] can't have anybody on your show from the left or the right who is connected to these nonprofit organizations because they won't tell you who's funding them.

Mary Annaise Heglar [00:22:06] And you think that's wrong?

Energy Voter Ad [00:22:08] I think that they're entitled to do this. They're entitled, they're entitled to keep their donors quiet. I think that that's up to them.

Amy Westervelt [00:22:14] Of course, not all astroturfing attempts are as obvious and goofy as a Wal-Mart thing across America. I mean, come on, guys through at least one employee and who doesn't just love the shit out of their Wal-Mart shop. If you want to sell this thing. But if you know what to look for, even the more subtle efforts are pretty easy to spot. They really play up the we're just normal average citizens thing in their names and in their messaging. They talk about saving you average American money, but their number one goal actually seems to be saving a company or an industry money. They use stock photos of people who are supposed to be members of their group in their ads. Hilariously, these guys are constantly doing this and thinking they're not going to get caught. They always get caught. There's no real way to join the group. You can learn more or sign a petition, sometimes even show up at a rally, but unlike genuine community groups, they're never having meetings unless you're hanging out near the Wal-Mart executive washroom in Arkansas. These types of ads really ramp up around elections, so keep an eye out for them in 2022. That's it for this time, next time on our final episode of this series, we're going to find out why Americans really embraced consumerism after World War Two. Come back for that. Thank you for joining us on this hair raising journey through the murky history of PR. Remember to subscribe or ever you get your podcast to find out once and for all who's really pulling the strings. Rig is an original Critical Frequency production, lots of documents, photos and other fun facts about the wild world of PR are on our web site at Rigged Media. Our producer is Marten's Alz Elswick. He also scored this season. Artwork is by Matthew Fleming. Our fact checker is Ashley Barone. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the 1st Amendment Project. Big thanks to Mary Agnes Hagler, who you'll hear throughout this series. If you want to hear more of me and Mary joking around, check out Hot. Take the show we do about climate change. Archival tape in this episode is courtesy of the Library of Congress, the PR Museum and Vanderbilt University's TV news archive. The show is reported by me, Amy Westervelt. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.