The article below was originally published in DeSmog. Investigative journalism – such as this story by acclaimed Canadian scientist David Suzuki – purports to expose the latest corporate outrage, but ends up unintentionally burying deeper truths that the public urgently needs to understand if we are to ever end corporate control over us. Within the body of David Suzuki’s article, Founding Director Paul Cienfuegos adds his editorial comments in a different color, to illustrate how much significant information is missing here. The $64,000 question is: How are we going to shift independent journalism so that exposing the deeper truths (that Paul unveils below) becomes background normal? The situation is urgent. Please share this page with the journalists you know.
AstroTurf looks and feels like grass—in an all-too-perfect way. But it’s not grass.
Now the well-known artificial turf’s brand name has taken on a new meaning, referring to purported “grassroots” efforts that are actually funded and supported by industry and political entities.
Actually, the term “astroturf” has been used for decades to describe such groups.
Some people, organizations and campaigns around everything from forestry to fossil fuels look and feel “grassroots,” but many are anything but. In discussions around climate change and fossil fuels, for example, we see groups like Canada Action (and its spin-offs, Oil Sands Action and Pipeline Action), Ethical Oil, Resource Works, the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, among others.
It’s one tactic in the industry playbook.
This industry tactic is only lawful because corporations and their trade associations and front groups have all been granted constitutional so-called “rights” by the US Supreme Court. This particular abuse of power originates from their First Amendment protected “right to speak”, which could be ended if We the People stopped challenging one corporate harm at a time, endlessly, and instead focused on dismantling corporate “rights” altogether.
In a recent column, we discussed science denial campaigns related to climate change and caribou habitat protection. Astroturf campaigns are designed not just to deny evidence and discredit opponents but also to imply broad public support for products or practices.
And these campaigns get away with lying to the public because corporate directors and managers are protected from personal or financial liability, so they can’t be sued for lying.
Many of the organizations are secretive about their funding and alliances, even as they attack social justice and environmental organizations over “foreign funding” and collaboration with international groups.
Corporate constitutional “rights” include their ability to maintain secret funding sources for their propaganda efforts (i.e. their “right to speak”).
Astroturf campaigns aren’t new, but they’re becoming increasingly widespread and effective as social media and the internet play a greater role in shaping public opinion.
In B.C., they go back at least as far as the 1980s and ’90s, during the “War in the Woods” over logging in Clayoquot Sound. To counter massive protests, the Citizens Coalition for Sustainable Development, also known as Share B.C., was launched with support from and ties to the forestry industry, later spawning a number of “Share” offshoots.
The tactic gained notoriety in the U.S. after the Environmental Protection Agency released a 1992 report about the health impacts of tobacco smoke on non-smokers. In response, the world’s biggest tobacco company, Philip Morris, launched a campaign “to prevent states and cities, as well as businesses, from passive-smoking bans.”
Before corporations won constitutionally-protected Free Speech “rights”, they were prohibited from advertising their products (commercial speech) and also prohibited from engaging in political speech. This all changed in the late 1800’s. Imagine how different our situation would be today if We the People passed laws forbidding corporations from launching political advocacy campaigns. Why is our activism not focused here, challenging those structures of law that make corporate rule inevitable?
The company hired PR firm APCO, which warned that industry spokespeople are not always seen as credible messengers and that a “national grassroots coalition” would carry more weight. APCO then established the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition to challenge the scientific consensus about tobacco smoke harms.
In his book Heat, UK writer George Monbiot quotes a memo from tobacco company Brown and Williamson: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”
The coalition, with additional funding from Exxon and other fossil fuel companies, went on to sow doubt about climate science. Its name illustrates another tactic: using labels and branding to convince the public they’re evidence-based or to blur distinctions between them and legitimate entities. In Canada, the International Climate Science Coalition and Friends of Science (both of which Tom Harris has been or is involved with), are anything but friendly to science.
Not being “friendly to science” is the least of our worries. The more urgent problem is that large corporations are constitutionally protected in their advocacy, their deceit, their secret fundraising, their involvement in our electoral campaigns. All of which would end if we dismantled the corporate “rights” legal frameworks that give corporations so much legal authority in the first place.
A report sponsored by the U.S. Heartland Institute and promoted by Harris’s ICSC was published under the banner of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, a name aimed at creating confusion between it and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In 1998, a group called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine sponsored the Oregon Petition, which urged the U.S. government to reject climate change measures. It used the same font and format as the legitimate Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, prompting that organization to issue a statement distancing itself from the bogus group.
As the internet and social media become greater forces in society, astroturf groups and campaigns are growing, especially around global warming. Armies of trolls and credible-sounding organizations spread similar messaging on a range of topics. In keeping the forestry industry’s caribou science denial tactics, we can expect to see it using PR firms and ostensibly third-party voices to make its case.
Although it would be difficult or impossible to end astroturfing, people can learn how to spot phoney “grassroots” organizations and campaigns.
Famed author David Suzuki waves the white flag of surrender! He claims that all we can do is spot these deceitful campaigns, but we can’t possibly end this outrage. How extraordinary an admission of his own sense of powerlessness, and of his lack of understanding as to how large corporations gain so much control over our societies and how that control can be taken down. If you know David personally, I urge you to forward this critique to him directly. Thank you!
SourceWatch and DeSmog provide thoroughly researched information on a range of groups and individuals involved in these campaigns.
“In these campaigns” is clearly referring to those groups that don’t realize how effective our social movements could become if we stepped back from our incessant single-issue oppositional activism and instead focused on dismantling corporate “rights”. Please consider joining us at Community Rights US as we tackle these deeper structural sources of the corporate rule crisis. The situation is urgent, and deeper more effective solutions exist. Find out more HERE.
For the sake of public discourse and progress on important social, health and environmental issues, it’s up to all of us to critically assess all information sources.