News Coverage
Guess who's behind this propaganda?
Many think tanks funded by lobbyists
Published September 21, 2003
For years, lobbyists for big polluting industries have been developing new tools for getting their way with government officials, many of which supplement traditional campaign contributions with efforts to influence public opinion - to which public officials pay so much attention.
One such vehicle the lobbyists have developed to convince you that they are right is to set up groups that sound like neutrally positioned policy "think tanks" and membership groups, then quietly fund these groups - which then just happen to agree with and spin the lobbying agenda of the polluting industries on talk radio, on television, on the Internet and in newspaper columns. You, on the other hand, never are told on whose behalf these paid PR groups are working.
The pesticide companies, for example, know they are better off having neutral sounding and credible spokespeople do their talking for them on key environmental and public health problems. Meet the increasingly high-profile funded Hudson Institute and one of its most prominent "scholars," Dennis Avery.
Groups criticized
Late last month, hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers across the country were presented with a long column by Avery, a "senior fellow" at the Hudson Institute. Avery actually is a former government agricultural policy bureaucrat, not a scientist. But he's been funded in recent years to be one of Hudson's 50 "scholars," whose sole job is to produce and place propaganda that sides with the industries that fund the Hudson Institute.
In his recent piece, Avery criticized groups such as mine for researching pesticide levels on fruits and vegetables and for testing levels of toxic industrial chemicals in consumer products. It seems like an odd thing to be upset about - scientists in our organization doing independent research, not funded by industries with a vested interest in their outcomes, then posting the results on a Web site for the press and public to weigh. If the government isn't doing research into these questions - which, in a perfect world, it would - why shouldn't someone do it so that people have access to the power of information, so they can make informed consumer choices?
The industry lobbying groups don't like this idea, and they are willing to have paid public relations people say just about anything to change the subject. Consider the false or misleading points in Avery's latest disinformation piece: There's no link between trace chemicals and human health (false, according to dozens of studies during the last several years). The long-banned DDT is not in the environment any more (we tested for the presence of the chemical in people's bodies and found it). Environmental Working Group has no scientists (false). All industrial chemicals found in people's bodies also are in the environment (true, because industries have polluted them). Groups like mine want you to be afraid of eating your vegetables (we actually eat of lot of vegetables here, we just think people should have information about pesticides on them).
Exaggerations
It's hard to know where to start with that bouquet of exaggerations, but it's really not necessary to go tit-for-tat. The larger point was raised by one of Avery's charges: "There's no link between the trace chemicals (recently found in federal research and a study we conducted) and our health."
Not true. There have been dozens of studies saying differently. But here's where the brilliance of setting up people such as Avery in the propaganda business. At the same time Avery is saying the case in the court of public opinion that chemicals pose no problems for us (he authored an entire book on "Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic"), the pesticide and chemical companies spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying to limit the studies federal government researchers will conduct.
If there's not much of a link between health and chemicals, that doesn't mean anyone has spent the time to test for one. No one has been required to safety test many of the 85,000 industrial chemicals before they were registered for use. The result? The only chemicals we know much about among the 85,000 registered for use in this country are the ones we have banned.
Hudson bills itself as "America's premier source of applied research on enduring policy challenges." But nowhere prominent does it tell you that its funded by pesticide and chemical interests that want you to hear their side from someone else as well as them. We think people deserve to know who is doing the talking - or, at least, who is paying to have the talking done.
Mike Casey, Environmental Working Group