Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. This week, a really important study was released from a frequent voice on Drilled, Robert Rule, visiting scholar at Brown University, an environmental sociologist. Rule looked at the rule of PR firms in blocking climate action, a subject we've covered a.
Lot in this podcast, and what he found.
When he looked at which firms the utilities, and coal companies and oil and gas companies were using was somewhat surprising. Only one firm showed up in the top three across
all categories, Edelman PR. Which is interesting because back in twenty fifteen, Edelman made this big announcement on the heels of several executives leaving the firm that it was no longer going to engage in greenwashing, that it was no longer going to work for coal companies at all, and that it was going to commit itself to being a responsible actor on climate. Well, the data that Rule found
does not back that up. If you haven't listened to season three of this podcast, I would recommend going back and doing that. We did a deep dive on all of the various PR folks involved in helping to block climate action, including We also just recently did an episode of our other podcast, rig on Edelman and their role in particularly astroturfing, this strategy where companies or industries will create front groups that seem like grassroots groups, but are in fact paid for by.
A company or industry group.
We're going to bring you that story today after the break, and next week a conversation with Bob Boule and former Edelman VP Christine Arena.
Hope you've enjoy today's.
Episode and come back next week.
For that conversation.
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 rich and I'm an energy voter.
If you can afford a tesla, then this message won't really matter to you.
His name is Don Smith. I've been with Walmart for their years twenty.
Eight years, seventeen and a half years, six and a half years, seventeen years.
Been here eleven years and just eleven Just love my job.
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 US industry. As 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 Driver's Alliance, or from employees that just love Walmart so much they want to sing it from the rooftops, But they're actually paid for by industry trade groups or specific companies.
They give these fake front groups these names that sound they're like perfectly innocuous names, like the California Driver's Alliance or the Washington Consumers for Sound Fuel Policy.
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.
There are hundreds of them, are usually secretly run by lobbying organizations, like though two I just mentioned are actually run by the Western States Petroleum Association, which is a top lobbyist for the oil industry. The Western States Petroleum Association is in turn funded by members including BP Shell, ex OnMobile, Chevron, and Occidental, among others. So it's fake activism, it's corporate money posing as activism, and it's designed to undo all of the progress that real activism makes.
Welcome back to Rigged Up podcast about the war for hearts and minds and activism right here on us 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 nineteen fifty two in Chicago by Daniel Edelman, a former journalist who had spent World War Two working in psychological warfare for the US Army. Here he is much later in life describing that gig.
Working at drug and doing the psychological warfare thing was fascinating because we were upsetting the claims made by the Germans.
It's all lies.
I mean, we had to disclaim them, yep.
And then he came home and put those skills to work on behalf of US industry against the American public. Edelman's son, Richard took over as CEO in nineteen ninety six, 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 push the idea that secondhand smoke was no big deal. It must be weird joining the family business when the family business
is propaganda. In a strategy he crafted for R. J. Reynolds in nineteen seventy seven, Daniel Edelman Datleman, if you like, recommends a civility campaign for smokers as a way to push the idea that smokers care about non smokers, that they're not just trying to be assholes imposing their cigarettes on the public.
He writes a program directed at our own constituency, the Smoker makes the greatest sense to us. Example, a code of conduct for smokers publicized in all the traditional ways, a smoker's etiquette handbook distributed in smoking sections of trains, airplanes, et cetera. Restaurant tabletops on smoking etiquette, awards to courtesy smokers, contests to develop the dos and dots of civility in smoking. The possibilities are limitless. We need to develop various ways
such a campaign and be pursued intelligently and effectively. It 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 cigarette smoke causes any health problems.
In nineteen ninety eight, after Big to B 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. Christina A Rena joined Edelman in twenty twelve, 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 twenty fourteen, Edelman created an astroturfing master plan designed to sway public opinion on trans Canada's Keystone
Excel 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 twenty fourteen, Arena knew she had to leave. In twenty fifteen, 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 twenty eighteen they submitted an entry for a pr Award for a campaign they created for Shell that well, it
sure looks a lot like greenwashing. In their award submission, Edelman said their campaign was meant to quote.
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.
They claimed a twenty eight 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 green washing, 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 Citizens. Energy Citizens is a front group created by Edelman for the American
Petroleum Institute way back in two thousand and nine. But creating groups like that is something Edelman has done over and over again for lots of clients in lots of different industries.
Like that creation of bake grassroom support, which came to be known as like astroturfing, and Edelman was genius at doing that. And that's like rallying, you know, with the tobacco companies. That was like state you know, doctors and academics and climate changes, like the scientists who take contrary and perspectives and anybody who will like prepare it the propaganda.
I'll use that.
AstroTurf plan to then influence media, to influence politicians, influence regulatory to do.
The Eedlman 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. 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 Walmart. When I heard about it, I had to call up Mary Anna eas Hegler,
writer and my frequent partner in crime. Okay, I'm going to just I'm going to read you a little story and we can pause along the way for your reactions to this.
Oh that's so sweet. Story time.
It's story time with Mary.
Here we go.
In April two thousand and six, Jim and I hiked the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Slot Canyons in Escalante. During our trip, we ended up in Page, Arizona at five am, 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 amid at least a dozen RVs. Not sure what was up, we asked why, and we learned that Walmart allows r vs to stay and 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 Walmart, 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 Walmart parking lot every night. And of course I'd write an article about it, maybe and maybe able to sell a story to an RV magazine with photos of rving in America and only staying at Walmart's. Given the litigious age we live in, we decided to get permission from Walmart to do so. So I called my brother who works at Edelman and whose clients include Working Families for Walmart, in order to find out if we'd be allowed to talk to people and take pictures in
Walmart 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. 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 Paul. In all, it was a perfect fit. Working Families for Walmart 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 that the end of that story.
Have you ever heard about the blog Walmarting across America dot com?
I have not at all.
Okay, okay, So this is the final post in that blog. It was a project of Edelman PR Company for Walmart, and it was started amidst a push among Walmart employees to unionize. So Edelman helped them create this group called Working Families for Walmart, which is one of the many, many, many examples of astroturfing that Edelman has done for various companies.
And it was kind of presented as like, you know, an employee group of people who really didn't want to unionize, and that they were just good old fashioned working glass Americans who just loved Walmart. And this blog came about, like as this whole you know, fight about you reunizing was happening, and they would go to all these Walmarts, this woman and her husband, they would talk to employees, and the employees would just go on and on about how much they loved working.
For I'm sure they dare.
Meanwhile, hair and makeup is like just off parking lot, right, yes.
Yes. At the time that Walmarting Across America debuted, Walmart was paying Edelman some ten 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 for millions to make you look generous instead of just paying your employees. In the aftermath of the Walmarting Across America debuckle, Richard Edelman himself went to the press with.
A statement, we regret not being one hundred percent transparent about the identity of the bloggers. That was entirely our fault, not our clients.
Okay, sure, But nowhere in there did he say anything about Working Families for Walmart, which was just as big of a fake. The organization was set up by Walmart, and most of its members were Walmart executives, not the store clerks. You might imagine when you hear Working Families for Walmart. Well, I mean, technically, those executives do work for Walmart, and I guess those families must really like the sweet paychecks they bring home. Walmart execs can earn
a thousand times that of an average employee. If I were in that family, I'd be very in favor of Walmart. The sole goal of Working Families for Walmart seemed to be to stop Walmart workers from unionizing, which tracked with
Walmart's history. When a handful of Walmart butchers at one store in Texas came together to bargain with the store collectively in two thousand, 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 Walmart. Of course, Edelman doesn't have
a monopoly on astroturfing. The other absolute legend at it is Doctor Evil aka Dick Evil. Richard Berman, king of the Front Group. He's the Attie 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 in Science and he was talking about antibiotics and meat.
Choosing a burrito or a foot long 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 accountablescience dot com.
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 activistcash
dot Com. And then, of course, Berman also runs the Center for Union Facts Surprise Surprise, and 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 at Mothers Against Drunk Driving on behalf of the restaurant and bar industry, and those hippies at the Humane Society on behalf of the industrial Meet 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.
Would 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?
Would you write a check to an animal charity that moved fifty million dollars to offshore counts instead of using it to help animals?
Would you support a humane society that actually ran zero pet shelters?
Would you?
Would you?
Would you? Would you?
But he's got more serious sounding groups too, the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, for example. Okay, 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 Studies, It's amazing. He really can't help himself. But that organization looks, on the face of it like a pretty standard DC policy you 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 Kochs, 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 Berman defending his right not to disclose who's funding which groups on Rachel Maddow back in two thousand and nine.
I start 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, if your beliefs are consistent with mine, will you help me get this thing out of it? So who does anything to put a website up?
Right?
But who on the acorn?
So nobody ever else ever supported that was out of the goodness 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 Berman, am being paid to tell you that the efforts to stop you from eating fish, or stop eating trans fats, or or stop smoking cigarettes, whatever they are, I'm being paid to tell you that these things are a bad idea.
I don't want things that I don't believe.
Okay, but you are being paid to save them as well by people who have a vested interest. If you admitted that, but somebody would call you doctor evil anymore. They just call you a pr guy. The 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 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.
And you think that's wrong.
I think that they're entitled to do that. They're entitled, they're entitled to keep their donors quiet. I think that that's up to them.
Of course, not all astroturfing attempts are as obvious and goofy as walmarting across America. I mean, come on, guys, through at least one employee and who doesn't just love the show out of their Walmart job 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 though 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 Walmart executive washroom in Arkansas. These types of ads really ramp up around elections, so keep an eye out for them. In twenty twenty two. 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 wherever you get your podcasts to find out once and for all who's really pulling the strings. Rigged is an original critical frequency production. Lots of documents, photos, and other fun facts about the wild world of PR are on our website at rigged dot Media. Our producer is Martin zaltz Ostwick. He also scored this season. Artwork
is by Matthew Fleming. Our fact checker is Ashley Braun. Our First Amendment attorney is Genie Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. Big thanks to Mary Annaise Hegler, 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 Westerbelt. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time.