There is a line between public relations and propaganda - or there should be. And there is a difference between using your skills, in good faith, to help rescue a battered reputation and using them to twist the truth - to sow confusion and doubt on an issue that is critical to human survival.
And it is infuriating - as a public relations professional - to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.
That's what is happening today, and I think it's a disgrace. On one hand, you have the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific consensus in history, advising that:
climate change is real;
it is caused by human activity; and
it is threatening the planet in ways we can only begin to imagine.
On the other hand, you have an ongoing public debate - not about how to respond, but about whether we should bother, about whether climate change is even a scientific certainty. ...
Check out the rest of Jim's manifesto and Jim's Desmog Blog. The latest post is an interesting one about the PR technique called Astroturfing where PR companies create fake "grassroots" organisations to promote their own interests.
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3 comments:
The worst one I have seen is the "Competitive Enterprise Institute", who did a series of video spots on "CO2 - They call it pollution... we call it life"
Main backer - Exxon. Put a check mark on my boycott list. Seriously.
Ugh. How ridiculous. It makes me feel sick.
That's a good idea about boycotting though. I'll definitely try to boycott Exxon and any other company I find supporting this kind of misinformation.
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