Subject: INDUSTRIAL MONEY AND POWER IN POLITICS
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:25:31 -0400
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of
California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
cc: Carol Browner browner.carol@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought
you might like to read an article - courtesy of Dr. Plumlee, Co-President
National Coalition for Chemically Injured.
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB LUNCHEON WITH JOURNALIST BILL MOYERS
SUBJECT: INDUSTRIAL MONEY AND POWER
IN POLITICS MODERATOR: RICHARD RYAN
DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2001
The following is a short excerpt that makes for interesting
reading and helps to explain why it is difficult to obtain the truth when major
corporations and industries fund research, etc., and why it is nearly impossible
to pass regulations to protect public health.
This excerpt/transcript should be required reading for
anyone fighting the Farm Bureau, factory hog farms, and CAFO pollution, etc.
Bill Moyers: Let me just give you a couple of examples in closing of what I
mean, why this battle is never ending. Some years ago my colleague Marty Kuen
(ph), one of the great investigative journalists or producers of our time, came
to me with a report he heard of efforts by the agricultural chemical industry to
delay and dilute an important study the National Academy of Sciences on the
effects of pesticide residues on children.
David Banning (ph) of Frontline joined us as an ally, and we set out
about doing a documentary. Four to
six weeks before we were finished, the industry obtained a purloined copy of the
rough script, and mounted a sophisticated and expensive campaign to discredit
the documentary before it aired. They flooded television reviewers and the
editorial pages of newspapers with propaganda.
A Washington Post columnist took a dig at the broadcast on the morning of
the day it aired without ever having seen it, and later admitted to me
personally when we had a drink in this building that the dig had been supplied
by a top lobbyist in town.
Public television stations were hit with an avalanche of
disinformation and with demands that PBS, quote, "obey the law" --
such as the First Amendment. Some station managers were so unnerved they
protested the documentary with letters that had been prepared by industry.
Several station managers later wrote me in their own words, and over
their own signature, apologizing for having been suckered.
But here's what most perplexed us: eight days before the broadcast aired
the American Cancer Society, a fine organization that in no way figured in our
documentary, sent to its 3,000 local chapters a critique of the unfinished
documentary, claiming wrongly that it exaggerated the hazards.
That struck us as odd.
Why was such a reputable organization taking the unusual
step of criticizing a documentary it hadn’t seen, didn't air, and didn't claim
what the society alleged? Well, an
enterprising reporter in town named Sheila Kaplan later looked into this
question for Legal Times, which headlined her story, quote,
"Porter Novelli Plays All Sides."
It turns out that the Porter Novelli public relations firm, which had
worked for several chemical companies, also did pro bono work for the American
Cancer Society. Sheila Kaplan found that the firm was be to cash in some of the
good will from that pro bono work to persuade the staff, communications staff of
the American Cancer Society, to issue some harsh talking points about our
documentary that had been supplied by, but not attributed to, Porter Novelli.
Others used the society's good name to discredit the documentary, including the
right-wing polemicist here in town, Reed Irvine, who published a screed against,
quote, "junk science on PBS,” and called on Congress to pull the plug on
public television again. PBS stood
firm -- again. The report aired,
the journalism held up, in contrast to the disinformation about it, and the
National Academy of Science was liberated finally to release the report the
industry had tried to cripple with propaganda.
None of this should have surprised us.
This is the industry that 30 years earlier had mounted a blitzkrieg
designed to destroy Rachel Carson's credibility as soon as the New Yorker
published the first of her three-part condensation of "Silent Spring."
Rachel Carson was accused of a communist plot to cripple American industry.
One chemical company threatened to sue Carson and her publishers if the
book was released. Others
threatened to withhold advertising from Garden magazines and weekly supplements
if they published favorable reviews of "Silent Spring." The industry
invested millions of dollars in public relations that paid off in support
articles in the New York Times, Time, Sports Illustrated and Reader's Digest. Then, like the American Cancer in our time, the American
Medical Association was snookered by the industry.
The AMA criticized Carson's book as a serious threat to the continued
supply of wholesome, nutritious food.
Rachel Carson was dying of cancer at the time, but events
totally vindicated her. And within
a year 40 state legislatures had passed regulations concerning pesticides.
Well Mr. Helliker, I would
like to note that while there now are "regulations" on how to use your
"registered" POISONS, we STILL are using these terrible toxins at far
greater levels than those with which Rachael Carson was so concerned.
The simplest answer to all of the "registered" CONTAMINATION is
to use safe and far more effective alternatives. Antoine de Saint-Exupery once noted: "A rock pile ceases
to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him
the image of a cathedral." Everyday
there are more and more people who are using safe and far more effective
(unregistered) alternatives rather than your dangerous "registered"
POISONS and they will continue to teach others how they too can avoid exposing
themselves and our earth to your dangerous "registered" POISONS.
It is my vision that everyone in the world can so avoid the ever
increasing exposure to your "registered" POISONS.
What is your vision?
Respectfully,
Stephen L. Tvedten
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