Trust Us, We're Experts PA

by Sheldon Rampton

  This book has largely been a catalogue of disturbing trends and failures to live up to the promise of an informed, democratic society. It is important to remember that these are not universal trends. We have described failures in the way the news media does its job, but there are also enterprising, committed journalists who take seriously their responsibility to serve as the public’s eyes and ears. In addition to reporters, there are activist congressional aides, government whistle-blowers, public-interest groups, and even trial lawyers who actively investigate and challenge the official doctrines of government and industry. Maude De Victor, for example, was a 23-year counselor with the U.S. Veterans Authority when she noted a pattern of illness among army veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange. She brought it to the attention of CBS news correspondent Bill Kurtis, whose resulting exposé earned him a coveted Peabody Award and three Emmys. De Victor herself was rewarded by being fired, black-listed, and banned from full-time government work, but she is a heroine to people who long for government accountability and a world free of chemical toxins.

  Activists and whistle-blowers come from all walks of life. Emelda West, a great-grandmother in her 70s, helped campaign against toxic releases in low-income communities in Louisiana. In Pensacola, Florida, Margaret Williams heads Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, a group formed in 1991 to battle the Environmental Protection Agency’s digging on a toxic site near her home. When residents—most of them elderly and not well-off financially—began suffering eye and skin irritations and breathing problems, she quickly learned about the poisonous effects of dioxin. Although her group lost the battle to stop the digging, it recently persuaded the federal government to pay for the relocation of all 358 families.

  Terri Swearingen had activism thrust upon her in 1982. “I was pregnant with our one and only child,” she recalls. “That’s when I first learned of plans to build one of the world’s largest toxic waste incinerators in my community. When they began site preparation to begin building the incinerator in 1990, my life changed forever.”21

  The incinerator, owned by a company called Waste Technologies Industries (WTI), was sited in East Liverpool, Ohio, just across the border from her home in West Virginia. It was situated in a floodplain, with homes nearby and an elementary school just 400 yards away. Worse yet, it was located in a valley that experiences frequent air inversions, which trap the air and prevent the escape of pollution. In short, it is about the worst place you could imagine building a giant hazardous waste facility that emits dioxins, acid gases like hydrogen chloride, and heavy metals, including mercury, lead, and chromium.

  “I’m a registered nurse,” Swearingen says, “so I’ve actually seen the effects of lead poisoning in young children and the types of behavioral or developmental problems that it produces. One of the first things I learned about WTI was that the government was going to let them emit 4.7 tons of lead annually. I thought, how can the government do this? How can they let them emit lead? Lead never breaks down. It never degrades. It just accumulates. When you know a little bit about the effects of lead, the rest is just common sense. That’s all you need to know to realize that they should never even consider building this thing next to a school.”

  When Swearingen first began trying to fight the incinerator, she says she was “at ground zero.” She picked up Rush to Burn, a 1989 book about waste incineration by reporters at Newsday magazine. “I read the book twice and highlighted sections with the people involved. Then I just started calling them up and asking for help. They said, ‘You’re going to have to deal with this yourself.’ ”

  She learned to tap the expertise of people such as Paul Connett, a professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence University whom Swearingen calls “our secret weapon.” Connett helped translate complex scientific data into information that the community could understand. Other advice came from Herbert Needleman, the University of Pittsburgh researcher who has studied the neurotoxicology of lead in children, and David Ozonoff, chairman of Boston University’s School of Public Health. To help challenge a risk assessment from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, she called on EPA whistle-blower Hugh Kaufman.

  Swearingen herself led more than 20 civil disobedience protests against the incinerator and even testified before the U.S. Congress. She helped make the incinerator such a high-profile issue that in 1992 Al Gore, then a candidate for vice president, promised to stop the project if he were elected. “The very idea of putting WTI in a floodplain, you know it’s just unbelievable to me,” Gore said. “For the safety and health of local residents rightfully concerned about the impact of this incinerator on their families and their future, a thorough investigation is urgently needed.”22

  Like many politicians’ promises, this one turned out to be worth less than the air in which it vibrated. Once in office, Gore backed down—not surprisingly, since Little Rock investment banker Jackson Stephens, the Clinton-Gore campaign’s biggest financial backer, was involved in financing the incinerator.

  But even though the WTI incinerator was not stopped, it became a turning point against the construction of new incinerators. Swearingen’s dogged protests—including her willingness to get arrested for the cause—gained enough attention to prompt Ohio Governor George Voinovich to halt future incinerator construction. The day after she was jailed for a demonstration in front of the White House, the Clinton administration declared a national moratorium on new incinerator construction and revised its rules to require stricter limits on the release of dioxin and heavy metals. In April 1997, she received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in recognition of her leadership.

  “I am not a scientist or a Ph.D,” Swearingen said upon accepting the award. “I am a nurse and a housewife, but my most important credential is that I am a mother. . . . We know what is at stake. We have been forced to educate ourselves, and the final exam represents our children’s future. ...Because of this, we approach the problem with common sense and with passion. We don’t buy into the notion that all it takes is better regulations and standards, better air pollution control devices and more bells and whistles. We don’t believe that technology will solve all of our problems. We know that we must get to the front end of the problems, and that prevention is what is needed.”23

  She recalls talking about WTI recently with a 14-year-old girl. Upon learning that the incinerator was located next to a school, the girl blurted out, “But that wouldn’t take any research to know it’s wrong!” Swearingen marvels at a teenager’s ability to grasp in a single sentence the point that eluded the EPA in its four-year, 4,000-page risk assessment.

  “We have to reappraise what expertise is and who qualifies as an expert,” Swearingen says. “There are the experts who are working in the corporate interest, who often serve to obscure the obvious and challenge common sense; and there are experts and non-experts who are working in the public interest. From my experience, I am distrusting more and more the professional experts, not because they are not clever, but because they do not ask the right questions. And that’s the difference between being clever and being wise. Einstein said, ‘A clever person solves a problem; a wise person avoids it.’ . . . Citizens who are working in this arena—people who are battling to stop new dump sites or incinerator proposals, people who are risking their lives to prevent the destruction of rain forests or working to ban the industrial uses of chlorine and PVC plastics—are often labeled obstructionists and anti-progress. But we actually represent progress—not technological progress, but social progress. We have become the real experts, not because of our title or the university we attended, but because we have been threatened and we have a different way of seeing the world.”24

  APPENDIX

  Recommended Resources

  Many of the books and other resources that we have used in researching this book are cited in the footnotes. The suggestions below indicate other resources that we have found particularly important and that we recommend for further reading.

  There is one t
ype of resource, however, that we endorse first and foremost: the public library. Librarians are a class of expert for which we have nothing but respect. They are trained not only in how to catalogue information but also in how to help patrons use a wide range of reference sources. Whether you are trying to understand the neurotoxicology of lead or investigate the funding of a Washington think tank, a few minutes spent talking to a librarian can often save hours of wasted time and yield remarkable discoveries. One of the trends during the past decade has been a retreat in public funding for libraries, as money has been shifted toward other information resources such as expensive computer systems. This is unfortunate, because often there is no substitute for talking to a human being with training in information sciences—especially in today’s age of data glut. We might add that we have never met a mean librarian. Free public libraries have been and remain an important resource for the maintenance of an informed public and a democratic society. Use them, and support them!

  BOOKS

  Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 1998). This book provides a comprehensive worldwide look at corporate anti-environmental PR campaigns, with chapters focusing on industry front groups, conservative think tanks, media strategies, efforts to target children, and the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP suits) to harass corporate critics.

  Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997). This collection of essays by the late Australian academic Alex Carey is both inspiring and disturbing. “The twentieth century,” Carey observed, “has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

  Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). The concept of “democracy” is frequently invoked but rarely examined in political discussions. Dahl’s book provides both a historic and a theoretical examination of democracy, beginning with the city-states of ancient Greece and concluding with discussion of the directions in which democracy must move if democratic societies are to exist in the future.

  William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1992). One of the best books we have read on the ways that influence peddling operates in Washington.

  Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994). Although this book focuses in particular on debunking the overhyped claims of computer scientists, it offers a wonderful, thoughtful, and in some places even poetic critique of the notion that computers can think for us and that “information” is equivalent to knowledge and wisdom.

  John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995). This was our first book together and provided a detailed exposé of the techniques used by today’s multibillion-dollar PR industry, including a number of techniques that are not discussed here, such as “grassroots PR,” surveillance of activists, and corporate “divide and conquer” strategies.

  Washington Representatives (Washington, D.C.: Columbia Books). This annual directory is the best single reference work for tracking individuals and organizations with offices in Washington, D.C., working as lobbyists, foreign agents, legal advisers, industry front groups, and public relations representatives. It is superbly researched, cross-referenced, and an excellent first source for examining the backgrounds, interests, and interconnections of those influencing federal policy and the media in the nation’s capital. Make sure your library carries it.

  Derk Arend Wilcox (ed.), The Right Guide and The Left Guide (Ann Arbor, MI: Economics America, Inc.). These two directories, updated every couple of years, provide excellent brief summaries on organizations, their political and ideological leanings, funding, leadership, tax status, and mission. Make sure your library carries these important reference guides.

  PERIODICALS

  EXTRA! magazine is published by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a national media watchdog group that focuses awareness on the corporate allegiance of the media and its underrepresentation of points of view from women, minorities, and low-income groups. For information, contact FAIR, 130 W. 25th Street, New York, NY 10001; phone (212) 633-6700.

  O’Dwyer’s PR Services is a monthly trade publication of the public relations industry. Although unreservedly pro-PR, it offers honest reporting on the activities of PR firms and often better journalism than you’ll find in the mainstream media. For subscription information, contact O’Dwyer’s, 271 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016; phone (212) 679-241.

  PR Watch, published quarterly by our own Center for Media & Democracy, offers investigative reporting on manipulative and deceptive practices of the public relations industry. For a sample copy, contact the Center for Media & Democracy, 520 University Avenue, Suite 310, Madison, WI 53703; phone (608) 260-9713. Searchable back issues are available at www.prwatch.org.

  Rachel’s Environment and Health Weekly is a decade-old, two-page weekly newsletter on the cutting edge of environmental, health, and democracy issues. It is edited by Peter Montague and published by the nonprofit Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403. It is unabashedly activist and passionate, but very well written and documented, and it provides a good look at how good science can combine with a precautionary approach. The ERF is also happy to handle written and phone inquiries on issues of environmental and health expertise, referring citizens and reporters to solid sources from the academic and activist communities. Searchable back issues are available at www.rachel.org.

  THE INTERNET

  Given the speed with which websites come and go, we have elected not to provide a list of recommended sites in this book. However, we maintain a list of recommended links online at the website of the Center for Media and Democracy, at the following address: www.prwatch.org/links/index.html.

  NOTES

  PREFACE: THE SMELL TEST

  1 Burson-Marsteller home page, , (September 27, 1999).

  2 James Lindheim, “Restoring the Image of the Chemical Industry,” Chemistry and Industry, no. 15, August 7, 1989, p. 491.

  CHAPTER 1: THE THIRD MAN

  1 Greg Miller and Leslie Helm, “Microsoft Tried to Grow ‘Grass Roots,’ ” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1998.

  2 Ibid.

  3 “An Open Letter to President Clinton from 240 Economists on Antitrust Protectionism,” the Independent Institute, June 1999.

  4 Robert MacMillan, “240 Economists Slam U.S. for Antitrust Actions,” Newsbytes, June 2, 1999.

  5 Joel Brinkley, “ ‘Unbiased’ Ads for Microsoft Came at a Price,” New York Times, September 18, 1999, p. 1.

  6 David J. Theroux, “Winners, Losers and Microsoft Strikes a Sensitive Nerve: Response to New York Times Article,” Independent Institute news release, September 19, 1999, , (July 25, 2000).

  7 David Callahan, “The Think Tank As Flack,” Washington Monthly, vol. 31, no. 11 (November 1, 1999), p. 21.

  8 Robert Dilenschneider, keynote speech at Media Relations ’98, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY, April 27, 1998.

  9 Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter, vol. 31, no. 16 (April 22, 1998), p. 8.

  10 Ben Wildavsky and Neil Munro, “Culture Clash,” National Journal, vol. 30, no. 20 (May 16, 1998), p. 1102.

  11 Mary Mosquera, “Spin Accelerates as Microsoft Trial Nears,” TechWeb News, October 16, 1998.

  12 Ted Bridis, Glenn Simpson, and Mylene Mangalindan, “When Microsoft’s Spin Got Too Good, Oracle Hired Private Investigators,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 200
0, p. 1.

  13 Mary Jo Foley, “Microsoft Still Considering Image Makeover Plan,” PC Week Online, April 13, 1998.

  14 David Coursey, “Microsoft’s PR Effort Is Just Part of the Game,” PC Magazine Online, April 10, 1998, , (July 25, 2000).

  15 Robert Cwiklik, “Ivory Tower Inc.: When Research and Lobbying Mix,” Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1998.

  16 Annabel Ferriman, “An End to Health Scares?” British Medical Journal, vol. 319, September 11, 1999, p. 716.

  17 “State Ags Investigate Healthcare PR Alliances,” O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, October 1999, p. 1.

  18 Mark Megalli and Andy Friedman, Masks of Deception: Corporate Front Groups in America (Essential Information, 1991), p. 82.

  19 Bob Burton, “Sometimes the Truth Leaks Out: Failed PR Campaigns ‘Down Under,’ ” PR Watch, vol. 4, no. 4 (Fourth Quarter 1997).