together to fight for their “rights.”
From a tactical standpoint this was a brilliant strategy. True grassroots organizations are one of the great expressions of democracy. In them, theoretically at least, you have a group of independent citizens bound together in common interest rising up and demanding to be heard. Reporters have grown appropriately cynical of corporate manipulation, and they are generally suspicious of established interest groups, from environmentalists to consumer advocates, who have made what appears to be common cause with government regulators. They find it refreshing to see an apparently spontaneous outpouring of support or opposition on any public issue.
The political theorist Jeffrey Berry documented this in his 2000 book, The New Liberalism: The Rising Power of Citizen Groups. Berry showed that in the realms of politics and media, grassroots organizations were outperforming industry-sponsored interest groups by a wide margin. For example, Berry found that a small number of citizens’ groups making representations in Congress were overrepresented in media citations by a factor of 10 to 1 when compared to their industry counterparts.
The National Smokers Alliance, however, was not a spontaneous outpouring of public support. It was an Astroturf group, a fake grassroots organization animated by a clever public relations campaign and a huge budget. As John Stauber wrote in a 1994 edition of the online journal PR Watch:
Burson-Marsteller’s state-of-the-art campaign utilizes full-page newspaper ads, direct telemarketing, paid canvassers, free 800 numbers, newsletters and letters to send to federal agencies. B-M is targeting the fifty million Americans who smoke. Its goal is to rile-up and mobilize a committed cadre of hundreds of thousands, better yet millions, to be foot soldiers in a grassroots army directed by Philip Morris’s political operatives at Burson-Marsteller.3
Such are the profits available to the tobacco industry that around the same time, Philip Morris had also engaged the public relations giant APCO Worldwide to craft a parallel attack on the scientific validity of links between cancer and secondhand smoke. In 1993 APCO proposed the foundation of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). The original documentation of this proposal is available on the Internet at TobaccoDocuments.org, a Web site established after the tobacco industry lost a series of 1990s lawsuits over the falsification of evidence and the attempt to cover up the health effects of smoking.
The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition’s stated objectives were these:
• Establish TASSC as a credible source for reporters when questioning the validity of scientific studies.
• Encourage the public to question—from the grassroots up—the validity of scientific studies.
• Mobilize support for TASSC through alliances with other organizations and third-party allies.
• Develop materials, including new article reprints, that can be “merchandized” to TASSC audiences.
• Increase membership in and funding of TASSC.
• Publicize and refine TASSC messages on an ongoing basis.4
The eagerness to increase TASSC’s membership and funding is important in the climate change conversation because, well, guess who APCO contacted when it came time to increase membership in its new Astroturf group? Realizing how obvious it would look if Philip Morris was TASSC’s only financial supporter, APCO sent out recruitment letters to twenty thousand businesses inviting them to join the fight for “sound science.” Below is a list of the kinds of companies that APCO considered appropriate partners for such a venture. The list comes from another memo, written in 1994 when APCO was planning to expand TASSC operations into Europe.5 One of the first goals, the memo said, was to try to “link the tobacco industry with other more ‘politically correct’ products.”
“As a starting point,” the memo begins, “we can identify key issues requiring sound scientific research and scientists that may have an interest in them.” This seems to suggest that no one was currently conducting research in any of the areas about to be discussed, or that the research being done was somehow unsound. Certainly, that research in most cases seemed to be inspiring legitimate interest groups to demand more government intervention and regulation of the sort that was costing industry money.
The TASSC memo continued:
Some issues our European colleagues suggest include:
• Global warming
• Nuclear waste disposal
• Diseases and pests in agricultural products for transborder trade
• Biotechnology
• Eco-labeling for EC products
• Food processing and packaging
It’s worth looking at these tactics because they suggest a high degree of sophistication and a willingness to underwrite an ambitious and expensive “grassroots” campaign. First, APCO suggested that TASSC target secondary markets, because this would “avoid cynical reporters from major cities [and involved] less reviewing/challenging of TASSC messages.” It’s a judgment call whether big-city reporters are by definition cynical. But it’s pretty clear that they are, as a group, better educated, better informed, and more likely to be briefed on specific areas of science. Small-town papers and broadcast outlets tend to have fewer journalists in total and fewer specialists. They also pay less, so there is an incentive for the best reporters to get their early experience in smaller markets and then move up to the high-paying big-city jobs. The public relations professionals at APCO know this, so you have to read more critically when the plan they wrote for TASSC recommends targeting small towns. The 1993 memo “The Revised Plan for the Public Launching of TASSC” suggests that a secondary-market focus “ . . . increases [the] likelihood of pick-up by media” and “limit[s] potential for counterattack. The likely opponents of TASSC tend to concentrate their efforts in the top markets while skipping the secondary markets.” It seems fair to conclude that this is APCO’s way of saying that TASSC should try to stay under the radar.
APCO also recommended that TASSC establish a public information bureau that would brief “pertinent associations” in Washington, D.C., and coordinate with “organizations that have tangential goals to TASSC, such as . . . The Science and Environmental Policy Project.” (The latter is another Astroturf group established by a tobacco-sponsored scientist named Dr. S. Fred Singer—more about him later.) The name “public information bureau” sounds benign, like an informational clearinghouse that perhaps would send out the odd news release or be at the ready to answer questions. Certainly APCO anticipated sending out information, but the specific list of proposed activities and tactics suggested something much more proactive—and much more political. The list included:
• Publishing and distributing a monthly update report for all TASSC members, which will quantify media impressions made the prior month and discuss new examples of unsound science.
• Monitoring the trade press (e.g., public interest group newsletters and activities) and informing TASSC members of any upcoming studies and relevant news.
• Arranging media tours.
• Issuing news releases on a regular basis to news wire services, members, allies and targeted reporters.
• Acting as a clearinghouse for speaking requests of TASSC scientists or other members and maintaining a Speakers Bureau to provide speakers for allies and interested groups.
• Drafting “boilerplate” speeches, press
