Corporations

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Syngenta PR’s Weed-Killer Spin Machine: Investigating the Press and Shaping the "News" about Atrazine

by PRW Staff — February 7, 2012 - 10:33am
  • Topics: Journalism, Atrazine Exposed, Corporations, Public Relations

    • - By Beau Hodai and Lisa Graves

    Documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, recently unsealed as part of a major lawsuit against Syngenta, reveal how the global chemical company's PR team investigated the press and spent millions to spin news coverage and public perceptions in the face of growing concerns about potential health risks from the widely used weed-killer "atrazine."

    This story is part of a new series about this PR campaign to influence the media, potential jurors, potential plaintiffs, farmers, politicians, scientists, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the midst of reviews of the weed-killer's potential to act as an endocrine disruptor, over the past decade or so.

    Dealing with Meddlesome Reporters

    Two years ago, on March 2, 2010, Huffington Post Investigative Fund (HuffPo) reporter Danielle Ivory contacted Syngenta Corporation Director of Corporate Communications-North America Paul Minehart and asked, as reporters do, a few questions.

    Little did she know her questions to Syngenta—which reported sales of over $11 billion that year, almost half of which, $5 billion, was profit—would provoke the creation of a secret dossier on her.

    News

    ALEC's Influence in Ohio Runs Deep

    by PRW Staff — February 6, 2012 - 5:37pm
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Corporations, Democracy, Labor, Politics

    • The influence of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Ohio runs deep, according to a new report released by Progress Ohio, together with the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), People for the American Way, and Common Cause. The report shows how Ohio's legislators are working in tandem with corporate leaders to deregulate key industries, privatize education and dismantle unions.

    News

    The Super Nonprofits Influencing Elections, Under the Radar

    by Brendan Fischer — February 6, 2012 - 3:32pm
  • Topics: Election 2012, Corporations, Democracy, Politics

    • While the popular understanding of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is that it opened the door to unlimited corporate spending, last week's FEC filings showed that many of the millions that Super PACs received in 2011 came not from corporations, but from deep-pocketed individuals and corporate CEOs. What remains unknown is just how much corporate money is secretly flowing through another vehicle being used to influence political outcomes, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit.

    Notably, the Tea Party-affiliated FreedomWorks Super PAC received more than $1.3 million in contributions from its associated 501(c)(4). Under current law, the FreedomWorks (c)(4) is not required to disclose its donors to the public -- unlike a Super PAC -- suggesting one way that corporate donors can disguise their political spending.

    Op-Ed

    ALEC Exposed, for 24 Hours

    by PRW Staff — February 2, 2012 - 11:08am
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Corporations, Democracy, Lobbying, Politics, U.S. Government

    • A guest post by Nick Surgey from Common Cause, originally posted on Common Blog.

    When Florida Rep. Rachel Burgin (R- 56) introduced a bill in November calling on the federal government to reduce taxes for corporations (HM 685), she made an embarrassing mistake.

    News

    ALEC Education "Academy" Launches on Island Resort

    by Dustin Beilke — February 2, 2012 - 9:18am
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Corporations, Education

    • Today, hundreds of state legislators from across the nation will head out to an "island" resort on the coast of Florida to a unique "education academy" sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise. (ALEC has claimed no corporate reps will be there but it has refused to let the press attend to see this claim for itself.)

    What is ALEC Scoring on Its Education "Report Card?"

    Little is known about the agenda of the ALEC education meeting taking place at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island. The meeting is not open to the public and recently even the press has been kicked out of meetings and barred from attendance. So to understand the ALEC agenda with regard to education, it is important to examine ALEC's education "scorecard."

    Imagine getting a report card from your teacher and finding out that you were graded not on how well you understood the course material or scored on the tests and assignments, but rather on to what extent you agreed with your teacher's strange public policy positions. That is the best way to understand the American Legislative Exchange Council's 17th Report Card on American Education released last week.

    Op-Ed

    The High Cost of Allowing Health Insurers To Continue Keeping Us In The Dark

    by Wendell Potter — January 26, 2012 - 4:24pm
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • In his State of the Union address, President Obama said very little about health care reform, but what he did say was a reminder of how tight a grip the insurance industry has on the U.S. health care system -- and will continue to have if the Affordable Care Act is not implemented as Congress intended. And it is largely up to the President to make sure that it is.

    "I will not go back to the days when health insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny your coverage or charge women more than men," he said.

    That comment drew applause, although certainly not from the insurance industry’s friends in Congress, who continue to call for gutting the law. That’s because when and if it’s fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will make many of the most egregious practices of insurers a thing of the past. Weakening or stripping out the consumer protections in the law that insurance companies despise would make executives and shareholders of those companies very happy, not to mention much richer in the years to come.

    Op-Ed

    Stress Testing Tim Geithner

    by Mary Bottari — January 26, 2012 - 12:58pm
  • Topics: Banking, BanksterUSA, Corporations

    • Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, in the State of the Union this week President Obama struck some of his most populist themes yet. He wants to tax millionaires, bring back manufacturing and prosecute the big banks. He touted his Wall Street reforms saying the big banks are "no longer allowed to make risky bets with customers deposits" and "the rest of us aren't bailing you out ever again."

    But are we safe from the next big bank bailout? Many experts are dubious and Wednesday the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen decided to test the theory in the most direct way possible. They used the administrative law process to formally petition the nation's top bank regulators to move swiftly to break up Bank of America (BofA) asserting in their petition: "The bank poses a grave threat to U.S. financial stability by any reasonable definition of that phrase."

    Op-Ed

    Scott Walker’s Plutonomy: An Economy for the One Percent

    by Mary Bottari — January 24, 2012 - 9:32am
  • Topics: Banking, BanksterUSA, Corporations, Real Economy Project

    • While volunteer after volunteer from each of Wisconsin's 72 counties marched into the state's election board to deposit over one million signatures for the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Walker was nowhere to be found.

    At the hour petitions were being deposited on January 17, Mother Jones revealed that Walker was scheduled to attend a high-dollar fundraiser in the heart of the New York's financial district at 339 Park Avenue -- the towering headquarters for global financial giant CitiGroup. The $5,000 per couple fundraiser was hosted by none other than Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, former CEO of AIG.

    Op-Ed

    Park City Tragedy Underscores Tragedy of the U.S. Health Care System -- for Both Canadians and Americans

    by Wendell Potter — January 23, 2012 - 2:52pm
  • Topics: Corporations, Ethics, Health

    • PARK CITY, Utah -- The journey I embarked on when I made the decision to leave a successful career in the health insurance business was a spiritual one. I can trace the decision to a true epiphany, to the very moment I saw hundreds of people standing, soaking wet, in long, slow-moving lines, waiting to get medical care that was being provided in animal stalls at a fairground in Wise County, Virginia.

    It hit me immediately that had my circumstances been a little different when I was growing up near there, I could have been one of those people. It also hit me that the work I was doing as a spokesman for the insurance industry was making it necessary, at least in part, for those people to resort to such humiliation to get basic medical care. One of my responsibilities was to persuade Americans of the lie that most of the uninsured are that way by choice, that they have shirked their responsibility to themselves and their families.

    Nothing could have been further from the truth. Our so-called health care "system" had simply left them behind.

    News

    Two Years After "Citizens United," Amending the Constitution is Essential

    by Brendan Fischer — January 20, 2012 - 10:19am
  • Topics: Activism, Election 2012, Corporations, Democracy, Politics

    • January 21 marks the second anniversary of Citizens United v. F.E.C., where a narrow majority of the U.S. Supreme Court asserted that the Constitution prevents Congress from limiting the amount of money that can be spent influencing our elections. The Center for Media and Democracy is working with a constellation of groups in support of amending the Constitution to reverse the decision and address the distortion of the democratic process.

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