You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God, the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to.
-  Humbert Wolfe, The Uncelestial City

Apparently independent research claiming to show Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) improved the lives of modern day postmenopausal women received widespread - and supportive - media coverage in the UK last year, gaining headlines such as, "HRT leads to a better sex life and a happy healthy life".

The British Medical Journal later reported that the research was commissioned by a pharmaceutical industry front group as part of an industry-fashioned campaign which gained an award from the magazine Pharmaceutical Marketing. http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=123

This kind of media manipulation is not just a British phenomenon.  Media experts in the US estimate that 40 percent of all "news" comes virtually unedited from public relations offices acting on behalf of corporate or political clients. The PR industry's proudest boast is that "the best PR is never noticed".

This is not necessarily the fault of the journalist. Few people have the time to keep looking behind the ever-increasing number of front groups and not-so-"independent experts" mouthing the message of industries focussed on their financial bottom line.

WE CAN HELP

Our new website, www.lobbywatch.org, has been set up to track deceptive PR.

The site offers an invaluable resource for journalists and concerned citizens. It provides an A-Z directory of lobbyists, PR firms, corporate front groups, political networks, and industry-friendly scientists and other "experts".

Journalist and author George Monbiot has said of the site, "If you want to know how the world works, this is the place to start. I cannot think of a more necessary set of facts than these."

ABOUT LOBBYWATCH

Lobbywatch is an off-shoot of the work of GM Watch (www.gmwatch.org) which reports on the massive PR push behind genetically modified (GM) foods. Our investigative work has prompted many items in the media. Our exposure of a dirty tricks campaign waged by Monsanto and its Internet PR firm against the company's scientific and environmental critics, led to coverage in New Scientist, The Guardian (a series of three articles), and in programmes on BBC TV and radio, as well as other media items around the world. You can find out more about who we are here: http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=2&page=1

In the course of investigating independent-seeming "third parties" promoting GM we came across many organisations and individuals active in corporate advocacy across a wide range of environmental, agricultural, health, development, trade and other issues.

We do not pretend to be an unbiased source and we do not ask you to accept our information unquestioningly. The great thing about an internet based directory is that we can provide links to other articles and to source materials to help you assess our findings for yourself.

We do think our findings raise questions that require answers. For example, if a science lobby group is run by a PR agency directly linked to a major corporate funder who has a known business and political agenda, why are they not disclosing that fact to you? http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=136

THREE LOBBYWATCH EXPOSES

The following examples are all based on information available at lobbywatch.org.

1. DR ROGER BATE is an "expert" whose views are widely promoted to the media on several continents on issues that affect us all, such as global warming and the environment.

Bate operates out of a whole series of lobby groups which serve as platforms for Bate to launch attacks on matters as diverse as:

**the Kyoto treaty
**the UN, the World Health Organisation, and aid agencies
**environment groups and other NGOs
**the weakening of drug patents
**restrictions on smoking
**organic farming
**restrictions on pesticide use, on-farm antibiotics etc.
**concerns over GMOs
**restrictions on industrial chemicals.

His press releases are faxed out of often innocuous or mainstream-sounding groups, such as:

**The Institute of Economic Affairs
**The European Science and Environment Forum
**The International Policy Network
**The Sustainable Development Network
**Africa Fighting Malaria
**The Competitive Enterprise Institute
**The American Enterprise Institute.

These groups are often inter-linked and the backing that they receive, from major corporate sponsors or from a network of right wing groups and donors, is not necessarily disclosed.

Take, for instance, The European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), which Roger Bate co-founded. Its website originally claimed ESEF accepted no corporate donations: "To maintain its independence and impartiality, the ESEF does not accept outside funding from whatever source, the only income it receives is from the sale of its publications". Yet papers released during a court case involving the tobacco giant Philip Morris revealed that ESEF had been established with Philip Morris money solicited by Bate. This sponsorship was not made apparent during ESEF's campaign against restrictions on passive smoking.

It would be a mistake to see the actions of lobbyists like Bate as marginal. The close links of George W. Bush's administration to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where Bate is a visiting fellow, are well known. The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), where Bate founded an Environmental Unit which he directed for seven years, claims to have had "enormous influence on public policy and the views of leading politicians".

More information and links: http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=30&page=11.

2. HALL OF MIRRORS

What do the following have in common?

The Science Media Centre, Progress Educational Trust, Genetic Interest Group, Sense About Science, the Pro-Choice Forum, and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service

They all have directors, CEOs or policy directors, and sometimes other staff, who are part of a political network which eulogises technologies like genetic engineering and human reproductive cloning and which is extremely hostile to their critics, whom they brand as Nazis.

This network engages in infiltration of media organisations and science-related lobby groups in order to promote its agenda.

What do the following have in common?

Families for Freedom, Institute of Ideas, Freedom & Law, Transport Research Group, Africa Direct, Spiked-online, WORLDwrite, Irish Freedom Movement, LM magazine, Feminists for Justice, Global Futures, Internet Freedom, The Litigious Society, Audacity.org.

They are just some of the front groups that have been directly generated by the same political network. These front groups have been used to deny the genocide in Rwanda, attack climate change science, support a big road building programme, oppose laws on date rape, etc. What makes these groups so difficult to deal with is that they do not normally disclose their allegiances.

More information and links - the network: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78 - Fiona Fox: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=45 - Thomas Deichmann: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=161

3. THE LIBERTY INSTITUTE

The Liberty Institute (aka The Julian Simon Centre) is an anti-regulation pressure group based in New Delhi, India. It's also part of rightwing coalitions like the US-based International Consumers for Civil Society (ICCS) and the London-based International Policy Network (IPN).

The institute's founder and director is Barun Mitra who has made regular appearanes in the western media. Mitra and Liberty lobbied hard for commercial approval for Monsanto's GM cotton, claiming there should be "free access" to new technologies without any government interference.

In March 2002 in the run-up to India's approval of the commercialisation of Monsanto's GM cotton, the Liberty Institute hosted a press conference at which representatives of large corporate farmers threatened to grow Monsanto's GM cotton regardless of regulatory approval. The group of farmers' leaders present included Chengal Reddy of what was billed as the "Indian Farmers Federation". None of the "farmers' leaders" present has a significant constituency.

Liberty has also been a strong supporter of Big Tobacco, publishing an attack on the World Health Organisation by Roger Scruton - the British philosopher since exposed as being in the pay of the tobacco industry - with a forward by Barun Mitra. In Liberty's press release for the book it is claimed, "The anti-tobacco crusade from the West, like the environmental one as manifested at the WTO meeting in Seattle last December, is the newest manifestation of the neo-imperialistic desires."

Attacking corporate critics as "neo-colonialists" is a frequent ploy. The Liberty Institute and Mitra are used in this way, as is the Kenyan James Shikwati and the US-based Indian scientist CS Prakash. The result: a Third World face is put on a pro-corporate agenda and civil society movements in the Third World who challenge corporate interests are denigrated.

An example of this was a march in support of free trade and biotechnology, involving farmers like Chengal Reddy, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002. James Shikwati wrote a commentary about the march for The (London) Times headlined, "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me". Mitra made a speech during the march in which he gave a "Bullshit award for Sustaining Poverty" to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva. In making the award, Mitra condemned Shiva as "a mouthpiece of western eco-imperialism".

However, the media contact given on the press releases for both the march and for Mitra's award was Kendra Okonski, the daughter of a US lumber industrialist who has worked for various right wing anti-regulatory NGOs - all funded and directed by "whites". These include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations, amongst them BIO member Dow Chemicals. Okonski also runs the website Counterprotest.net, where her speciality is helping right wing lobbyists take to the streets in mimicry of popular protesters.

Okonski works for the London-based International Policy Network and the deceptively named Sustainable Development Network. She has edited a book attacking climate change and makes multiple media appearances on a variety of issues, most recently on BBC TV news criticising Fair Trade.

More information and links: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=156 www.lobbywatch.org