{"id":1060,"date":"2013-11-08T14:53:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T21:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2019-07-10T17:24:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T00:24:46","slug":"industry-pr-campaign-sways-us-opinion-except-practically-nobody-saw-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=1060","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Industry PR Campaign sways US Opinion&#8217;; except practically nobody saw it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ross Gelbspan&#8217;s &#8220;Snowed&#8221; article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2005\/05\/snowed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in the May\/June 2005 issue of <em>Mother Jones<\/em> magazine<\/a> described how a &#8216;misguided application of journalistic balance&#8217; and &#8216;a decade-long campaign of deception, disinformation, and, at times, intimidation by the fossil fuel lobby&#8217; was causing the media not to properly warn us about the perils of global warming. Accept his narrative without question, and it&#8217;s a rallying cry to solve the problem. But notice the errors in his article&#8217;s 5th &amp; 6th paragraphs, and it makes you wonder how much more he gets wrong.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Gelb-Snowed-WFA.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s recap a few of the problems seen in the 5th paragraph:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8230; <em>its annual report that it was enlisting several scientists<\/em> &#8211; I detailed the wipeout of the word &#8220;<em>enlisted<\/em>&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=542\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\u2026 <em>Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, and S. Fred Singer\u2014as spokesmen<\/em> &#8211; Dr Singer was <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=223\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">never a part of the PR campaign<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\u2026 <em>paid these and a handful of other skeptics some $1 million over a three-year period<\/em> &#8211; David Helvarg&#8217;s November, 1996 &#8220;The Greenhouse Spin&#8221; article in <em>The Nation<\/em> magazine says the campaign <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Helvarg-WFA-6-mo-1024x270.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">only lasted 6 months<\/a><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>** <\/strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>[See Author&#8217;s 12\/19\/14 note below]<\/em> (f<\/span><\/span>ull context <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalpolicy.org\/component\/content\/article\/212\/45418.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/sites\/default\/files\/guide2011-11-28.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here, pgs 3-5<\/a>)<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li>\u2026 <em>and sent them around the country to speak to the press and the public<\/em> &#8211; no, it was to just <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=296\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">three small cities<\/a> for brief media interviews, combined with with some newspaper ads and around <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ICE-Simmons-Limbaugh.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">four or so weeks<\/a> of radio ads playing for just 3-7 times throughout the entire day.<\/li>\n<li>\u2026 <em>According to internal strategy papers I obtained at the time<\/em> &#8211; or that the Ozone Action organization, or both, obtained at the time, depending on <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=987\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">which of three narratives one chooses to read<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\u2026 <em>the purpose of the campaign was &#8220;to reposition global warming as theory (not fact)&#8221;<\/em> &#8211; this statement being the <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=326\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">alleged smoking gun evidence<\/a> to indict skeptic scientists, which Gelbspan has never shown in its full context<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s six major problems in a single 5-sentence part of one paragraph. And I&#8217;ll have to save what he said in its first sentence about a TV editor being threatened &#8220;<em>with a withdrawal of oil and automotive advertising<\/em>&#8221; for an entirely separate blog piece later.<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s his 6th paragraph,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Western Fuels campaign was extraordinarily successful. In a Newsweek poll conducted in 1991, before the spin began, 35 percent of respondents said they \u201cworry a great deal\u201d about global warming. By 1997 that figure had dropped by one-third, to 22 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>WFA&#8217;s &#8220;Information Council for the Environment&#8221; that Gelbspan so widely touts as smoking gun evidence of a top-down industry directive &#8216;<em>to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact<\/em>&#8216; lasted just six months<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>**<\/strong><\/span> <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>[See Author&#8217;s 12\/19\/14 note below] <\/em><\/span><\/span>in its entirety, with the actual PR tour being restricted to just three cities in May of 1991 and maybe a single 60-second national radio ad on Rush Limbaugh&#8217;s program at that time. If people within the reach of the media markets of Fargo, Bowling Green and Flagstaff weren&#8217;t newspaper readers, or didn&#8217;t pay attention to the radio ads, or had a different TV program on during that time, they would have never seen it. And if the rest of the nation missed the Limbaugh radio ad &#8211; assuming it did actually get broadcast time &#8211; there&#8217;s no way on Earth that the campaign would have had any effect on people&#8217;s opinion about global warming. Researchers would be hard-pressed to find few references &#8211; if any &#8211; to the ICE campaign back in 1997 as something influencing the public to be skeptical about man-caused global warming.<\/p>\n<p>Contrast that to Gelbspan&#8217;s influence. Just this past May, <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Gelb-MJ-comment-copy-998x1024.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an out-of-the-blue commenter at my own Facebook page<\/a> felt compelled to &#8216;rebut&#8217; an article I linked to by copying a line <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Gelb-HB-Apr-05-1024x653.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">straight out of an April 2005 <em>Mother Jones<\/em> interview of Gelbspan<\/a> (which mentioned his upcoming &#8220;Snowed&#8221; article);\u00a0 the line about Western Fuels from Gelbspan&#8217;s &#8220;Snowed&#8221; article carried enough influence that it was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=&quot;The+Western+Fuels+campaign+was+extraordinarily+successful&quot;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reproduced in a 2007 book and repeated elsewhere<\/a>;\u00a0 and the entire article is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/#q=&quot;Ross+Gelbspan&quot;+&quot;snowed&quot;+&quot;mother+jones&quot;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">linked to by many<\/a>, with one year-old book&#8217;s remark about skeptics&#8217; corruption <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=A4IfhsdJbrYC&amp;pg=PT236&amp;lpg=PT236&amp;dq=&quot;best summary&quot;+&quot;Ross+Gelbspan&quot;+&quot;snowed&quot;+&quot;mother+jones&quot;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">saying<\/a>, &#8220;<em>This activity has been widely documented, but the best summary is provided by Ross Gelbspan, &#8220;Snowed&#8221;, Mother Jones, May\/June 2005.<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Readers of this blog might find that last bit familiar. <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/McClure-09-comment-1024x414.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">It&#8217;s what prompted me in 2009<\/a> to find <strong><em>anybody<\/em><\/strong> who independently documents the &#8220;corruption&#8221;. But all I&#8217;ve found is endless problems with the accusation\u2026 and where the true influence of the issue regarding public opinion of skeptic climate scientists is apparently seen.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>**<\/strong><\/span><em>[Author&#8217;s 12\/19\/14 note: Having looked through &#8220;Greenpeace USA n\u00e9e Ozone Action&#8221;\u2019s ICE scans for this length of time now, I myself am more inclined to say it only lasted <strong>five<\/strong> months, January to late May 1991. I may be able to provide irrefutable evidence of its time frame later.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ross Gelbspan&#8217;s &#8220;Snowed&#8221; article in the May\/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones magazine described how a &#8216;misguided application of journalistic balance&#8217; and &#8216;a decade-long campaign of deception, disinformation, and, at times, intimidation by the fossil fuel lobby&#8217; was causing the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=1060\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[132,112,18,38,7],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8769,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/8769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}