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Follow the money and see who is paying for the opinions and "information" you receive before you believe the corporate spin.
Here's an example of why:
"To protect profits threatened by a lawsuit over its controversial herbicide atrazine, Syngenta Crop Protection, a major manufacturer of pesticides, launched an aggressive multimillion-dollar campaign that included hiring a detective agency to investigate scientists on a federal advisory panel, looking into the personal life of a judge, and commissioning a psychological profile of a leading UC Berkeley scientist who has been critical of atrazine.
The Switzerland-based company also routinely paid "third-party allies" to appear to be independent supporters, and kept a list of 130 people and groups it could recruit as experts without disclosing ties to the company. Recently unsealed court documents also reveal a corporate strategy to discredit critics and to strip plaintiffs from a class-action case against Syngenta. The company specifically targeted one of atrazine's fiercest and most outspoken critics, Tyrone Hayes of UC Berkeley, whose research suggests that atrazine feminizes male frogs.
Syngenta's campaign is spelled out in hundreds of pages of memos, invoices, and other documents from Illinois' Madison County Circuit Court that were initially sealed as part of a 2004 lawsuit filed by Holiday Shores Sanitary District.......
According to memos and emails between Syngenta and the public relations firms it hired, the company also secretly paid a stable of seemingly independent academics and other "experts" to extol the economic benefits of atrazine and downplay its environmental and health risks, without disclosing their financial ties to the company. At the same time, the company provided strict parameters for what these experts would say.
Don Coursey, Ameritech Professor of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, collected $500 an hour from Syngenta to write economic analyses touting the necessity of atrazine, according to an April 25, 2006, email from Coursey to Ford of Syngenta. The company supplied Coursey with the data he was to cite, edited his work, and paid him to speak with newspapers, television stations, and radio broadcasters about his reports, without revealing the nature of his arrangement with the corporation, according to Ford's deposition. Coursey's work, presented in 2010 at the National Press Club, was widely picked up as independent analysis by newspapers across the country. Coursey also is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a libertarian nonprofit focused on environmental regulations......
At least four public relations firms were hired to work on the Syngenta campaign, according to the documents. The White House Writers Group, based in Washington, DC, and Jayne Thompson & Associates, based in Chicago, were heavily involved. Invoices show that the White House Writers Group received more than $1.6 million in 2010 and 2011 from the Syngenta campaign. Thompson is Illinois' former first lady, wife of former Governor Jim Thompson......
In an email to Syngenta's head of communications, Thompson praised an essay that ran in the Belleville News Democrat, an Illinois newspaper based about twenty miles from Edwardsville, the community that initiated the lawsuit. The 2006 essay was signed by Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute. The essay claimed the Holiday Shores lawsuit could, if successful, shrink the nation's food supply.
These are great clips for us because they get out some of our messages from someone (Lehr) who comes off sounding like an unbiased expert," Thompson wrote. "Another strength is that the messages do not sound like they came from Syngenta."
The Heartland Institute fought a subpoena all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court in 2012 that would have forced it to disclose any financial relationship with Syngenta and the source of its articles supporting atrazine........"
Pesticide Manufacturer Targeted UC Berkeley Professor | Feature | Oakland, Berkeley & Bay Area News & Arts Coverage
Here's an example of why:
"To protect profits threatened by a lawsuit over its controversial herbicide atrazine, Syngenta Crop Protection, a major manufacturer of pesticides, launched an aggressive multimillion-dollar campaign that included hiring a detective agency to investigate scientists on a federal advisory panel, looking into the personal life of a judge, and commissioning a psychological profile of a leading UC Berkeley scientist who has been critical of atrazine.
The Switzerland-based company also routinely paid "third-party allies" to appear to be independent supporters, and kept a list of 130 people and groups it could recruit as experts without disclosing ties to the company. Recently unsealed court documents also reveal a corporate strategy to discredit critics and to strip plaintiffs from a class-action case against Syngenta. The company specifically targeted one of atrazine's fiercest and most outspoken critics, Tyrone Hayes of UC Berkeley, whose research suggests that atrazine feminizes male frogs.
Syngenta's campaign is spelled out in hundreds of pages of memos, invoices, and other documents from Illinois' Madison County Circuit Court that were initially sealed as part of a 2004 lawsuit filed by Holiday Shores Sanitary District.......
According to memos and emails between Syngenta and the public relations firms it hired, the company also secretly paid a stable of seemingly independent academics and other "experts" to extol the economic benefits of atrazine and downplay its environmental and health risks, without disclosing their financial ties to the company. At the same time, the company provided strict parameters for what these experts would say.
Don Coursey, Ameritech Professor of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, collected $500 an hour from Syngenta to write economic analyses touting the necessity of atrazine, according to an April 25, 2006, email from Coursey to Ford of Syngenta. The company supplied Coursey with the data he was to cite, edited his work, and paid him to speak with newspapers, television stations, and radio broadcasters about his reports, without revealing the nature of his arrangement with the corporation, according to Ford's deposition. Coursey's work, presented in 2010 at the National Press Club, was widely picked up as independent analysis by newspapers across the country. Coursey also is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a libertarian nonprofit focused on environmental regulations......
At least four public relations firms were hired to work on the Syngenta campaign, according to the documents. The White House Writers Group, based in Washington, DC, and Jayne Thompson & Associates, based in Chicago, were heavily involved. Invoices show that the White House Writers Group received more than $1.6 million in 2010 and 2011 from the Syngenta campaign. Thompson is Illinois' former first lady, wife of former Governor Jim Thompson......
In an email to Syngenta's head of communications, Thompson praised an essay that ran in the Belleville News Democrat, an Illinois newspaper based about twenty miles from Edwardsville, the community that initiated the lawsuit. The 2006 essay was signed by Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute. The essay claimed the Holiday Shores lawsuit could, if successful, shrink the nation's food supply.
These are great clips for us because they get out some of our messages from someone (Lehr) who comes off sounding like an unbiased expert," Thompson wrote. "Another strength is that the messages do not sound like they came from Syngenta."
The Heartland Institute fought a subpoena all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court in 2012 that would have forced it to disclose any financial relationship with Syngenta and the source of its articles supporting atrazine........"
Pesticide Manufacturer Targeted UC Berkeley Professor | Feature | Oakland, Berkeley & Bay Area News & Arts Coverage
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