Front Groups Listening Test 3

Front Groups Transcript

TRANSCRIPT: Hello, and welcome to this short lecture today entitled ‘front groups’. Front groups appear, on the surface, to be independent voluntary associations or charitable organisations, but in reality they are used to shield multi-national companies from legal liability. In today’s lecture we’ll look at what a front group actually is in more detail and focus on three front group case studies connected to the tobacco, alcohol and oil industries. This should provide you with a clearer understanding of a front group. I’ll then finish with a conclusion on what needs to be done. So, let’s begin with a clear explanation of a front group.

Front groups are seemingly independent and not-for-profit organisations, predominantly operating in and around the areas of public health and the environment. The main point to note here is that they’re typically set up by hugely lucrative conglomerates, and usually funded by all the major organisations within that industry. Their main objective is to discredit any type of scientific fact that significantly hampers that particular industry’s corporate gains. The front group maintains a neutral stance and disguises itself as a supporter of government regulations and policies, but in truth are fervently against them. They tend to create marketing strategies and propaganda campaigns based on unproven scientific evidence to sow doubt, mislead or/and provide misinformation into the minds of the general public to prevent change or distort the truth. Overall then, a front group is an organisation that claims to represent one agenda, but in reality they represent the interests of another often very concealed agenda.

We’ll now start to look at some case studies to provide you with a clearer understanding of a front group and how it operates. So, we’ll start with the tobacco industry. Remarkably, in the tobacco industry, front groups have existed since the 1950s. Stop (2021), a global tobacco industry watchdog, states that the Industry Allies List has recorded almost 100 groups in 27 countries, some of which are low- and middle-income countries. These densely-populated nations tend to have the highest rates of smoking, yet front groups such as theBrazilian Institute for Ethics and Competition (ETCO), which receives funding from a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, strongly opposes most smoke-free regulations including tobacco tax, health warnings on packaging and restrictions on marketing to young people. The purpose of the front group here is very clear. Its principal aim is to prevent all obstacles in the sale and profit of selling tobacco.

Recent research from the University of Bath (2021) discovered that Philip Morris International (PMI), the world’s largest transnational tobacco company, established a new front group in 2017 called the Foundation for a Smoke-free World (FSFW) and plans to give it almost US$1bn over the next twelve years. The alleged goal of this foundation is to fund research and encourage measures to reduce the harm caused by smoking, but of course this couldn’t be further from the truth. The foundation actually provides grants to 3^rd party pressure groups aimed at undermining the implementation of the W.H.O Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and national tobacco control policies meant to drive down rates of tobacco use. The University of Bath also found links with the front group to oppose the disclosure of tobacco industry links or funding for journal research. Many academic journals will not publish research paid for directly or indirectly by big tobacco companies. However, PMI channels large amounts of research money through the Foundation, which flows down to its grant recipients who are affiliated researchers and journal peer-reviewers, and as a result this has now become incredibly difficult for editors that are trying to rigorously apply research journal policies on conflicts of interest and transparency to ensure science is protected from Big Tobacco’s influence.

Now let’s move onto the alcohol industry. Here we’ll see similarities to the Tobacco industry. Alcohol Justice (2014) report that despite its name, the front group International Alliance of Responsible Drinking (IARD), is actually wholeheartedly against restrictions on access to and availability of alcohol, as well as measures to reduce alcohol advertising and to raise the price of alcohol. The key focus of the IARD is to control the public discourse surrounding alcohol-related harm, to focus the public’s attention far from alcohol products as the cause of harm and to provide positive PR for alcohol producers. They also fund academic researchers to discredit the evidence of alcohol-related harm from their products and promote spurious research to support the industry/producer agenda. They use “Drink Responsibly” as a marketing tactic to build loyalty and promote alcohol while blaming society rather than the product and corporate practices for alcohol-related harm. I think you’ll agree that these companies go through great lengths to protect their products and use misinformation to redirect the key focus. Personally, I think you can clearly see that the work of these front groups can be considered as legal deceit.

Ok, now let’s look at our last case study which is probably the biggest industry that uses front groups to steer public opinion. It’s the oil industry and climate change. The Climate Reality Project (2019) states that as more and more evidence is gathered regarding the impact of fossil fuels on the environment, and thus newer policies, such as the Paris Agreement are drawn up to fight climate change, the world’s largest oil and gas companies, for instance ExxonMobil, have begun to use considerable portions of their revenue to invest in misinformation campaigns, misleading climate-related branding, and lobbying to sow doubt on the well-established science so that their profits remain unharmed. Since the 1970s, ExxonMobil has been the world leader in climate change denial. It’s continuously been involved in opposing regulations to curtail global warming, critical of the Kyoto Protocol and sought to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. According to CACC (2021) ExxonMobil’s main objective is to ruin the public’s understanding of climate change science.

In addition to this, Greenpeace (2022) found that Koch Industries, the second largest privately-owned company in the US, whose subsidiaries are involved in raw materials, chemicals, minerals, fertilizer, paper, technology, computing finance, trading, investments and of course manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum, has recently invested $88 million in traceable funding to attack climate change science, policy and regulation. The research discovered that Koch Industries fund political campaigns against climate change regulations, such as the bill to oppose pollution controls or the law to abolish controlling greenhouse gas emissions. It was also found that they fund extremist think tanks and anti-regulatory groups to produce bogus science with the purpose of manipulating the government’s fossil fuel policies.

Ok, so let’s summarise the lecture today. Although front groups on the surface may appear to be of public interest, it’s clear that in reality they deceitfully represent the interests of another often very concealed agenda. Naturally, the use of front groups question our very own moral values and ethical standards of trust, honesty, integrity, transparency and environmental responsibility, which in turn prevent societies from making effective public and planetary health decisions.  The constant pressure and lobbying techniques of front groups sowing seeds of doubt, discrediting scientific fact, spreading misinformation and distorting the truth need to be stopped; however, the question remains how this corruption can ever be prevented with the vast amounts of money being poured into front group campaigns, and what becomes increasingly apparent from the actions of these hugely successful multinationals is that they’re clearly willing to put profit before the health of the planet, and everyone who lives on it.  Thank you.

Written by C. Wilson (2023) / Spoken by C. Watts

Reference list

Alcohol Justice, (2014). Industry Front Groups Unite to Own Public Discourse About Alcohol-Related Harm [online]. Available at: https://alcoholjustice.org/news-2/blog/1086-industry-front-groups-unite-to-own-public-discourse-about-alcohol-related-harm  [Viewed 18.02.2023].

Campaign Against Climate Change (CACC), (2021). The funders of climate disinformation [online]. Available at:

https://www.campaigncc.org/climate_change/sceptics/funders  [Viewed 17.02.2023].

Greenpeace (2016) Koch front groups are defending ExxonMobil’s anti-science

 campaigns, Greenpeace USA. Available at: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/koch-cash-in-defense-of-exxonmobil-climate-denial-investigations/ [Viewed 15.02.2023].

STOP, (2020). STOP Identifies 18 More Organizations Helping Tobacco Companies Undermine Public Health [online]. Available at: https://exposetobacco.org/news/stop-exposes-18-more-industry-allies/ [Viewed 17.02.2023].

The Climate Reality Project, (2019). The Climate Denial Machine: How The Fossil Fuel Industry Blocks Climate Action [online]. Available at: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-denial-machine-how-fossil-fuel-industry-blocks-climate-action [Viewed 17.02.2023].

Toxic-free Future, (2021). How To Spot a Front Group [online]. Available at: https://toxicfreefuture.org/how-to-spot-a-front-group/ [Viewed 16.02.2023].

University of Bath, (2021). Big tobacco, big conflict of interest [online]. Available at: https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/big-tobacco-big-conflict-of-interest/ [Viewed 17.02.2023].