PR WATCHPublic Interest Reporting on the PR/Public Affairs Industry

Volume 6, Number 2 Second Quarter 1999

Greenwashing anOlympic-Sized Toxic Dumpby Dr. Sharon Beder

When the Olympic Games begin in the year 2000, you can expectto see them hyped as the “greenest” summer Olympics of all time. Buta massive toxic waste dump will lie underneath the fine landscaping ofthe Olympic site. It will be covered by a meter of dirt and a mountainof public relations.

The Olympic Games will be held at Homebush Bay in Sydney,Australia. Homebush Bay is a former industrial site and armamentsdepot which was previously subjected to years of unregulated wastedumping. In recent years asbestos-contaminated waste and chemicalsincluding dioxins and pesticides have been found there, along witharsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury and zinc. It is theworst toxic waste dump in Australia, and the bay into which the wasteleaches is so contaminated that there is a fishing ban. The sedimentsin the bay have concentrations of dioxin that make it one of the world’sworst dioxin hot spots. The dioxin is largely the result of waste from aUnion Carbide factory which manufactured the notorious herbicideAgent Orange there during the Vietnam war.

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Flack AttackDuring the reign of Catherine the Great in Russia,

one of her closest advisors was field marshall GrigoriPotemkin, who used numerous wiles to build herimage. When she toured the countryside with foreigndignitaries, he arranged to have fake villages built inadvance of her visits so as to create an illusion of pros-perity. Since that time, the term “Potemkin village” hasbecome a metaphor for things that look elaborate andimpressive but in actual fact lack substance.

Today, the public relations industry has becomeadept at creating its own Potemkin villages, such as thesupposed “green showcase” that Olympics promotersin Australia are building atop a toxic waste site.

The effort to create a “green Olympics” arose inresponse to activist criticisms of environmental damagecaused by past Olympics games. “The black listincludes vast gashes opened up in forests for various

events, walls erected for bob runs and the imposingstature of ski jumps, to cite just a few examples,” admit-ted a 1993 publication of the International OlympicCommittee. The following year, a committee involvedwith the games in Norway warned that “Confronta-tions with environmental interest groups and an antag-onized local public will increase unless steps are takento implement a pro-active environmental strategy.”

It was activism that prompted Olympics organizersto even consider addressing environmental concerns. Bycontrast, the strategy of collaboration that environ-mental groups adopted in Australia enabled Olympicsorganizers to go ahead with their plans while ultimatelyescaping their environmental obligations.

The lesson we can learn from this sorry fiasco is thatactivists should not allow themselves to be led intohelping society construct more Potemkin villages. Theworld does not need more facades. We need realprogress, and real activism in order to attain it.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:Media Self-Censorship inAustralia's Olympics Bidpage 7

Selling a Leaky Landfill asthe “World’s Best Practice”page 9

Letters from Readerspage 10

The Father of Spin:Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations(book review)page 11

What is impressive, in PR terms, is the way this mas-sive toxic waste site has been transformed into a “greenshowcase,” thanks in large part to the endorsement ofGreenpeace and other key environmentalists.

BASHING BEIJINGPart of the story of Sydney’s PR campaign to win the

2000 Olympics has only recently come to light, throughinvestigations into the scandal over Salt Lake City’sbribery of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)which is responsible for selecting between competingcities’ bids. In a major report in the Sydney MorningHerald, Gerard Ryle and Gary Hughes revealed a planby key Australian businessmen and government officialsto discredit a bid by Beijing, which was then thought tobe the front-runner.

Sydney’s secret public relations strategy was devel-oped by businessmen representing industries whichstood to benefit financially if the Olympics bid suc-ceeded. They included the managing director of LendLease (one of Australia’s largest construction compa-nies), the managing director of Optus (the country’ssecond largest telecommunications company), and a cor-porate lawyer and close adviser to media mogul KerryPacker. In December 1992, these individuals met withNew South Wales Premier John Fahey to discuss howChina’s human rights record could be used to damageits bid, and also how to deflect expected criticism ofSydney’s bid from the news media, Aborigines, envi-ronmentalists and trade unionists. The group agreed tohire a public relations strategist to help them.

An unofficial committee, named after businessmanRoss Turnbull who had organized the meeting, contin-ued working together and steering the bid from behindthe scenes. Three international members were added tothe committee including James Wolfensohn, the Aus-tralian-born president of the World Bank. The “Beijingstrategy” was put together by the Turnbull committeewith the help of Gabrielle Melville, a former BHP publicrelations strategist, and Sir Tim Bell, former head ofSaatchi and Saatchi advertising company in Australia,and adviser to Margaret Thatcher (which earned him aknighthood).

The Beijing strategy involved covertly funding ahuman rights group to campaign against China’s humanrights abuses in the lead up to the Games decision. Thecampaign was to be based in Europe or the United Statesto divert suspicion from Australia. A book was to be pub-lished on the same topic, and “an eminent internationalidentity” would be paid to have his name on the book.A story would also be “planted” in the London Times

newspaper. Sydney Games officials claim that this planwas never implemented, but in the months leading upto the bid decision in 1993 there was a US-based humanrights campaign that damaged Beijing’s bid.

SELLING SYDNEYA veil of secrecy was wrapped around the strategiz-

ing for the Sydney bid by establishing a private company,called Sydney Olympics 2000 Bid Limited (SOBL), tooversee the bidding process. As a private company,SOBL was exempt from Freedom of Informationrequests, thus protecting it from having to disclose itsinternal reports and documents. SOBL’s articles of asso-ciation ensured that information was tightly controlledso that very few people had access to documents, andphotocopies were prohibited.

Secrecy was further enhanced through variousarrangements with the media. A Communications Com-mission was formed to be in charge of public relationsstrategies, chaired by the managing director of theClemengers advertising agency. Other members of thecommission included the national director of advertis-ing for Australian Consolidated Press, the media direc-tor of the state Premier’s office and the general managerof marketing for the Ampol oil company.

A remarkable admission of the media’s complicity inthe bidding process came in February 1999 from BruceBaird, a former government minister for New SouthWales who was responsible for the bidding process. Bairdclaimed that he had obtained the agreement of threemajor media executives not to run stories about the

Construction of a leachate drain for waste atHomebush Bay. (photo by Sharon Beder)

wining, dining and other blandishments offered to IOCofficials.

The three executives named by Baird were KerryPacker (owner of Consolidated Press Holdings), KenCowley (chief executive of Murdoch’s News Ltd.), andJohn Alexander (then editor-in-chief of the SydneyMorning Herald). All three have vehemently deniedBaird’s claims, describing them as “absolute bullshit”and “rubbish,” and Baird has subsequently recanted.

What is known, however, is that Packer, Cowley andAlexander all accepted invitations to sit on the SOBLcommittee. All of the Australian commercial televisionchannels, the three main media companies, and anumber of radio stations were involved in supporting thebid, either through being on bid committees or throughdirect sponsorship of the bid. At the time that the bid-ding was underway, Herald journalist Mark Coultanstated that “Journalists who write stories which might beseen as critical are reminded of their bosses’ support andtold that their stories would be used against Sydney byother cities.”

The Sydney Morning Herald also editorialized in sup-port of the Sydney bid, and SOBL financed the fare ofa Herald journalist to Monaco to report on the bid delib-erations. Another Herald journalist, Sam North, wasassigned to report on the Olympics and wrote a succes-sion of favorable stories, several of which appeared inadvertising supplements funded by Olympic sponsors.News Ltd’s Telegraph Mirror also gave unwavering goodPR to the bid.

GREENPEACE BUYS INAs the bidding and selection process for the 2000

Olympics got underway, the International OlympicCommittee (IOC) made it clear that it wanted to havea “green” Olympics. IOC President Juan Antonio Sama-ranch said the IOC’s primary concern would be to ensurethe environment is respected and that this would be takeninto account in the final vote on site selection. For Aus-tralia, therefore, it was critical to present itself as “green”despite the toxic waste buried at Homebush Bay.

The co-optation of Greenpeace Australia was a keyfactor in the success of this campaign. Greenpeace hascampaigned against hazardous landfill dumps for manyyears, so its support for the Homebush Bay Olympic sitehelped reassure a public that might otherwise be con-cerned about the site’s toxic history.

To win over Greenpeace, SOBL invited them to drawup environmental guidelines for construction and oper-ation of the Olympic facilities. The proposed design ofthe Olympic Athletes’ Village was developed by a con-sortium of architects including a firm commissioned byGreenpeace Australia. On paper, the design lookedimpressive. It provided for use of solar technology andsolar designs, state-of-the-art energy generation, andwaste water recycling systems.

For Greenpeace, participation in developing a show-case Olympic village offered another benefit: the oppor-tunity to transform its own image. Instead of simplysounding the alarm on environmental problems as it had

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done for the previous 20 years, the “new Greenpeace”would be seen as promoting solutions.

Greenpeace involvement in the Sydney bid soon wentbeyond simply offering ideas, as it became a vocal sup-porter. Karla Bell, Cities and Coasts Campaigner forGreenpeace Australia, made a statement supporting theenvironmental merits of the full bid when the IOC vis-ited Sydney early in 1993. Her statement did not men-tion the problem of land contamination. She made anobvious impression on the IOC, whose report in July ofthat year “noted with much satisfaction the great empha-sis being placed on environmental protection in allaspects of the bidding process and the attention beingpaid to working closely with environmental protectiongroups such as Greenpeace.”

Support also came from Paul Gilding, the head at thetime of Greenpeace International who previously hadheaded Greenpeace Australia. “The Olympic villageprovides a prototype of future environmentally friendlydevelopment not only for Australia, but for cities allaround the world,” Gilding stated in a March 1993news release.

SOBL hired Karla Bell and Kate Short (now KateHughes) of the Sydney Total Environment Centre(TEC) to draw up environmental guidelines for theGames. Short was a prominent Sydney environmental-ist who had a long history of campaigning on toxic issues,particularly pesticides. The guidelines drawn up by Belland Short advocated the use of recyclable and recycledbuilding materials, the use of plantation timber asopposed to forest timber, and tickets printed on “recy-cled post consumer waste paper.” Short and other envi-ronmentalists and consultants were also appointed to aspecial environmental task force advising SOBL.

Some environmentalists, however, remained skepti-cal. The TEC distanced itself from Short’s involvement,and TEC director Jeff Angel argued that the SydneyOlympic bid was ignoring significant environmentalproblems.“The state of Sydney’s environment has beenmisrepresented to a serious degree,” he said. “Forexample, the [New South Wales] Premier in his Intro-duction to the Bid’s Fact Sheets describes the Games asoccurring in a pollution-free environment. The biddocument asserts Sydney’s waste system can cope,when in fact we have a waste crisis.” Environmentalistswere also concerned about the diversion of revenueinto extravagant sports facilities and the loss of valuedlocal ecosystems.

Environmentalists were particularly angry when theydiscovered that the official Bid Document to the IOCclaimed support from various environmental groups

including the Australian Conservation Foundation, theNew South Wales Nature Conservation Council and theTEC. Although individuals affiliated with those organi-zations had joined the bid committee’s environmentaltask force, the groups themselves emphatically deniedtheir support and the statement had to be retracted.

Notwithstanding these misgivings, the issue of toxiccontamination of the site was not openly discussed priorto the Olympic decision. This was clearly because of theinaccessibility of relevant information and the success-ful co-optation of key environmentalists who reassuredothers that the site was being cleaned up properly.

In private communications at the time of the biddingprocess, Greenpeace Australia toxics campaigner RobertCartmel told me that “there is every likelihood that theremediation measures being undertaken at HomebushBay won’t measure up.” He said that this was “an areathat would be considered to be a Superfund site in theUS.” He warned that “when it comes to leakage of toxicmaterials, it is not a question of if, it is a question of when.There is no such thing as a safe landfill.” Yet Cartmelwas unwilling to publicly criticize Greenpeace’s involve-ment in the Olympics bidding process.

This brochure, published by the AustralianOlympic bidders, highlighted the bid’sendorsement from Greenpeace.

FROM RHETORIC TO REALITYThe promised measures, particularly the village

design and the environmental guidelines, were heraldedas a major environmental breakthrough in urban design.“No other event at the beginning of the 21st Centurywill have a greater impact on protecting the environmentthan the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney,” stated aSOBL news release. New South Wales minister BruceBaird said that Sydney’s Olympics would be an envi-ronmental showpiece to the rest of the world and a modelfor other cities to follow in future games. Ros Kelly, theFederal Minister for Environment, Sport and Territories,also put out a news release arguing that “a vote by theinternational community for Sydney will be a vote forthe environment.”

“The Olympic villageprovides a prototype of future

environmentally friendlydevelopment not only for Australia,but for cities all around the world.”

—Greenpeace leader Paul Gilding, March 1993

Once the bid was won, however, the government’slack of genuine commitment to a green Olympicsbecame apparent. It discarded the winning village design,the one that was supposed to be a showcase of greentechnology. The consortium of architects that haddesigned the village, including the Greenpeace-com-missioned architects, complained of being “absolutelyshafted.” Within a year, Greenpeace was forced todenounce the government’s failure to keep to the envi-ronmental guidelines written by Short and Bell.

Cost considerations also led the planners to quietlyshelve another environmental showcase, the OlympicPavilion and Visitors Center. The original design hadenvisioned a center made of recycled materials withnatural ventilation.

PLASTIC RULESIn 1994, Paul Gilding resigned as head of Greenpeace

International and went into business for himself as anenvironmental consultant. One of his clients was LendLease/Mirvac, the same company that had participatedin behind-the-scenes strategizing to win the Sydney bid.Lend Lease was hired to draw up a new plan for theAthletes’ Village.

The new village design, unveiled in 1995, was toutedas environmental because it used solar technology, even

though more than half the houses were temporary struc-tures, designed to be taken down later. Worse yet, fromthe perspective of Greenpeace, the plans called for theuse of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) as a building material.

Greenpeace has campaigned internationally againstthe use of PVCs, and the environmental guidelines whichit helped draft for the Sydney Olympic games had calledfor “minimizing and ideally avoiding the use of chlorine-based products (organochlorines) such as PCB, PVCand chlorinated bleached paper.” The Olympic Coordi-nation Authority’s decision to abandon this commitmentcame in the wake of a deliberate public relations cam-paign by the plastics and chemical industry.

In 1995, Andrew Byrne of the Sydney Morning Heraldrevealed how Australia’s Plastics and Chemical Indus-tries Association (PACIA) was financing a campaign toundermine commitments to a PVC-free Games. PACIAwas concerned that making the Village a PVC-free show-piece would add momentum to the Greenpeace cam-paign against organochlorines—a reasonable fear, sincethat was precisely the point behind the original environ-mental recommendations.

Using contributions from member companies, thePACIA launched a PVC Defense Action Fund for thepurpose of bringing pro-PVC experts from Europe tobrief key government officials. Other tactics detailed ina document obtained by Byrne included enlarging itsOlympic lobbying program, developing a “credibilityfile” on Greenpeace and promoting the benefits of

“Remediation” of toxic wastes underway prior to construction of the Olympic grounds.(photo by Sharon Beder)

PVC on the internet. PVC manufacturer James Hardieeven became a member of the Olympic Village planningconsortium.

TOXIC LEAKSThe government continued with its own PR activi-

ties, offering guided tours of the Olympic site to thepublic and announcing a major tree planting effort coor-dinated by “Greener Sydney 2000” committee whichwould provide “a unique opportunity to involve thewhole community in the 2000 Olympics.” A landscap-ing project for the site was heralded as greening the site,even though the toxic waste remained untreated beneath(see accompanying story).

As evidence of toxic contamination of the site filteredout, environmentalists involved in the Olympics biddingbegan to change their stories. In 1995, a major televi-sion current affairs program featured Greenpeace andKate Short criticizing the cover-up of the site’s toxic con-tamination (which they had known about all along buthad previously refrained from mentioning).

In subsequent years Greenpeace staged two actionsto highlight dioxin contamination in the vicinity of theOlympic site. “Our investigations show that not only isthe ‘Green Games’ concept rapidly becoming a cynicalfarce, but that the presence of high levels of dioxin atHomebush Bay presents a real environmental and healththreat,” stated one Greenpeace news release. David Rich-mond, the head of the Olympic Coordination Author-ity (OCA), responded by accusing green groups whohighlighted toxic contamination of the Games site asdoing “damage to Australia.”

A number of revelations about dioxin on the Home-bush site posed another public relations crisis for theOCA in 1997. Colin Grant, OCA’s executive director ofplanning, environment and policy, publicly stated thatthe site did not contain any 2,3,7,8 TCDD (the mosttoxic form of dioxin). After this statement was provenfalse, the OCA was forced to “unreservedly” apologizefor the “mistake.”

DAMAGE CONTROLHired by OCA as an “environmental special advisor,”

Kate Short organized a series of forums in 1998 on“Dioxin and Beyond: Enhancing Remediation Strategiesat Homebush.” In reality, the forums were carefully-staged public relations events aimed at creating theappearance of public consultation without the open-ness that true public involvement would require. Atten-dance was by invitation only, and the forums primarilyshowcased speakers dwelling on good news about theremediation.

Following the forum series, in what seemed like anattempt to give the forums a veneer of having been a realconsultation, the Australian government announcedthat a further $11.6 million would be spent for an“Enhanced Remediation Program” which would consistof validation, monitoring and “education and commu-nity development” involving school children, but no fur-ther treatment of the wastes.

“The ‘Green Games’ concept israpidly becoming a cynical farce.”

—Greenpeace Australia, 1995

As the pressure has mounted for public disclosure ofdocuments relevant to the Sydney bid, the Games pro-moters have turned again to using the cover of a privatecompany in order to maintain secrecy, claiming that itsfinancial documents belong to internal auditors who area private firm and therefore exempt from Freedom ofInformation rules.

Although involvement in the Olympic Games hasbeen an environmental embarrassment, it has also beena gold mine of opportunities for the individuals who sup-ported the Sydney bid. The Sydney Morning Herald isnow a “Team Millennium Partner” for the Games andhas established a unit to “maximize the associated com-mercial opportunities.”

Karla Bell and Paul Gilding have both left Green-peace to become consultants to companies seeking con-tracts to construct Olympic facilities. Both have alsoparticipated as paid consultants in preparing Stockholm’sbid for the 2004 Olympics.

By contrast, Robert Cartmel, the Greenpeace cam-paigner whose misgivings kept him from joining in thecampaign to greenwash Homebush Bay, has since beensqueezed out of his job. n

Dr. Sharon Beder is a professional civil engineerand associate professor in Science and TechnologyStudies at the University of Wollongong, Australia.She is the author of several books, including TheNature of Sustainable Development, The New Engi-neer, Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing, and Global Spin:The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism, as wellas numerous articles on environmental and otherissues, many of which are available on her websiteat <http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/sbeder/>.

Perhaps the rarest and most perverse form of flatterythat a writer can receive is to have the government seekto suppress his or her work. I had the opportunity toexperience one of these institutional efforts at censorshipin 1993, when two senior government officials—the gen-eral manager and the information manager of the Home-bush Bay Development Corporation—visited me and thehead of my university department, demanding to see acopy of an article I had written for New Scientist, theinternational science magazine. My article dealt with pol-lution remediation methods for the Homebush Bay toxicwaste site in Sydney, Australia where authorities werehoping to locate the year 2000 Olympic Games.

The timing of my article, and of the visit by these gov-ernment officials, was critical. The article had alreadybeen accepted for publication and was scheduled toappear in the weeks leading up to the InternationalOlympic Committee’s final decision about which citywould host the year 2000 games. The front-runners atthe time were Sydney, Beijing and Manchester.

My article detailed the contaminants buried at thesite, government efforts to bypass public consultation onsite remediation, and inadequacies of the government’spreferred remediation process which would leave con-taminants untreated on site. Some of the information forthe article had been obtained from unpublished reportscommissioned by a state government authority. I hadgained access to these reports as an academic researcher,but after finding out that I was writing an article, theperson who had given me access demanded the right toreview the article prior to publication. And then camethe visit from the senior officials.

Journalists who wrote critical storieswere attacked as “unpatriotic,

eccentric, inaccurate and negative.”

My visitors told me that some of the reports that Iobtained were not even available to the public underFreedom of Information legislation (implying that theytherefore had some sort of right to control informationobtained from them). I told them that they shouldapproach the magazine itself for a copy of the article.Within three days of this visit I received a phone call fromthe magazine’s deputy editor informing me that they hadheld an editorial meeting and decided not to run the arti-cle. He said the article was well written and balanced butthat they had decided to “kill” it for political reasons.

He gave me three reasons. First, it would be unfairto run such a story on the environmental credentials of

the Sydney bid if they did not run stories on the envi-ronmental credentials of the Manchester and Beijingbids, and there was not time to do that before the winnerwas announced. Second, he said that the Chinese wereplaying dirty and would use such an article to campaignagainst Sydney winning the Olympics and that at all coststhey didn’t want China to win the Games. Third, hefeared that the magazine would bear the brunt of blameif it published my article and Sydney lost the bid.

The Australian media were effectively closed to crit-icism of the Sydney bid at this time. The AustralianCentre for Independent Journalism published a specialOlympic Edition of its newsletter Reportage which cov-ered a number of stories that were not being covered inthe general media. The Centre’s director, Wendy Bacon,noted that the few journalists who wrote critical storieshad been “attacked as unpatriotic, eccentric, inaccurateand negative.” Meanwhile, public support for the bid hadbeen mobilized using a “pervasive media and marketingexercise” which included putting the bid logo on milkcartons, car registration stickers, buses, and all sorts ofother places.

AFTER THE VICTORYThe state government began releasing information

about the contamination of the site to the media shortlyafter the bid had been won, carefully framing the infor-mation in terms of the clean-up. “Restoring HomebushBay for the 2000 Olympics, billed as the biggest envi-ronmental repair job undertaken in Australia, is revers-ing decades of environmental abuse at a cost of $83million,” reported an article in the Sydney MorningHerald, which went on to reassure the public that theclean-up would make the site perfectly safe.

My article, the one that had been “killed,” was pub-lished a month later in the Australian Current Affairs Bul-letin. I was subsequently interviewed about it onAustralian public television. The Homebush Bay Devel-opment Corporation responded by issuing a news releaseheadlined “Attack on Remediation Program Scientifi-cally Flawed.”

It claimed that “all the allegations contained in thearticle were bereft of fact. What we are doing at Home-bush Bay is the greatest urban environmental reforma-tion seen in Australia’s history. . . . The remediationstrategies adopted for Homebush Bay are the best inter-national practice for the type of contamination at the site.. . . Scientists with proven track records in this fieldendorse this approach.” (The release neglected, however,to identify by name any of these “proven scientists” ortheir evidence.)

Media Self-Censorship in Australia’s Olympics Bidby Dr. Sharon Beder

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the Corpo-ration’s response even though it had not deemed my arti-cle important enough to mention previously. ItsOlympics reporter, Sam North, wrote an article basedon the press release criticizing my article without con-tacting me for comment. When I contacted the Heraldto complain about inaccuracies in North’s article, thepaper refused to report on my response and suggested Iwrite a letter to the editor, which they published.

After it was announced that Sydney would host the2000 Games, the Freedom of Information Act for NewSouth Wales was amended to ensure that SydneyOlympic committee documents could not be accessed.This decision was criticized by the NSW Ombudsman,who pointed out that the exemptions to the Act had beenadded without public consultation.

The amendment specifically denied the public accessto contracts, proposals for the various Olympic facilitiesincluding the athletes’ village, the criteria for selectingcontractors, progress reports, committee meetings, andpublic opinion surveys. Contractors who work on thefacilities must sign a confidentiality agreement. Even thecontract between the NSW government and the Inter-national Olympic Committee is a state secret.

In 1996, Herald environment writer Murray Hogarthreported on the continuing secrecy surrounding theGames: “Though we are less than four years out andclosing fast, there are five rings of secrecy enveloping keyaspects of Sydney’s Olympics. They are the often-impenetrable International Olympic Committee (IOC),the State Government with its spin doctors, the 30-yearCabinet secrecy rules and the ban on Freedom of Infor-mation requests, SOCOG and its media Games-keep-ers, OCA’s ICAC-inspired probity requirements, andfinally big business, with a tangled web of confidential-ity agreements.”

In 1997 Nathan Vass of the Herald reported that thestate government was considering setting up a multi-mil-lion dollar strategy to deal with an expected 5,000 or sointernational non-accredited journalists who would behanging around Sydney before and during the 2000Games looking for stories. Such journalists, unlike the15,000 or so officially accredited journalists there toreport on the sporting events, were likely to be the sourceof critical stories.

In preparation for this feared onslaught of scrutiny,the Olympics manager of the Australian Tourist Com-mission has recommended a “crisis media managementprogram” to deal with negative stories about the envi-ronment, the ozone layer and Aboriginal issues. The plancalled for seeking money from Olympic sponsors to

establish a center to house and respond to such jour-nalists, thereby ensuring that “the non-accredited mediapresent Sydney in a very positive fashion.”

In the years following the winning of the bid, the storyof the toxic waste contamination of Homebush Bay hasbeen well covered by the Australian media and has alsoreceived some international coverage, especially in Ger-many. But when journalists from throughout the worldbegin arriving in Sydney to cover the Olympics, will theybe able to see through the “media management” that isbeing geared up to greet them? n

A diagram of the Olympic Games site, showingthe location of toxic waste dumps.

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In 1989, Australian government authorities decidedto use Homebush Bay as the site for a future OlympicGames. Even the chance of winning an Olympic bid,however, could not justify spending the $190 million thatexperts estimated it would cost to contain and treat thetoxic wastes buried there. The government thereforesought a cheaper, more modest remediation strategy thatcould be carried out in time for the 1993 Olympic bid.

Authorities considered various options for dealingwith the wastes. One possibility would be to segregateand treat the wastes, but this option would have been dif-ficult and expensive.

Another possibility would have been to take a “bankvault” approach—sealing up and walling in the wastes.This approach would have entailed tightly containing thecontaminated soil with double liners beneath, soil cap-ping over the top, leachate drains and gas collection andtreatment systems. This approach was tried for a badly-contaminated embankment where the Olympic swim-ming facility was to be built, but the planners decidedthat it was too expensive to be used elsewhere.

A third, cheaper option was chosen for the rest of thesite. It eliminated the gas collection and treatment sys-tems and the double liners. This option meant that thewastes would continue to leak into underlying ground-water. A consultant to the government explained the rea-soning behind this approach:

The liability associated with deterioration and orfailure of a “bank vault” secure landfill remainedconstant with time, but its probability of occur-rence increased with time as the facility aged. Bycontrast the leaky landfill would over time carry lessliability as the quality of leachate eventuallyimproved. Therefore it is an intrinsically morerobust or resilient way of limiting risks.

In other words, the waste would be disposed of byletting it slowly leak into the surrounding environment,rather than risk the financial liability of a possible suddenand more traceable major failure in the future.

In public discussions, however, these cost and liabil-ity issues were not raised. Instead, the public was toldthat the leaky landfill was the only feasible option, giventhe difficulty of treating the diverse range of chemicalsthat were present on the site. The option of a more secure“bank vault” landfill was not discussed outside of con-sultants’ reports.

By choosing the leaky landfill option, the plannerswere able to reduce the cost of remediation of theOlympic site from $190 million to $69 million, includ-ing landscaping and road base preparations. This

enabled most of the remediation to be completed by1993, in time for Sydney to win the bid for the 2000Olympic Games.

EXCLUDING THE PUBLICAustralian guidelines are quite explicit about the pub-

lic’s right to know and participate in decision-makingabout the clean-up of contaminated sites. The remedi-ation work at Homebush Bay, however, was carried outwithout proper public consultation. The government’sreports on contamination at the site and the risks asso-ciated with it have not been published. In their place arenewsletters and brochures produced for public relationspurposes.

In 1992, when the remediation was already under-way, a local environmental group conducted a surveywhich found that 71 percent of the respondents felt theywere not getting enough information to form an opin-ion about what was being done in the Homebush Bayarea. Roughly the same number—75 percent—said theyhad not received enough information to satisfy them thatthe area would be safe for people to live and work.

The usual process in New South Wales for involvingthe public in such decisions is to issue and seek publiccomments on an environmental impact statement (EIS).For the Olympic site, however, the NSW Minister ofPlanning was given full authority to make decisions with-out the normal consultation process. The reaction ofGreenpeace Australia’s Lynette Thorstensen is a tellingindication of how deeply the venerable environmentalcrusader had allowed itself to be co-opted. “At this stagewe are much more interested in seeing the green devel-opment up and running than having ourselves locked upin disputes about process,” Thorstensen stated.

The urgency to get the Games ready without both-ering about due process is something that the Olympicauthorities undoubtedly appreciated. Public relations isa much simpler and more controllable process than gen-uine public consultation.

In the absence of true public participation, PRaround the Homebush Bay site has focused on vacuousmedia stunts and photo opportunities. A brochure by theOlympic Coordination Authority falsely describes theremediation of the site as the “world’s best practice.”

On October 31, 1998, the OCA also organized an“Olympic Neighbors Day.” Titled “the Big Clean-up,” the event took area residents on a tour of the nicely-landscaped Olympic site, while avoiding mention of thetoxic wastes buried underneath the new lawns and shrub-bery that will be slowly contaminating these neighbors’groundwater for years to come. n

Selling a Leaky Landfill as the “World’s Best Practice”by Dr. Sharon Beder

ACSH DefendedAs a career professional scientist with more than 30

years of tenured service at two Big Ten universities plusa decade as a researcher at the National Institutes ofHealth, I feel qualified to challenge your criticism of theAmerican Council on Science and Health (ACSH) asexpressed in your Fourth Quarter 1998 issue.

First of all, I have been a member of the ACSH Boardof Directors for a number of years and a Scientific Advi-sor virtually since its inception. Your selective descrip-tion of the ACSH Board of Directors carefully omittedNobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug (originator of the“Green Revolution”), the eminent Dr. Robert White ofCase Western Reserve University and other eminent sci-entists. The policies of the ACSH are not determinedsolely by the Board members you actively criticized.

Secondly, the ACSH is completely “up front” aboutits sources of funding. In contrast, I would suggest thatyou attempt to obtain a complete list of the individualsand/or organizations who fund the Center for Science inthe Public Interest (CSPI).

Thirdly, I would suggest that you should actuallycount the number of ACSH Scientific Advisors who arein academic departments of “food science and technol-ogy.” They are a very small minority. Indeed, thebreadth of sciences covered by this group is literallyastounding—literally an alphabet of biological and med-ical sciences, medicine, nursing, engineering, etc. We allcontribute to the peer-review process for ACSH publi-cations, just as we do to numerous professional journals.

A major portion of the ACSH overall effort isdevoted to presenting materials that enhance the publicunderstanding of science from a perspective of unbiasedevaluation of the complete scientific literature, not froma selective, pre-biased viewpoint.

Roger P. Maickel, Ph.D., FRSCProfessor of Pharmacology and Toxicology

PR Watch responds: Drs. Borlaug and White areindeed eminent in their fields, a fact which in no way con-tradicts ACSH’s documented pro-industry bias. Indeed,our Fourth Quarter 1998 issue detailed the ways thatACSH has been able to advance its right-wing agendathrough its associations with the distinguished formerU.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Space didnot permit us to to analyze the role of every individualwho is affiliated with ACSH.

As for the claim that ACSH is “completely ‘upfront’ about its sources of funding,” that is not what wewere told when we contacted the ACSH office on

December 23, 1998, to ask for a list of its institutionalfunders. ACSH Associate Director Jeff Stier refused toprovide a list, stating that to do so would have a “preju-dicial effect” on our readers. ACSH once did have apolicy of publicly disclosing its funders, but that policywas abandoned years ago. As a member of the ACSHBoard of Directors, Dr. Maickel ought to know this.

Dr. Maickel’s dig at CSPI notwithstanding, the factremains that CSPI offers better funding disclosure thanACSH, because CSPI discloses its institutional funders.If Dr. Maickel believes that nonprofit organizationsshould also disclose all of their individual donors (a highlyunusual practice, since most groups allow individuals togive anonymously), he should at least have the integrityto do the same on behalf of his own organization.

Sandman’s Cagey TacticsPrior to reading your First Quarter 1999 issue, we

had never heard of Peter Sandman by name. His tactics,however, bore a familiar ring.

The State of Nevada has long opposed efforts by theU.S. Department of Energy and the commercial nuclearindustry to turn our state into a national dump site forhigh-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Sandman’sadvice to the DOE sounds exactly like the strategy takena few years ago when the Secretary of Energy announcedthat there would be a “citizen advisory panel” to discussthe Yucca Mountain project. The real purpose of thepanel was to invite opponents of the site such as ourselvesto draft standards that would make the Yucca Mountainprogram acceptable.

We were also invited to workshops in which govern-ment, industry and public representatives were supposedto “prioritize your values.” Then we were supposed to“trade off” our values in order to reach an acceptablecompromise. Our response was to “just say no.” We werethen told that we were being “unreasonable.” In ouropinion, however, dumping nuclear waste on an unwill-ing community is itself an unreasonable action.

DOE also appears to have taken Sandman’s adviceon how to play the role of what he calls the “caged beast.”We decided to control the beast on our own terms andnot play with a Cheshire cat.

We urge all public advocates and public interestgroups to carefully read and understand how Sandmanand his “outrage” neutralization schemes work. Don’t befooled. Outrage can be good. Keep it and use it.

Judy Treichel and Steve FrishmanNevada Nuclear Waste Task Force

L E T T E R S F R O M R E A D E R S

Today, few people outside thepublic relations profession recognizethe name of Edward L. Bernays. Asthe year 2000 approaches, however,his name deserves to figure on histo-rians’ lists of the most influential fig-ures of the 20th century.

It is impossible to fundamentallygrasp the social, political, economicand cultural developments of the past100 years without some understand-ing of Bernays and his professionalheirs in the public relations industry.PR is a 20th century phenomenon,and Bernays—widely eulogized as the“father of public relations” at the timeof his death in 1995—played a majorrole in defining the industry’s philos-ophy and methods.

Eddie Bernays himself desperatelycraved fame and a place in history.During his lifetime he worked andschemed to be remembered as thefounder of his profession and some-times drew ridicule from his industry colleagues for hisincessant self-promotions. These schemes notwith-standing, Bernays richly deserves the title that BostonGlobe reporter Larry Tye has given him in his engag-ingly written new book, The Father of Spin.

In keeping with his obsessive desire for recognition,Bernays was the author of a massive memoir, titled Biog-raphy of an Idea, and he fretted about who would authorhis biography. He would probably be happy with Tye’sbook, the first written since his passing.

The Father of Spin is a bit too fawning and uncriticalof Bernays and his profession. We recommend it, how-ever, for its new insights into Bernays, many of whichare based on a first-time-ever examination of the 80boxes of papers and documents that Bernays left to theLibrary of Congress. The portrait that emerges is of abrilliant, contradictory man.

Tye writes that “Bernays’ papers . . . provide illumi-nating and sometimes disturbing background on someof the most interesting episodes of twentieth-century his-tory, from the way American tobacco tycoons made itsocially acceptable for women to smoke to the way othertitans of industry persuaded us to pave over our land-scape and switch to beer as the ‘beverage of moderation.’The companies involved aren’t likely to release theirrecords of those campaigns, assuming they still exist. ButBernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took

in. . . . In so doing, he let us see justhow policies were made and how, inmany cases, they were founded ondeception.”

In an industry that is notable for itsmastery of evasions and euphemisms,Bernays stood out for his remarkablefrankness. He was a propagandist andproud of it. (In an interview with BillMoyers, Bernays said that what he didwas propaganda, and that he just“hoped it was ‘proper-ganda’ and not‘improper-ganda.’”)

Bernays’ life was amazing in manyways. He had a role in many of theseminal intellectual and commercialevents of this century. “The tech-niques he developed fast becamestaples of political campaigns and ofimage-making in general,” Tye notes.“That is why it is essential to under-stand Edward L. Bernays if we are tounderstand what Hill and Knowltondid in Iraq—not to mention how

Richard Nixon was able to dig his way out of his post-Watergate depths and remake himself into an elderstatesman worthy of a lavish state funeral, how RichardMorris repositioned President Bill Clinton as an ideo-logical centrist in order to get him reelected, and howmost other modern-day miracles of public relations areconceived and carried out.”

Many of the new insights that Tye offers have to dowith Bernays’s relationship with his family and his uncleSigmund Freud, whose reputation as “the father of psy-choanalysis” owes something to Bernays’ publicityefforts. Bernays regarded Uncle Sigmund as a mentor,and used Freud’s insights into the human psyche andmotivation to design his PR campaigns, while also trad-ing on his famous uncle’s name to inflate his own stature.

There is, however, a striking paradox in the relation-ship between the two. Uncle Sigmund’s “talking cure”was designed to unearth his patients’ unconscious drivesand hidden motives, in the belief that bringing them intoconscious discourse would help people lead healthierlives. Bernays, by contrast, used psychological techniquesto mask the motives of his clients, as part of a deliberatestrategy aimed at keeping the public unconscious of theforces that were working to mold their minds.

Characteristically (and again paradoxically), Bernayswas remarkably candid about his manipulative intent. “Ifwe understand the mechanisms and motives of the group

The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PRbook review

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mind, it is now possible to control and regiment themasses according to our will without their knowing it,”he argued in Propaganda, one of his first books. In a laterbook, he coined the term “engineering of consent” todescribe his technique for controlling the masses.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of theorganized habits and opinions of the masses is an impor-tant element in democratic society,” Bernays argued.“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of soci-ety constitute an invisible government which is the trueruling power of our country. . . . In almost every act ofour daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or busi-ness, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, weare dominated by the relatively small number of persons. . . who understand the mental processes and social pat-terns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires whichcontrol the public mind.”

This definition of “democratic society” is itself a con-tradiction in terms—a theoretical attempt to reconcilerule by the few with the democratic system which threat-ened (and still threatens) the privileges and powers of thegoverning elite. On occasion, Bernays himself recoiledfrom the anti-democratic implications of his theory.

During Bernays’ lifetime and since, propaganda hasusually had dirty connotations, loaded and identifiedwith the evils of Nazi PR genius Joseph Goebbels, or theoafish efforts of the Soviet Communists. In his memoirs,Bernays wrote that he was “shocked” to discover thatGoebbels kept copies of Bernays’ writings in his own per-sonal library, and that his theories were therefore help-ing to “engineer” the rise of the Third Reich.

Bernays liked to cultivate an image as a supporter offeminism and other liberating ideas, but his work onbehalf of the United Fruit Company had consequencesjust as evil and terrifying as if he’d worked directly forthe Nazis. The Father of Spin sheds new and importantlight on the extent to which the Bernays’ propagandacampaign for the United Fruit Company (today’s UnitedBrands) led directly to the CIA’s overthrow of the electedgovernment of Guatemala.

The term “banana republic” actually originated inreference to United Fruit’s domination of corrupt gov-ernments in Guatemala and other Central Americancountries. The company brutally exploited virtual slavelabor in order to produce cheap bananas for the lucra-tive U.S. market. When a mildly reformist Guatemalagovernment attempted to reign in the company’s power,Bernays whipped up media and political sentimentagainst it in the commie-crazed 1950s.

“Articles began appearing in the New York Times, theNew York Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, Time,

Newsweek, the New Leader, and other publications all dis-cussing the growing influence of Guatemala’s Commu-nists,” Tye writes. “The fact that liberal journals like theNation were also coming around was especially satisfy-ing to Bernays, who believed that winning the liberalsover was essential. . . . At the same time, plans wereunder way to mail to American Legion posts and auxil-iaries 300,000 copies of a brochure entitled ‘Commu-nism in Guatemala—22 Facts.’”

His efforts led directly to a brutal military coup. Tyewrites that Bernays “remained a key source of informa-tion for the press, especially the liberal press, rightthrough the takeover. In fact, as the invasion was com-mencing on June 18, his personal papers indicate he wasgiving the ‘first news anyone received on the situation’to the Associate Press, United Press, the InternationalNews Service, and the New York Times, with contactsintensifying over the next several days.”

The result, tragically, has meant decades of tyrannyunder a Guatemalan government whose brutality rivaledthe Nazis as it condemned hundreds of thousands ofpeople (mostly members of the country’s impoverishedMaya Indian majority) to dislocation, torture and death.

Bernays relished and apparently never regretted hiswork for United Fruit, for which he was reportedly paid$100,000 a year, a huge fee in the early 1950s. Tyewrites that Bernays’ papers “make clear how the UnitedStates viewed its Latin neighbors as ripe for economicexploitation and political manipulation—and how thepropaganda war Bernays waged in Guatemala setthe pattern for future U.S.-led campaigns in Cuba and,much later, Vietnam.”

As these examples show, Tye’s biography of Bernaysis important. It casts a spotlight on the anti-democraticand dangerous corporate worldview of the public rela-tions industry. The significance of these dangers is oftenoverlooked, in large part because of the PR industry’sdeliberate efforts to operate behind the scenes as itmanages and manipulates opinions and public policies.This strategy of invisibility is the reason that PR acade-mic Scott Cutlip refers to public relations as “theunseen power.”

Bernays pioneered many of the industry’s techniquesfor achieving invisibility, yet his self-aggrandizing per-sonality drove him to leave behind a record of how andfor whom he worked. By compiling this information andpresenting it to the public in a readable form, Tye hasaccomplished something similar to the therapeuticmission that Freud attempted with his patients—a recov-ery of historical memories that a psychoanalyst mightterm a “return of the repressed.” n