Read the strategy below and see if it sounds eerily familiar to our
experience with the US BF Awareness Campaign:
(Complete text at http://www.unspecial.org/UNS609/UNS_609_T18.html )


On April 29th, 2002, Judith Richter, author of Holding Corporations
Accountable, gave a presentation at WHO on corporate conduct and the use of
strategic public relations (PR) to undermine international health policy
making. 

Corporate propaganda, as a means of protecting corporate power against
democracy, is not a new phenomenon. However, it has become far more
powerful, ever better concealed and ever better financed. Furthermore, it
has gained a quite astounding legitimacy in the past twenty years of
unfettered neoliberalism and 'free' market doctrine. 

PR activities of all kinds have been enormously facilitated by the
increasing concentration of media ownership and commercialization of
broadcast media in almost all countries, which has accompanied corporate-led
neoliberal globalization. 

Drawing in particular on the case of corporate PR in the area of infant
feeding practices, Dr Richter outlined the strategies commonly used to fight
international regulation. 

Issues management 

Today, comprehensive PR strategies for TNCs almost always include issues
management to shape rather than react to public discourse and decision
making. ITS functions include intelligence gathering, assessment of the
socio-political climate, manipulation of public debate and the exclusion of
divergent voices. 

Examples of strategic PR in action include industry lobbying of the US
government to withhold its contributions to WHO if the latter continues to
meddle with free enterprise through its critical work on regulatory codes
and corporate activities; and implied, if not open, threats of libel, legal
action to silence journalists and activists. 

Image transfer 

Image transfer is a critical and subtle strategy in which individuals,
groups and organizations, by accepting sponsorship or engaging in
'partnerships' or 'dialogues' with industry, facilitate the transfer of
their good reputation to the corporate sponsor. 

If an issue cannot be ignored or hidden from public view, issues managers
(as PR people are now called) will engage actively in public debate using
strategies to delay, de-politicise, divert and fudge....

Arly Helm, MS, IBCLC

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