On The Media

I have to take umbrage at the point made by the guest regarding Coca Cola's partnership with WWF, which goes way beyond the simple "cutting of a $20 million check to WWF" by Coca Cola.

The Coca Cola partnership with WWF includes a wide array of actions, including a reduction of water usage and local community work in Coca Cola's places of business.

Your guest oversimplifies a very important step taken by one of the world's largest corporations toward environmental responsibility. Corporations should be scrutinized for their actions, but not misrepresented in order to prove a point.

I certainly stand by my comments, Dan. Here's a recent post on our website about the Coke/WWF partnership. Click some of the internal links:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/6123

I agree with Dan. Stauber is a weak interview and the questions lobbed to him were soft. I checked the PR sites and links - not much, unless your business is knocking corporations because that's what you get paid to do and that's what keeps your niche audience excited, happy and donating.

The BPcase is old news and wasn't much to begin with. As a citizen, I'm happy to see oil companies doing anything positive. But if I work for BP I say, why bother with people like Stauber around, who I imagine consumes as much oil as anybody.

Nobody knows yet how the WWF-Coca Cola deal is going to pan out, so that's pre-judgement, DBA simple prejudice. If WWF is on the corporate dole, Stauber's on the foundation dole, both spin their self-interest, and I don't see much difference.

Actually, the difference is that BP and Coke are subject to some accountability and Stauber isn't.

Ken

Santa Fe, NM

I disagree with Ken and Dan. When environmental groups come to depend on corporate sponsors, those groups can and do lose credibility, as their decision-making becomes influenced by their financial needs. Ken makes the point that Stauber is on the "foundation dole" and decries that. Why is that okay for WWF but not CMD? In fact, CMD relies on foundations as well as individual remittances, and I suspect sales from books.

I largely agree with John Stauber, though I think "greenwashing" may not be that new a phenomenon after all. Charles Deahl, my high school English teacher in the early 1980s, termed it the "Weyerhaeuser Syndrome," -- a genre of advertising in which advertisers touted the very thing they did NOT do or FAILED to offer. The Weyerhaeuser paper concern famously promoted itself as the "tree-growing" company when in fact it clear-cut many thousands (I would guess) of acres of woodlands.