False Fronts: Why to look beyond the label [Nuclear PR]

[megatherium]

A Columbia Journalism Review editorial (which Eric Alterman links to in his blog Altercations on msnbc.com):


This year, with the little matter of global warming finally getting its moment in the sun, the nuclear energy industry saw an opening. No U.S. nuclear power plant has been built for three decades now, and the industry would like to pick up a shovel. Nuke plants may be costly to construct, melt down on rare occasions, and present us with a spent-fuel problem, but they don’t pollute the air. So how to green up the image?

To that end the Nuclear Energy Institute, with the help of Hill & Knowlton, formed something called the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. To co-chair it the institute hired a pair of environmental consultants, a duet to sing pro-nuclear songs. Christine Todd Whitman, of Whitman Strategy Group (which “can help businesses to successfully interact with government to further their goals,” according to its Web site), and Patrick Moore, of Greenspirit Strategies, were hired for their résumés: Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, is known as the outdoorsy and moderate Republican who ran the Environmental Protection Agency for two years under George W. Bush; Moore was a cofounder of Greenpeace in the 1970s. Part of the thinking, surely, was that the press would peg them as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke cheerleaders, rather than as paid spokespeople.

<edit>

Life is complicated. So are front people for industry causes — or any cause, in a world of increasingly sophisticated p.r. We have no position on nuclear power. We just find it maddening that Hill & Knowlton, which has an $8 million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press.

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/4/editorial.asp