Burson-Marsteller

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Burson Marsteller is one of the most notorius and biggest PR firms in the world. It is owned by communications conglomerate WPP

Burson-Marsteller has over the last 12 months at three occasions been forced to step up transparency after critique emerged over its role in establishing and de facto running “the Coalition to Prevent Deep-Vein Thrombosis" (on behalf of Aventis), “European Women for HPV Testing� (on behalf of Digene Corporation) and the “Bromine Science and Environmental Forum� (on behalf of major producers of bromine flame retardants). In all these cases, the involvement of the companies – let alone Burson Marsteller – was initially hidden or kept vague. [1]

Environmentalist PR?

Burson Marsteller has a history of employing environmentalists where possible, especially in the UK. These have included:

Biafra

In the 1960s Burson Marstellar worked for the Nigerian government to spin the crushing of the Biafran revolt. A subsidiary of Burson Marsteller, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelley, also worked with the Nigerian military junta in the early nineties. This was during the time there was routine human rights abuses against protestors such as the Ogoni, who were non-violently campaigning against the oil-giant Shell. [5]

Spin for torture

In the seventies after a military coup in Argentina, B-M was hired to improve the country’s image. During this period, an estimated 35,000 people disappeared and thousands were tortured.

Some of the torture techniques used during this period were "el submarino" holding the person’s head under water or excrement until near drowningb "La picana" – the electronic prod applied to the most sensitive parts of the body rape – sometimes by police dogs torture – tearing out of toe nails; and putting live rats to feed on fresh wounds. [6]

A book was written on the disappeared called "Nunca más (Never More)" [7] Excerpt from Nunca más:

On 5 April 1978, at approximately 10 p.m., Dr Liwsky arrived at his flat in Flores, in Buenos Aires city:
As I was inserting the key in the lock I realized what was happening, because the door was pulled inwards violently and I stumbled forward.
I jumped back, trying to escape. Two shots (one in each leg) stopped me. However, I still put up a struggle, and for several minutes resisted, being handcuffed and hooded, as best I could. At the same time, I was shouting at the top of my lungs that I was being kidnapped, begging my neighbours to tell my family, and to try to stop them taking me away.
Finally, exhausted and blindfolded, I was told by the person who apparently was in command that my wife and two daughters had already been captured and ’disappeared’.
They had to drag me out, since I couldn’t walk because of the wounds in my legs. As we were leaving the building, I saw a car with a flashing red light in the street. By the sound of the voices and commands, and the slamming of car doors, interspersed with shouts from my neighbours, I presumed that this was a police car.
After several minutes of heated argument, the police car left. The others then took me out of the building and threw me on to the floor of a car, possibly a Ford Falcon, and set off.
They hauled me out of the car in the same way, carrying me between four of them. We crossed four or five metres of what by the sound of it was a gravelled yard, then they threw me on to a table. They tied me by my hands and feet to its four corners.
The first voice I heard after being tied up was of someone who said he was a doctor. He told me the wounds on my legs were bleeding badly, so I should not try to resist in any way.
Then I heard another voice. This one said he was the ’Colonel’. He told me they knew I was not involved with terrorism or the guerrillas, but that they were going to torture me because I opposed the regime, because: ’I hadn’t understood that in Argentina there was no room for any opposition to the Process of National Reorganization.’ He then added: ’You’re going to pay dearly for it ... the poor won’t have any goody-goodies to look after them any more’.
Everything happened very quickly. From the moment they took me out of the car to the beginning of the first electric shock session took less time than I am taking to tell it. For days they applied electric shocks to my gums, nipples, genitals, abdomen and ears. Unintentionally, I managed to annoy them, because, I don’t know why, although the shocks made me scream, jerk and shudder, they could not make me pass out.
They then began to beat me systematically and rhythmically with wooden sticks on my back, the backs of my thighs, my calves and the soles of my feet. At first the pain was dreadful. Then it became unbearable. Eventually I lost all feeling in the part of my body being beaten. The agonizing pain returned a short while after they finished hitting me. It was made still worse when they tore off my shirt, which had stuck to the wounds, in order to take me off for a fresh electric shock session. This continued for several days, alternating the two tortures. Sometimes they did both at the same time.
Such a combination of tortures can be fatal because, whereas electric shock produces muscular contractions, beating causes the muscle to relax (as a form of protection). Sometimes this can bring on heart failure.
In between torture sessions they left me hanging by my arms from hooks fixed in the wall of the cell where they had thrown me.
Sometimes they put me on to the torture table and stretched me out, tying my hands and feet to a machine which I can’t describe since I never saw it, but which gave me the feeling that they were going to tear part of my body off.
At one point when I was face-down on the torture table, they lifted my head then removed my blindfold to show me a bloodstained rag. They asked me if I recognized it and, without waiting for a reply - impossible anyway because it was unrecognizable, and my eyesight was very badly affected - they told me it was a pair of my wife’s knickers. No other explanation was given, so that I would suffer all the more ... then they blindfolded me again and carried on with their beating.
Ten days after I entered this ’pit’, they brought my wife, Hilda Nora Ereñu, to my cell. I could scarcely see her, but she seemed in a pitiful state. They only left us together for two or three minutes, with one of the torturers present. When they took her away again,I that this would be the last time we saw each other. That it was the end for both of us.
On two or three occasions they also burnt me with a metal instrument. I didn’t see this either, but I had the impression that they were pressing something hard into me. Not like a cigarette, which gets squashed, but something more like a red-hot nail.
One day they put me face-down on the torture table, tied me up (as always), and calmly began to strip the skin from the soles of my feet. I imagine, though I didn’t see it because I was blindfolded, that they were doing it with a razor blade or a scalpel. I could feel them pulling as if they were trying to separate the skin at the edge of the wound with a pair of pincers. I passed out. From then on, strangely enough, I was able to faint very easily. As for example on the occasion when, showing me more bloodstained rags, they said these were my daughters’ knickers, and asked me whether I wanted them to be tortured with me or separately. I began to feel that I was living alongside death. When I wasn’t being tortured I had hallucinations about death - sometimes when I was awake, at other times while sleeping.
The most vivid and terrifying memory I have of all that time was of always living with death. I felt it was impossible to think, I desperately tried to summon up a thought in order to convince myself I wasn’t dead. That I wasn’t mad. At the same time, I wished with all my heart that they would kill me as soon as possible. In the midst of all this terror, I’m not sure when, they took me off to the ’operating theatre’. There they tied me up and began to torture my testicles. I don’t know if they did this by hand or with a machine. I’d never experienced such pain. It was as though they were pulling out all my insides from my throat and brain downwards. As though my throat, brain, stomach and testicles were linked by a nylon thread which they were pulling on, while at the same time crushing everything. My only wish was for them to succeed in pulling all my insides out so that I would be completely empty. Then I passed out.
Without knowing how or when, I regained consciousness and they were tugging at me again. I fainted a second time.
Another day they took me out of my cell and, despite my swollen testicles, placed me face-down again. They tied me up and raped me slowly and deliberately by introducing a metal object into my anus. They then passed an electric current through the object. I cannot describe how everything inside me felt as though it were on fire.

Other Clients

B-M has a history of working with major polluters and despotic regimes.

In the seventies it worked with Babcock and Wilcox after the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. The following decade, it worked with Union Carbide after the Bhopal disaster in India , which caused death or injury to tens of thousands of people and for which Union Carbide orginally tried to blame the disaster on sabotage. [8] [9]

The company has a history of working with the anti-environmental movement in the US and setting up corporate front groups such as the Business Council for Sustainable Development, British Colombian Forest Alliance, the Canadian Coalition for Clean and Renewable Energy or Australian Forest Protection Society. [10]

B-M also set up anti-smoking front-groups. In the Nineties it created the National Smokers Alliance in the US with money from Philip Morris. [11]

It has also worked with numerous despotic regimes, such as Argentina when it committed human rights abuses in the seventies, Indonesia when it was acused of causing genocide in East Timor and Nigeria in the Nineties (see above).

It has worked for the oil industry against clean air and climate change legislation – forming front groups such as Foundation for Clean Air Progress – its clients have included: the American Petroleum Institute, British Petroleum, Chevron, Ford Motor Company, Mitsubishi, Pennzoil Occidental Petroleum, and the government of Saudi Arabia. [12] [13]

B-M has also worked for Monsanto and the biotech body Europabio in Europe. A leaked memo prepared by Burson–Masteller gives us an insight into PR and Biotech. It argued that the biotech industry had to " Stay off the killing fields".

"Public issues of environmental and human health risk are communications killing fields for bioindustries in Europe. As a general rule, the industry voice cannot be expected to prevail in public opposition to adversarial voices on these issues. All the research evidence confirms that the perception of the profit motive fatally undermines industry's credibility on these question. It said that instead the industry had to "Fight fire with fire
"For EuropaBio to make the transition from effective policy interlocutor to effective public communicator, it is essential to shift from issues-based communications to stories-based communications. There are no issues-orientated media with any broad appeal, and the selling of complex issues coverage is a difficult task in any event because it contains little or no news value. Good stories, on the other hand, go around the world in minutes. That's the way adversaries play. That's the way industry must play". [14]

Other clients include the Iraqi National Congress

Obesity

Burson Marstellar advertises a specialism on obesity on its website: [15]

Obesity and, in a broader sense, food/health/nutrition issues, arguably represent one of the biggest public health challenges in western societies today, with enormous repercussions for a variety of industries. Some see it as the modern-day equivalent to previous macro-issues like tobacco, chemical industry & environment, GMOs, etc. The WHO, the EU, national governments are all considering some regulations or recommendations to the general audience, the medical community or the business world. Indeed, companies increasingly have to carefully consider their positioning, strategy and messages on this issue.
Burson-Marsteller has the experience, track-record and credentials to help companies address the issue. We have a unique and comprehensive mix of capabilities and people, we have inroads into some of the key players and we understand how best to present the information to reporters.
Specifically, Burson-Marsteller can help with
  • Tracking Issues and Business/Political Intelligence - identify trends and flag key events and political decisions that influenhttp://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller&action=editce and accelerate the development of the issue.
  • Constituency Relations - actions and on-going campaigns to shape the perceptions of key groups that are active in defining the media / public opinion and political agenda --trade and heath organizations, groups, etc.
  • Corporate Positioning – how to create a single differentiating communication platform
  • Public Affairs and Governmental Relations – how to engage in a dialogue with governmental organizations and prepare for forthcoming legislation
  • Media Relations – how to balance the debate in the media
  • Brand Building – how to strategically position a brand or product

What this means is that they will influence, fund, take-over or simply invent consumer and advocacy groups to pursue the corporate interest in minimum regulation.


Resources

January 1997.

Articles

Books

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