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Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign
Book by Hager, Nicky, Burton, Bob
288 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 21, 2020
Fantastic insights into the lengths that environmentally damaging industries will go to protect their interests.
A must-read for serious environmental campaigners.
A must-read for serious environmental campaigners.
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July 28, 2011Secrets And Lies, by Nicky Hager & Bob Burton. pub Craig Potton, 1999.
This week, I’m going to diverge from recently published works to recommend a work of non-fiction, which carefully investigates and chronicles the actions of Timberlands, one of the poster-child SOE’s of the 90’s, in it’s attempts to discredit opposition to its clear-felling practices in the West Coast Native Bush reserves during the late 80’s through to late 90’s.
Hager and Burton used OIA requests to amass a huge volume of source data, from which this solid fact-finding book emerged. If you didn’t know anything about the derivation of environmental groups in Aotearoa/New Zealand, you might find the narrative difficult to follow; and the information is incredibly dense and heavily annotated. But as a study of how PR firms help corporations to spin and manipulate public opinion, I’ve seen none better.
The publication of this book came just before the public mass protests about GE, and long before any of the current protests about State Coal mining in Happy Valley, near Westport, but parallels can be made between the tactics used by Timberlands, and those subsequently used against protesters by Monsanto, and Solid Energy, one a huge MNC, the other an SOE with an ostensibly greenwashed public face.
If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of claims of eco-terrorism happening in our fair land, this book will help you to understand the context in which PR firms have popularised the terminology, in defense of their SOE and corporate clients.
I found my reading copy in a library; I’m pretty sure the book is out-of-print, so if you’re interested I suggest a scroll through the catalogue in your library of choice, or take time out to visit the little Anarchist library, Revolting Books, based at 128 Abel Smith Street Community House. I can vouch that they have multiple copies, along with a lot of other materials about direct activism in Aotearoa NZ, including other works by Nicky Hager.
Useful links:
http://blog.forestandbird.org.nz/
http://www.gefreepolicy.com/
http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz/
This week, I’m going to diverge from recently published works to recommend a work of non-fiction, which carefully investigates and chronicles the actions of Timberlands, one of the poster-child SOE’s of the 90’s, in it’s attempts to discredit opposition to its clear-felling practices in the West Coast Native Bush reserves during the late 80’s through to late 90’s.
Hager and Burton used OIA requests to amass a huge volume of source data, from which this solid fact-finding book emerged. If you didn’t know anything about the derivation of environmental groups in Aotearoa/New Zealand, you might find the narrative difficult to follow; and the information is incredibly dense and heavily annotated. But as a study of how PR firms help corporations to spin and manipulate public opinion, I’ve seen none better.
The publication of this book came just before the public mass protests about GE, and long before any of the current protests about State Coal mining in Happy Valley, near Westport, but parallels can be made between the tactics used by Timberlands, and those subsequently used against protesters by Monsanto, and Solid Energy, one a huge MNC, the other an SOE with an ostensibly greenwashed public face.
If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of claims of eco-terrorism happening in our fair land, this book will help you to understand the context in which PR firms have popularised the terminology, in defense of their SOE and corporate clients.
I found my reading copy in a library; I’m pretty sure the book is out-of-print, so if you’re interested I suggest a scroll through the catalogue in your library of choice, or take time out to visit the little Anarchist library, Revolting Books, based at 128 Abel Smith Street Community House. I can vouch that they have multiple copies, along with a lot of other materials about direct activism in Aotearoa NZ, including other works by Nicky Hager.
Useful links:
http://blog.forestandbird.org.nz/
http://www.gefreepolicy.com/
http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz/
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews