The game of dialogue

The game of dialogue

There is no doubt that links with environmental groups help industry establish or improve their 'green credentials' and help the company to gloss over its polluting practices. In the USA, the joint project between the Environmental Defense Fund and McDonalds has been repeatedly praised throughout the industry. In this country, we need no reminding that McDonalds sued two unemployed activists who questioned the company's environmental, animal rights, health and employment record.

We must understand that for business, establishing links with environmental, human rights, development and Indigenous groups, and having dialogue with the opposition, is a simple PR technique. Dialogue is the most important PR tactic that companies are using to overcome objections to their operations.

It is a typical divide and rule approach. One PR guru has outlined a three step divide and conquer strategy on how corporations can defeat public interest activists - who apparently fall into four distinct categories: 'radicals', 'opportunists', 'idealists' and 'realists'. The goal is to isolate the radicals, 'cultivate' the idealists and 'educate' them into becoming realists, then co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.

Dialogue is a very clever PR technique, dreamt up by PR firms whom many activists have never heard of: Burson Marsteller and Hill and Knowlton, for example. So what is the public relations industry? It is a $35 billion a year industry, whose aim, in the words of one Mobil executive "is getting people to behave the way you hope they will behave by persuading them that it is ultimately in their interest to do so".

We should not underestimate the power of corporate PR - indeed, some people argue that corporate propaganda threatens democracy itself. As Australian scholar Alex Carey said:

"The twentieth century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance; the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."