Page 128 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

10 FIGHTING FOR COAL: PUBLIC RELATIONS … 117

The overarching communication strategy was to foster ‘doubt’ by
challenging tobacco researchers and their evidence. The tactics employed in
support of this strategy included: ad hominem attacks against scientists and
organizations; rhetorical tactics of blame shifting and misdirection; dubious
third-party endorsements and testimonials from ‘experts’; publishing
pseudo-scientific reports and studies; espionage of oppositional groups; and
political donations with quid pro quo expectations. Oreskes and Conway
(2011) contend that these interventions, which sought to influence debate
and sow doubt regarding the consequences of smoking, are now employed
by the mining and energy industry to argue that the science of global
warming is ‘not settled’. As discussed below, many of these tactics have been
used to oppose attempts by the Australian government to pass legislation to
mitigate the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The communication tactics employed by the coal industry are part of the
‘persuasive tradition’ of public relations first developed in the US in the
early 20th century. According to Edward Bernays, the self-proclaimed
founding father of public relations (Gower 2008, p. 308), communication
specialists should use information and persuasion “to engineer public
support for an activity, cause, movement, or institution” (Bernays 1955,
pp. 3–4). While public relations academics and practitioners acknowledge
that persuasion can be manipulative, they also argue that it can by ethically
justified. Public relations has often sought to change attitudes and beha-
viours so that they align with the operational interests of corporations and
other organizations; how far these interventions also advance the public
interest is open to debate (Pfau and Wan 2006).
Persuasive communication strategies are often used by organizations
that face ‘adversarial publics’—such an environmental groups—in their
operational environment, which makes it a common approach for the coal
industry (Miller and Sinclair 2009). Advocates of the persuasive tradition in
public relations contend that corporations have an obligation to their
shareholders and employees, and should take actions to protect their
financial interests and the livelihoods of their stakeholders. In practice this
means that public relations practitioners seek to challenge critics of their
operations through persuasive counter arguments, and see themselves as
advocates or defenders of their organizations much like an attorney in an
advocacy legal system (Grunig and Grunig cited in Pfau and Wan 2006,
p. 103).
Persuasive communication strategies draw on a repertoire of common
tactics that include, as a first line of defense, actions which takes place