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from the smoking-gun-found-next-to-skeleton-in-closet dept.
PandoDaily's Mark Ames has published a paywalled article [archive] entitled "Shillers for killers: Revealed: How the tobacco industry paid journalists, scientists, activists and lawyers to cover up the most deadly crime in human history." The article draws upon a new round of documents that was recently added to the University of California San Francisco's Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. The library contains 14 million documents and is growing, as noted on the Library's blog. Some bits are more relevant to our community.
In 1994, marketing director at the RJ Reynolds tobacco company wrote to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to discuss topics related to protecting tobacco advertising on the Internet. Later that year, EFF's executive director sent a proposal to RJ Reynolds's direct marketing manager, Peter Michaelson, soliciting money to fund an EFF project that would oppose government regulations on commercial tobacco advertising on the Web. An alternative plan is suggested:
"We are also prepared to pursue a legal test of this alternative approach to regulation. For example, if MARC [RJR's direct marketers] or RJR decided to put one or another sponsored on-line service up on the Internet or via America-on-Line or other on-line service, the white paper could become the basis of a legal brief challenging the constitutionality of any governmental effort to block the programming on the basis of current advertising bans in electronic media... We have not budgeted for this alternative at this point."
Years before Glenn Greenwald teamed up with Laura Poitras and whistleblower Edward Snowden to expose the NSA, he worked as a lawyer for Wachtell Lipton, a law firm that sued ABC-TV for $10 billion and helped to gag smoking industry whistleblowers. This had a chilling effect on CBS, which prevented the airing of a 60 Minutes program covering Merrell Williams and Jeffrey Wigand until the next year. These events were covered by the 1996 Frontline documentary "Smoke In The Eye" [Internet Archive] and Wigand's story inspired the 1999 film, The Insider.
It's reasonable to assume Greenwald—ever the diligent researcher—must have joined Wachtell fully aware that they were helping gag whistleblowers and threatening journalists: Greenwald says that he chose to work for Wachtell in 1994 after being recruited by over a dozen top law firms. But of course that doesn't necessarily mean he worked on the specific Philip Morris case. Except that a billing ledger discovered in the tobacco library shows Greenwald's name in a Wachtell Lipton bill to Philip Morris... Other Wachtell Lipton memos show Greenwald's name prominently displayed on the letterhead in aggressive, threatening letters against ABC-TV, against whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, and against whistleblower Merrell Williams...
[...] Again, in the two decades since, whistleblower champion Glenn Greenwald has never said a single word about this case or about the role his law firm played in crushing TV investigative journalism. As far as our research can tell, Greenwald has never taken a position on tobacco laws or spoken about the horrific death toll smoking is taking.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Open4D on Monday July 13 2015, @01:04PM
Well the article hits out at various "journalists, scientists, activists and lawyers" who were paid by the tobacco industry.
To me, banning tobacco advertising is a legitimate option for a government, but opposing such a ban is not immoral. It may not be the EFF's finest moment, but 21 years later I don't see the fact that the "EFF called for using 'content blocking' technologies, rather than 'intrusive' government regulations" to be a big deal.
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Distorting the truth, however, is potentially another matter entirely. The article mentions scientists like Alvan Feinstein [wikipedia.org]. And it talks about the tobacco industry lawyers (such as law firm Wachtell Lipton) who aggressively targeted whistleblowers. But the focus on Greenwald seems to be more in proportion to the extent that he's now a whistleblowers champion, rather than the extent that he was actually involved in Wachtell Lipton's behaviour.
I already knew Greenwald is not perfect.[1] He struck gold when he was contacted by Snowden. But PandoDaily are overdoing the criticism here.
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[1] - For example, he is determined to muddy the waters when it comes to the behaviour of Islamists. He equated Charlie Hebdo with racism and bigotry, claiming it "contained a stream of mockery toward Muslims generally". (N.B. If you made the mistake of believing him, see these: 1 [lemonde.fr], 2 [macleans.ca], 3 [wordpress.com], 4 [tabletmag.com].)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:30PM
> N.B. If you made the mistake of believing him, see these
(1) That's the "I'm not racist, I hate everybody equally" fallacy.
(2) Just because you aren't a bully 100% of the time doesn't mean you aren't a bully
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Monday July 13 2015, @04:36PM
You obviously didn't read the articles. Neither of your two points can be taken as a defence of Greenwald, a rebuttal of anything I said, or a rebuttal of anything in the articles. They are just random remarks intended to give the impression of a reasoned response, without any of the substance of one. I might just as well respond back to you with some pointlessly random remarks of my own:
(3) - Some French Muslims believe the murders of caroonists and Jews were done by the government to discredit Muslims.
(4) - Just because Greenwald is right some of the time doesn't mean he is right all of the time.
Profound, I'm sure you'll agree ...