Word: mobilizers
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...instance, early this year Mobil ran an ad entitled "Infamous Energy Mysteries: Case No. 3." The ad decried the situation in Gilette, Wyo., where Mobil owned a coal field but was at that time unable to mine it because of delays caused by environmental "over-regulation" and "red tape." The extent of these bothersome requirements became clear only later in the ad: the government required Mobil to assess the environmental impact of the proposed surface mining and required it to devise a plan to reclaim any areas that suffered adversely. The ad demurred, "We want to protect the environment...
Clearly, the regulations did not "thoroughly frustrate" energy development but merely assured that such development proceeded in accord with the need for protecting lands from the ravages of surface mining. What's more, Mobil's claim to environmental altruism is dubious. The regulations is question were established in the first place only because companies like Mobil had ignored environmental concerns and left strip-mined areas looking like lunar wastelands. In any case, the position itself was clear: "At a time when the public is being asked to make sacrifices to help allay America's energy crisis, shouldn't the government...
When Carter's energy plan was announced last spring, though, Mobil's arguments took a curious turn. It seemed that Carter wanted to expand the use of coal in industries that had previously used oil, and Mobil got a little bit frightened. While coal was a pleasant sideline for the energy conglomerate, oil was its mainstay; so suddenly and mysteriously Mobil acquired an environmental conscience. In an ad entitled "Musings of an oil person," Mobil questioned the desirability of a switch to coal on the grounds that it raised serious environmental questions, including the problems of strip mining...
...final problem with the media blitz is not one of content but one of methods. Again, Mobil seems to be the chief villain. This summer it launched a new program whereby prominent cartoonists were hired to draw cartoons subtly embued with the Mobil message. An example is one by Roy Doty of a man standing in his back yard, axing to bits a rubber hose which was in the process of supplying water for his inflatable swimming pool. Another man turns to a puzzled neighbor and says, "He's explaining how breaking up the oil companies would work." Another cartoon...
What is disturbing about this practice is that the cartoons themselves bear no mention that they are part of a Mobil public relations campaign, and most of the papers that run the cartoons make no effort to volunteer that information. When the issue was advertisement by anti-Mobil groups, Herbert Schmertz, Mobil's vice-president for public affairs, wrote: "The public has a right to know who is behind any advocacy effort, and for whom the advocate is speaking. That applies to material from a corporation, or from a group that labels itself as public interest." How quickly they forget...