The email arrived this morning. Subject: Ridiculous Stimulus Spending
It was from a Heather Stegner, using a simple gmail address.
Friendly sounding.
Ian,
I’m working with a group called Smart Taxpayers Exposing Waste (STEW). With your background in investigative journalism, I thought this might be of interest to you.
STEW is a growing group focused on exposing federal job stimulus money that was supposed to be used to create/save jobs and is instead being used to run political-style attack ads against soda companies, specifically in areas like New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and Hawaii.
Some of these ads are grotesque, over-the-top and in no way representative of how people consume beverages.
More information, including links to news articles, can be found on the STEW Facebook and Twitter pages.
Let me know if you would like any more information.
Thanks,
Heather
It didn’t take long to find out that STEW isn’t some group of crusading investigative bloggers. It’s really a front group created by the American Beverage Association to fight back against public interest advertising on the health dangers of obesity caused by consumption of sugary soft drinks, and is identified that way in the fine print on the group’s Facebook info page.
Heather, it seems, moved to Washington earlier this year for a job in “communications.” She works for a marketing company, Story Partners.
This from a 2010 item in The Hill:
• Gloria Story Dittus has established a new public affairs firm called Story Partners. She has founded two previous firms, Direct Impact and Dittus Communications. The new firm will have offices in Washington, New Orleans and Birmingham, Ala. Several principals with experience at Dittus Communications are joining the new firm, such as Shelton Jones and Collier Craft.
From the company’s own description on Facebook:
Story Partners develops and executes strategic communications strategies for clients to influence issue debates; define or penetrate a market or enhance a company’s or executive’s reputation. We focus on aligning online, offline and viral communications and leveraging them through coordinated public affairs campaigns.
So, the moral of the short story–don’t trust unsolicited offers of info from unknown sources.
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I got one too. I was prepared to ignore it out-of-hand, but thanks for the background info.
🙂
N
We surely don’t want beverage companies interfering in the political process. Only unions and profitable non-profits are allowed to do that.
I wouldn’t hire a PR company that would say “strategic communications strategies.”
I’d like to see proof that stimulus funds are being thusly used. I’m sure one of the Solicitrs General would, too. I’ll try see what’s there, if anything.
So, I checked both STEW’s Twitter feed and its FB page and no specifics whatsoever. There is a slide specifically ridiculing Hawaii (with a map of Maui in the background) but, again, no details providing evidence of their claim.
Perhaps they’re talking about the Gov’s soda tax proposal but I don’t see a stimulus funding connection there.
At least they seem to honestly describe themsleves on the FB page. A long time ago a PR person explained the difference between PR and advertising is the PR people get their message across for free.
” … a front group created by the American Beverage Association to fight back against public interest advertising …”
OMG, imagine that! A business spending its own money to fight back against hostile propaganda developed with government (i.e., taxpayer) money and printed or broadcast for free by media who feel compelled to provide free “public interest” messages to stay in the good graces of Big Brother government. I’m with the 99% ordinary Joes who enjoy drinking calorie-laden soda pop even though the 1% highly paid effete snobs in government and media bureaucracies tell us we should stop because they know what’s best for us.
This is not a nanny state, this is a corporate state.
Agriculture in the US has evolved into corporate monoculture based around growing corn as an ingredient for junk food. (Thirteen of the 38 ingredients in a Chicken McNugget are made of corn.) This is heavily subsidized by the US taxpayer.
Corporate welfare in this case is literally killing the US taxpayer, voter and consumer.
Try to push for an end to corporate welfare.
Try not to eat junk food.
I drink soda maybe once a year. I hope I live longer than the human farm animals who drink it every day on my dime.
Two things, Mr. Conklin:
(1) Since you claim to be an evidence driven thinker, what exactly is the evidence that taxpayer money is being used to develop an anti-soda campaign with stimulus money as alleged by STEW? I’m not talking about Neils’s soda tax idea, now, altho’ taxes on tobacco surely have driven down consumption of that unhealthy substance (while taxpayer dollars are schizophrenically used to support tobacco producers); and
(2) Since you are opposed to a “nanny state,” as I would like to think I am, would you be willing to support incentivized (hate that word) health insurance premium pricing? In other words, would you be willing to pay more for your health insurance coverage if you engage in unhealthy lifestyle choices (like subsisting on junk food, cola, etc.)? Are you willing to take personal responsibility for those choices?
Replying to ohiaforest3400:
1. I confess I have not researched the specific issue whether “stimulus” money was spent in the propaganda campaign against soda pop. But in general, the trajectory of the campaign against soda pop reminds me very much of the trajectory at the beginning of the campaign against cigarette smoking way back when that campaign was first getting started. But my main point was that there is nothing at all reprehensible about a company using its own money to hire a PR firm to create a public relations campaign to defend its product line against elitist propaganda.
2. I am generally “Libertarian” on social and economic policy, so I am happy to leave it up to individual health insurance companies to decide whether to adopt lower premiums for non-soda-drinkers and higher premiums for soda drinkers, and then let the marketplace sort out whether insurance companies that do that are successful in competing against companies that do not do that. I know that many health insurance companies do have different rates for smokers vs. non-smokers, so that model seems to be economically viable. I also note that in earlier decades it was normal for insurance companies to set different rates for different racial groups and for men vs. women, based on actuarial analysis of different levels of claims by different groups. However, such race or gender-based premiums have become politically incorrect and in some cases are illegal. So it will be interesting to see whether obesity becomes a “protected” demographic class such that it become illegal to discriminate against obese people.
Thanx for your response. I tried to reply earlier today but the site wasn’t accepting comments and it got sent into cyberspace (!).
I completely agree that there is nothing wrong with a “a company using its own money to hire a PR firm to create a public relations campaign to defend its product line against elitist propaganda,” or any other kind of threat to company/shareholder interests, for that matter. However, in this instance, that campaign masquerades as some sort of populist crusade against government waste, generally, and only barely acknowledges its parentage, specifically.
Moreover, a perusal of STEW’s FB page and Twitter feed shows only generalized rants against federal/stimulus funds being used to attack American companies. Huh? There are no specifics — none — about any federal/stimulus funded campaign against ANY American company, much less one against a beverage company or the industry itself.
If such a company/industry has a genuine beef and wants that beef to be given any credibility, it should: (1) identify itself clearly/prominently; and (2) provide specifics.
Otherwise, it’s propaganda from an industry front, just like Ian called it.
Details of how ARRA moner was spent in the state are here:
http://hawaii.gov/recovery
I couldn’t see any evidence of money being used for soda, but it could be buried in one of the health initiatives.
Incidentally, ARRA funds were also used to buy airport backscatter devices:
http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1267803703134.shtm
There are supposed to be labels on the machines which were purchased with these funds, but I haven’t had a chance to look at the ones here because I always opt for the patdown.
We need to keep in mind the howls set up by this same beverage cartel when former Big Island State Sen. Lorraine Inouye pushed through the deposit bill that halted millions of plastic bottles from gong into Hawaii’s waste stream.
Hey, Heather, “Whoops!”
Good to see you have the same reaction as I do Ian to these kinds of PR people who think they’re soooo smart and soooo good at manipulation they’re going to scam us to write abut their “cause” without checking out their story- and them.
If you want to do PR, be my guest. But don’t try to use me for your little con and if you do- without disclosure- you can be sure that your name and your bunko will wind up in print but not the way you envisioned. In other words- I don’t get mad, I get even.