# Meet the Harrisons: Architects of Greenwashing and Environmental PR

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 28 Feb 2020, 29 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/1b8185a6-172c-49bd-95c5-b3ec00f47b4d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

E. Bruce and Patricia Harrison launched the E. Bruce Harrison Company in 1973, working for a mix of chemical companies, oil and gas companies, and tobacco companies. E. Bruce is considered the father of environmental public relations—or by his critics, "the godfather of greenwashing." The Harrisons ran multiple cross-industry coalitions and front groups, aimed primarily at stopping regulation on everything from smoking to carbon emissions. Today, Ms. Harrison is the president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a position she's held since 2005. Support us on Patreon. Extra tidbits in the Heated newsletter. Read the transcript Check out our sister podcast, Hot Take. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:14] Speaker 1: Modern public relations industry was created as a response to
[0:19] Speaker 1: basically creeping democracy. More and more people were wanting in
[0:24] Speaker 1: on this freedom thing, and it made the country's titans
[0:27] Speaker 1: of industry nervous. You had the muckrakers, journalists like Upton Sinclair,
[0:33] Speaker 1: Ida Tarbell, and Ida b Wells writing about the dark
[0:36] Speaker 1: side of the American dream, exposing the robber barons who
[0:41] Speaker 1: ran the coal, oil, and railroad industries, calling for fair
[0:44] Speaker 1: treatment of workers and factories, and shining a light on
[0:48] Speaker 1: systemic and often violent discrimination. And you had various groups
[0:52] Speaker 1: fighting to expand the vote to people who weren't white, male,
[0:56] Speaker 1: or rich. Ivy Lee and Edward Berneze emerged in the
[1:00] Speaker 1: midst of this and put their propaganda skills to work,
[1:03] Speaker 1: helping the powerful stay right where they were.
[1:06] Speaker 2: I mean, what's interesting is that the exact same kind
[1:11] Speaker 2: of thing occurred in the nineteen sixties when corporations started
[1:19] Speaker 2: again being held responsible for their environmental, health and safety
[1:23] Speaker 2: records by the new social movements that come out of
[1:26] Speaker 2: the sixties, the civil rights movement, the consumer movement, and
[1:30] Speaker 2: the environmental movement.
[1:32] Speaker 1: That's Brown University environmental sociologist Bob Brule. He's the first
[1:37] Speaker 1: person who told me about the focus of our episode today,
[1:40] Speaker 1: a guy by the name of E. Bruce Harrison.
[1:44] Speaker 2: Into this breach steps E. Bruce Harrison to develop newer
[1:48] Speaker 2: social technologies, to be able to equip corporations to be
[1:52] Speaker 2: able to address this new challenge to their image. So
[1:58] Speaker 2: there's a great deal of parallel between the muckrakers in
[2:01] Speaker 2: the progressive era and the environmental movement and the new
[2:06] Speaker 2: social movements that come out of the nineteen sixties, and
[2:09] Speaker 2: how industry got at first caught flat footed.
[2:12] Speaker 1: One of the many interesting things about Harrison is the
[2:15] Speaker 1: fact that his wife, Patricia was very much his partner
[2:19] Speaker 1: in crime. The Harrisons ran a PR firm together from
[2:22] Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three to nineteen ninety six. They were real
[2:26] Speaker 1: partners equals. Patricia was sort of a prototypical career woman
[2:31] Speaker 1: a nineteen seventy's Cheryl Sandberg. If you will, Here's E.
[2:35] Speaker 1: Bruce in a twenty ten interview describing Patricia as one
[2:39] Speaker 1: of his mentors.
[2:41] Speaker 3: My wife Patricia, who joined me in business for twenty
[2:45] Speaker 3: five years until we sold the firm, and who taught
[2:47] Speaker 3: me far more about populations and communications and presentation than
[2:53] Speaker 3: I could possibly have known and half the presenter that
[2:58] Speaker 3: she is.
[2:59] Speaker 1: The Hairrison were as subtle as they were brilliant. They
[3:03] Speaker 1: changed the way the industry talked about environmental issues, not
[3:06] Speaker 1: just in terms of what they said, but how they communicated,
[3:10] Speaker 1: how they got their message out. Doctor Brule once described
[3:13] Speaker 1: them to me as the intellectual parents of climate denial,
[3:17] Speaker 1: and having researched them for a year or so, now
[3:19] Speaker 1: I don't think that's an overstatement. They're still active today
[3:23] Speaker 1: in ways that might surprise you. That's the story we're
[3:26] Speaker 1: going to tell in this episode. I'm Amy Westervelt and
[3:29] Speaker 1: this is Drilled, season three. The Madmen of Climate Denial.
[3:45] Speaker 1: E Bruce and Patricia Harrison had pretty different childhoods. E
[3:50] Speaker 1: Bruce was born in nineteen thirty two in Lynette, Alabama.
[3:54] Speaker 1: Patricia's birthdate is tough to find, but she was born
[3:57] Speaker 1: into an Italian immigrant family in Brooklyn, and she's a
[4:00] Speaker 1: fair bit younger than E Bruce. He's eighty eight now
[4:03] Speaker 1: and retired. Well, she's still very much working. We'll get
[4:07] Speaker 1: to that in a minute. Like a lot of our
[4:09] Speaker 1: mad men, E Bruce is a thwarted journalist. Here he
[4:13] Speaker 1: is explaining his reporter roots.
[4:16] Speaker 3: Started off as a journalist, that is to say, a
[4:18] Speaker 3: newspaper reporter. Always wanted to be one. Grew up in Alabama,
[4:23] Speaker 3: LAS about ten or twelve years old. My brother and
[4:26] Speaker 3: I he's too young, and I started following newspapers, reading newspapers,
[4:32] Speaker 3: and in fact started to create rival newspapers that he
[4:37] Speaker 3: and I would write and try to sell to neighbors.
[4:40] Speaker 1: For some reason, more than half of the pr legends
[4:43] Speaker 1: we've covered this season didn't just start out as reporters,
[4:45] Speaker 1: but specifically as sports reporters. Something to do with game theory.
[4:50] Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. Anyway, he Bruce did too.
[4:53] Speaker 3: I'll follow that path toward being a newspaper reporter. My
[4:58] Speaker 3: dream was to become a sports reporter or a sports
[5:02] Speaker 3: editor of a daily newspaper. That was my dream for
[5:05] Speaker 3: many years. Ended up doing sports reporting in high school
[5:09] Speaker 3: and in college University of Alabama. Ended up editor of
[5:14] Speaker 3: the campus newspaper graduate journalism.
[5:17] Speaker 1: But it wasn't long until he got into politics.
[5:21] Speaker 3: I had a rather brief three year career in reporting
[5:26] Speaker 3: in Alabama and weekly newspapers, and then went to Columbus, Georgia,
[5:31] Speaker 3: where I was a political reporter of a daily and
[5:34] Speaker 3: did that until I got the call to Washington from
[5:38] Speaker 3: a friend who got elected to Congress and asked me
[5:41] Speaker 3: if I would come to Washington and be his press secretary,
[5:45] Speaker 3: which was, as they say down South, tall cotton for
[5:48] Speaker 3: a little boy from Lynnette, Alabama. So I did that,
[5:53] Speaker 3: came to Washington, became a press secretary, and moved up
[5:57] Speaker 3: to being his legislative stant and finally administrative assistant. Did
[6:02] Speaker 3: that for a few years, then got into the political realm.
[6:07] Speaker 3: Did a little campaign in political campaigning for various candidates,
[6:11] Speaker 3: including the John F. Kennedy campaign of nineteen sixty when
[6:17] Speaker 3: I was on the speaking circuit and wait for it,
[6:20] Speaker 3: Alabama campaigning for Jack Kennedy. Do you want a man
[6:37] Speaker 3: for president? Who?
[6:40] Speaker 1: Now you might remember one of our other mad men,
[6:42] Speaker 1: Herb Schmertz, also worked for Kennedy's campaign. He and Harrison
[6:47] Speaker 1: were operating around the same time and almost certainly would
[6:51] Speaker 1: have crossed paths, but so far we have no proof
[6:54] Speaker 1: that such a meeting ever happened. At any rate, you
[6:56] Speaker 1: can imagine that Kennedy was not the most popular candidate
[6:59] Speaker 1: in Alabama in the sixties. That gig seems to have
[7:03] Speaker 1: been enough to push Harrison out of politics, but of
[7:05] Speaker 1: course by this point he'd built up some contacts on
[7:08] Speaker 1: the Hill and an understanding of how policy is shaped.
[7:12] Speaker 3: Following that went into industry, first with the chemical industry.
[7:18] Speaker 1: Boy Diddy Harrison got a job as director of public
[7:21] Speaker 1: relations for the Manufacturing Chemists Association in nineteen sixty one.
[7:26] Speaker 1: That organization is called the American Chemistry Council today. A
[7:30] Speaker 1: year after E. Bruce joined them, Rachel Carson's book Silent
[7:34] Speaker 1: Spring came out. If you don't know much about that
[7:37] Speaker 1: book or Carson, she was a science writer for US
[7:40] Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife, and in the years leading up to
[7:42] Speaker 1: writing Silent Spring, she kept being asked to write up
[7:45] Speaker 1: the results of various studies that concerned her. What she
[7:48] Speaker 1: was seeing was that industrial chemicals were having a huge
[7:51] Speaker 1: negative impact on the environment. They were impacting wildlife too,
[7:55] Speaker 1: which made Carson wonder what they might be doing to humans.
[7:59] Speaker 1: Here she is in an interview shortly after the book
[8:02] Speaker 1: came out.
[8:03] Speaker 4: The public was being asked to accept these chemicals and
[8:07] Speaker 4: did not have the whole picture, so I said about
[8:09] Speaker 4: to remedy the balance there.
[8:11] Speaker 1: That book was a serious alarm bell industry was spoiling
[8:15] Speaker 1: public resources, possibly harming public health, and they were doing
[8:19] Speaker 1: it with impunity. Silent Spring wasn't just some dry science
[8:23] Speaker 1: book that no one read either. It was excerpted in
[8:26] Speaker 1: The New Yorker for months before it came out, and
[8:28] Speaker 1: it debuted as a New York Times bestseller. Everyone was
[8:32] Speaker 1: talking about this book in nineteen sixty two. It's often
[8:36] Speaker 1: credited with launching the modern environmental movement, and it also
[8:40] Speaker 1: launched Ebruce Harrison's career. Here's doctor Brule again.
[8:44] Speaker 2: Debruce Harrison is the father of modern environmental public relations.
[8:48] Speaker 2: Apparently his boss walked into his office holding up a
[8:53] Speaker 2: copy of Rachel Carson's book, going, it's Pearl Harbor for
[8:57] Speaker 2: the chemical industry, you know, and then it tells Bruce,
[9:01] Speaker 2: you're gonna work on this full time. Get over to DuPont.
[9:04] Speaker 2: They're leading the you know, the corporate effort. And he
[9:07] Speaker 2: then gets enlisted in the effort to address the issues
[9:11] Speaker 2: raised by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. And it's out
[9:14] Speaker 2: of this experience that Bruce Harrison develops the whole social
[9:19] Speaker 2: technology of environmental public relations.
[9:23] Speaker 1: The industry mounted an all out attack against Carson. They
[9:28] Speaker 1: said her data was flawed. That is not only not
[9:31] Speaker 1: a scientist but also a woman. She'd gotten the facts wrong,
[9:35] Speaker 1: that she had some sort of personal vendetta against the
[9:38] Speaker 1: chemical industry because she had cancer. Of course, when government
[9:42] Speaker 1: scientists did go through her data, they were able to
[9:44] Speaker 1: double check all of her work and came to the
[9:46] Speaker 1: same conclusions. By nineteen sixty four, President Lyndon B. Johnson
[9:51] Speaker 1: was signing the Pesticide Control Bill. Unfortunately, it came just
[9:55] Speaker 1: months after Carson had died.
[9:59] Speaker 4: Closing loopholes which permitted pesticides to be sold before they
[10:03] Speaker 4: were fully tested. This bill safeguards I held of all Americans.
[10:06] Speaker 4: I'm sorry the boys of Rachel Carson is still today.
[10:10] Speaker 4: She would have been proud of this bill in this moment.
[10:13] Speaker 1: Harrison left the chemical industry in nineteen sixty nine and
[10:16] Speaker 1: went to work for the mining business.
[10:19] Speaker 3: Became vice president of a mining company headquartered in New York,
[10:22] Speaker 3: where I was what's now called the chief communications officer,
[10:27] Speaker 3: the vice president for public relations, which was interesting pr
[10:33] Speaker 3: not only in the US but overseas, because we opened
[10:36] Speaker 3: the big copper mine in Indonesia and I was charged
[10:39] Speaker 3: with handling environmental energy, international relations, and corporate communications and
[10:48] Speaker 3: opening that mine.
[10:50] Speaker 1: By this point it was the early nineteen seventies. The
[10:53] Speaker 1: Watergate scandal broke in nineteen seventy two, the environmental and
[10:56] Speaker 1: civil rights movements were in full swing, and a guy
[10:59] Speaker 1: with hairs and skills and connections was in demand for industry.
[11:03] Speaker 1: E Bruce and Patricia had gotten together by this point.
[11:06] Speaker 1: Two they got married and Patricia joined E. Bruce at
[11:10] Speaker 1: his new PR firm, the E. Bruce Harrison Company in
[11:14] Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. Here's Bob brule again.
[11:17] Speaker 2: He's just at the right time, at the right place,
[11:20] Speaker 2: with the right product. Because the sixties and the seventies,
[11:23] Speaker 2: the corporations are really taking it on the chin from
[11:26] Speaker 2: environmental groups, and here comes along a guy with answers
[11:30] Speaker 2: of what do you do? And he develops these techniques
[11:33] Speaker 2: and then goes on to sell his services to a
[11:37] Speaker 2: wide variety of corporations, including most of the major oil companies.
[11:42] Speaker 2: The Global Climate Coalition the Coalition for Vehicle Choice.
[11:46] Speaker 1: The Global Climate Coalition was a coalition of companies and
[11:50] Speaker 1: trade groups that came together across industries to make sure
[11:53] Speaker 1: the US would not partake in any sort of binding
[11:57] Speaker 1: global treaty on climate change. That's not my opinion, that's
[12:00] Speaker 1: what they wrote down, you know, a whole bunch of
[12:02] Speaker 1: meeting notes and strategy documents that our favorite document guy,
[12:06] Speaker 1: Kurt Davies and the Climate Investigation Center dug up Ebrus
[12:10] Speaker 1: Harrison ran pr for the Global Climate Coalition from nineteen
[12:13] Speaker 1: ninety two to nineteen ninety six. We know how successful
[12:16] Speaker 1: their efforts were because Davies and his team have also
[12:20] Speaker 1: found documentation of later meetings between the State Department and
[12:23] Speaker 1: members of the Global Climate Coalition, congratulating the group on
[12:27] Speaker 1: their efforts. Here's Davies.
[12:29] Speaker 5: It's a briefing memorandum for Secretary Undersecretary de Brianski at
[12:34] Speaker 5: the State Department in June of two thousand and one.
[12:37] Speaker 5: She is about to meet with members of the Global
[12:39] Speaker 5: Climate Coalition and is being given talking points from a
[12:44] Speaker 5: deputy of hers named Ken Brill. And it states categorically
[12:50] Speaker 5: that the President of the United States rejected Kyoto in
[12:54] Speaker 5: part based on input from you. She's congratulating the GCC
[12:58] Speaker 5: members that are there and thanking them.
[13:00] Speaker 1: I asked Patricia Harrison if she'd had anything to do
[13:02] Speaker 1: with the work her firm did for the Global Climate Coalition,
[13:06] Speaker 1: and her publicist said no, but her involvement with various
[13:09] Speaker 1: other groups. The firm handled is documented and overall Patricia
[13:13] Speaker 1: was very involved in running the firm alongside her husband.
[13:17] Speaker 2: Patricia Harrison is a really interesting and quite influential person
[13:23] Speaker 2: in conservative circles. You know, they all say that they
[13:26] Speaker 2: were real true partners in the formation of E. Bruce
[13:29] Speaker 2: Harrison Incorporated. I mean, the thing that I find the
[13:32] Speaker 2: most interesting is that in nineteen ninety we know that
[13:37] Speaker 2: Patricia Harrison was on the National Coal Board, and in
[13:43] Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two the National Coal Board put out a
[13:47] Speaker 2: study about you know, Cole's image needs to be fixed.
[13:52] Speaker 2: It then lays out the need for an aggressive public
[13:56] Speaker 2: relations campaign to support you know, and change coal's image.
[14:00] Speaker 2: It certainly fits the pattern that was laid down by
[14:04] Speaker 2: her husband E. Bruce Harrison with the Global Climate Coalition
[14:08] Speaker 2: and the Coalition for Vehicle Choice. Is that we now
[14:11] Speaker 2: have the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
[14:14] Speaker 1: This report that doctor Brule is talking about is actually
[14:17] Speaker 1: from the National Coal Council, which Patricia Harrison sat on
[14:21] Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two as well. That report is where
[14:25] Speaker 1: the whole idea of clean coal came from.
[14:29] Speaker 6: We're committed to a future in which our most abundant fuel.
[14:32] Speaker 6: Coal generates our electricity with even lower emissions, including the
[14:36] Speaker 6: capture and storage of CO two. It's a big challenge,
[14:40] Speaker 6: but we've made a commitment, a commitment to clean Learn
[14:44] Speaker 6: more about clean coal at america'spower dot org.
[14:47] Speaker 1: We know that Patricia was also involved in the National
[14:50] Speaker 1: Environmental Development Association because it's part of her official bio
[14:54] Speaker 1: in a lot of places. We'll get to her position
[14:57] Speaker 1: in the George W. Bush White House in a minute,
[14:59] Speaker 1: but her zio there read quote. As a founding partner
[15:03] Speaker 1: of E. Bruce Harrison Company, among the country's top ten
[15:07] Speaker 1: owner managed public affairs firms prior to its sale in
[15:11] Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, she created and directed programs in the
[15:15] Speaker 1: public interest, comprising diverse stakeholder groups, including the National Environmental
[15:21] Speaker 1: Development Association, a partnership of labor, agriculture, and industry working
[15:26] Speaker 1: for better environmental solutions together. The thing about this group,
[15:30] Speaker 1: like most of the Harrison's coalitions, is that it spawned
[15:34] Speaker 1: a whole host of subgroups too. One of them, the
[15:37] Speaker 1: Clean Air Project, counted Exonmobile, BP, Occidental, and Coke industries
[15:43] Speaker 1: as members. Another was more targeted to indoor air quality.
[15:47] Speaker 1: When I saw that NITA had an indoor air quality project.
[15:50] Speaker 1: I checked the Harrison's client list, and sure enough, like
[15:54] Speaker 1: a lot of our other madmen this season, they were
[15:56] Speaker 1: working for the oil and gas industry and the tobacco
[15:59] Speaker 1: industry at the same time. They counted Philip Morris and R. J.
[16:03] Speaker 1: Reynolds as clients. So I went digging through the tobacco
[16:07] Speaker 1: industry archive at the University of California at San Francisco,
[16:11] Speaker 1: and it turns out that the National Environmental Development Association's
[16:15] Speaker 1: Indoor air Quality Project was a tobacco industry front group.
[16:20] Speaker 1: The National Environmental Development Association created the Total Indoor Environmental
[16:25] Speaker 1: Quality Coalition with funding from RJ. Reynolds. The PR firm
[16:30] Speaker 1: and the front group share the same phone number. We
[16:37] Speaker 1: also found quite a few documents from Patricia's own nonprofit,
[16:42] Speaker 1: the National Women's Economic Alliance Foundation, which she described as
[16:49] Speaker 1: quote an organization that was formed to offer American women
[16:54] Speaker 1: a strong, positive alternative to the National Organization of Women
[16:58] Speaker 1: that hopes to spread the quote unquote good news about
[17:02] Speaker 1: free enterprise and business. From the mid eighties to about
[17:06] Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, there are several letters from Patricia Harrison
[17:10] Speaker 1: to the Tobacco Institute, the main front group of the
[17:14] Speaker 1: tobacco industry at the time, inviting them to be part
[17:17] Speaker 1: of various programs, asking them for money, inviting them to
[17:22] Speaker 1: various campaign events. In nineteen ninety six, the Harrisons sold
[17:30] Speaker 1: their firm and Patricia decided to run for co chair
[17:33] Speaker 1: of the Republican National Committee.
[17:36] Speaker 7: I was very interested in having a voice, and I
[17:41] Speaker 7: felt that the party needed to reach out to women
[17:44] Speaker 7: and minorities, and that's what I felt I could bring.
[17:47] Speaker 7: And I told I remember telling my husband, I'm going
[17:50] Speaker 7: to run for co chair. He ghost, yeah, yeah, but
[17:52] Speaker 7: in the meantime, we want you to spend off. Let's
[17:55] Speaker 7: spend off part of the company because we were selling it.
[17:58] Speaker 7: And we both thought, I have an opportunity just to
[18:01] Speaker 7: express my unvarnished views.
[18:05] Speaker 2: And that'll be it.
[18:06] Speaker 7: And the funny thing happened on the way to the forum.
[18:08] Speaker 7: I got elected, and I'm been standing They're thinking, oh
[18:12] Speaker 7: my goodness, now I am this, which.
[18:14] Speaker 1: Put her right into the two thousand presidential election. Having
[18:18] Speaker 1: spent twenty five years working with her husband to defeat
[18:22] Speaker 1: environmental regulations, Patricia was no fan of Al Gore's who
[18:26] Speaker 1: you'll remember was running against George W. Bush in that election.
[18:30] Speaker 1: Here she is ripping on Gore at an event the
[18:32] Speaker 1: Heritage Foundation hosted with popular conservative talk radio hosts.
[18:37] Speaker 7: You know, there's some sense that in Reagan, Carter Karda
[18:41] Speaker 7: won the debate winning meaning you're the brightest kid in
[18:44] Speaker 7: the classroom, and you can memorize and spew out the
[18:46] Speaker 7: telephone book. But then you're sitting back and saying, who
[18:50] Speaker 7: do I want my living room? For four years? And
[18:53] Speaker 7: I think, of course, I'm coming from a position of
[18:56] Speaker 7: extreme prejudice. They looked at Al Gore and just thought,
[18:59] Speaker 7: I'm going to be annoyed to death.
[19:01] Speaker 1: Meanwhile, E Bruce is advising Rudder Finn, the giant PR
[19:05] Speaker 1: firm that bought Ebruce Harrison Company. He was still actively
[19:09] Speaker 1: shaping industri's approach to environmental issues, which he called greening,
[19:14] Speaker 1: and he started writing books and teaching classes on it too.
[19:18] Speaker 1: In addition to the cross industry coalition thing, he grabbed
[19:21] Speaker 1: onto the idea of the triple bottom line and really
[19:25] Speaker 1: really ran with it. Here's doctor brule again.
[19:28] Speaker 2: Certainly science misinformation campaigns are creating doubt about the science
[19:33] Speaker 2: was certainly a part of it, but also considering about
[19:37] Speaker 2: the costs of climate action and how much it's going
[19:40] Speaker 2: to cost, and what it would do to our economy,
[19:44] Speaker 2: and of course, by reference to that, the good life,
[19:47] Speaker 2: and we're all going to be paying taxes, being cold
[19:50] Speaker 2: in the dark, not driving our car, and they're going
[19:52] Speaker 2: to take away our Hamburgers.
[19:55] Speaker 1: In two thousand and one, Patricia's run as co chair
[19:58] Speaker 1: of the Republican National Committee came to an end and
[20:01] Speaker 1: she was offered a position in George W. Bush's State Department.
[20:05] Speaker 1: That's where we grabbed that bio that I read from earlier.
[20:07] Speaker 1: It's interesting timing given what was happening with the Global
[20:11] Speaker 1: Climate Coalition that year. Here's Kurt Davies again.
[20:14] Speaker 5: Yeah, so again we're talking about this memo. That's a
[20:17] Speaker 5: briefing memorandum for Secretary Undersecretary de Brionski at the State Department.
[20:23] Speaker 5: And then it says, interested in hearing from you, what
[20:26] Speaker 5: type of international alternatives to Kyoto would you support? The
[20:30] Speaker 5: reason being that they had caught so much stuff about
[20:35] Speaker 5: dropping Kyoto. The bush dumping Kyoto had generated a wave
[20:40] Speaker 5: of news around the world about the Climate Treaty, and
[20:43] Speaker 5: the US is leaving the Climate Treaty, so it actually
[20:47] Speaker 5: created more press than the treaty itself three years earlier,
[20:51] Speaker 5: four years earlier, so they needed an alternative. They knew
[20:54] Speaker 5: they had made a mistake. There was actually a major
[20:58] Speaker 5: debate inside the bushdministration between Colin Powell on one side,
[21:03] Speaker 5: with Christy Todd Whitman and Dick Cheney and a few
[21:06] Speaker 5: others on the other side about what to do, and
[21:08] Speaker 5: Christy Todd, Whitman and Colin Power saying, you stay in
[21:11] Speaker 5: the treaty and you move it to our needs, you
[21:15] Speaker 5: don't reject it.
[21:16] Speaker 1: That's fascinating because you know who goes to work for
[21:18] Speaker 1: Colin Powell right after this meeting is Patricia Harrison.
[21:23] Speaker 5: Wow, I did not know that.
[21:25] Speaker 1: Patricia Harrison was named an undersecretary in the State Department
[21:28] Speaker 1: in July two thousand and one, the month after this meeting.
[21:32] Speaker 1: She worked on educational and culture issues, creating and overseeing
[21:36] Speaker 1: international exchange student programs and the return of the Fulbright
[21:40] Speaker 1: program to Afghanistan and Iraq. It's hard to read about
[21:43] Speaker 1: that job and not think of E. Bruce's theory on
[21:46] Speaker 1: what any good PR person needs to know.
[21:49] Speaker 3: Culture influence things like Francis Fukuyama and what he teaches
[21:54] Speaker 3: the Johns Hopkins about what it takes to build trust,
[21:58] Speaker 3: and trust is built on understanding social capital in various
[22:05] Speaker 3: countries and various cultures. So understanding culture, understanding behavior. I mean,
[22:10] Speaker 3: after all, we're out to influence behavioral change.
[22:18] Speaker 1: But it was Patricia's next job, the one she still has,
[22:22] Speaker 1: that came as a real shock. I think you're going
[22:24] Speaker 1: to be surprised too. We'll bring you that right after
[22:26] Speaker 1: this quick break. Okay, so last year I had the
[22:40] Speaker 1: great pleasure of being a guest on these stuff they
[22:43] Speaker 1: Don't Want you to Know podcast. Highly recommend it. They
[22:46] Speaker 1: basically take conspiracy theories, research the crap out of them,
[22:50] Speaker 1: and tell you what's what. Anyway, at the end, we
[22:52] Speaker 1: were chatting and one of the hosts, Matt Frederick, gave
[22:55] Speaker 1: me a hot tip.
[22:57] Speaker 8: Hey, Amy, this is a complete aside. If it's cool,
[23:00] Speaker 8: if you could indulge me just for one moment when
[23:03] Speaker 8: we were doing research for the show to have you
[23:06] Speaker 8: on our show, we were I was looking into E.
[23:09] Speaker 8: Bruce Harrison, learning about him because it was he's such
[23:12] Speaker 8: a fascinating character. Did you happen to come across who
[23:15] Speaker 8: his spouse is? Patricia to Stacy Harrison. Is that correct?
[23:20] Speaker 8: Do you know what her position is right now? And
[23:22] Speaker 8: maybe I'm getting this wrong, but the person, a person
[23:26] Speaker 8: named Patricia to Stacy Harrison is the president and chief
[23:30] Speaker 8: executive officer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
[23:37] Speaker 1: I didn't think this could possibly be true, but it is.
[23:41] Speaker 1: Patricia full name, Patricia to Stacy Harrison has been the
[23:45] Speaker 1: president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for
[23:50] Speaker 1: fifteen years. Here she is explaining what that organization does
[23:55] Speaker 1: in a c Span interview shortly after she got the job.
[23:58] Speaker 7: The corporation is the still word of the federal funding
[24:03] Speaker 7: for all of public television and public radio. We only
[24:08] Speaker 7: represent fifteen percent of that investment because these locally owned,
[24:13] Speaker 7: locally operated stations raised the other eighty five percent. But
[24:17] Speaker 7: it's a very important fifteen percent investment.
[24:20] Speaker 2: How much is that per year?
[24:23] Speaker 7: Well, our budget is around four hundred million.
[24:26] Speaker 1: When the interviewer asks her about whether her role with
[24:29] Speaker 1: the RNC makes her too political for a job in
[24:31] Speaker 1: public media, she actually uses her time with the PR
[24:35] Speaker 1: firm as proof of how a political she is.
[24:39] Speaker 7: You know, every time they write about me, it's as
[24:42] Speaker 7: if I sprung full blown out of the head of
[24:45] Speaker 7: the Republican Party. I actually had a very successful business
[24:50] Speaker 7: for twenty years that was nonpartisan. It was about the
[24:54] Speaker 7: bottom line.
[24:55] Speaker 1: At the time that Harrison was brought on at the
[24:57] Speaker 1: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, there was an investigation into Ken Tomlinson,
[25:02] Speaker 1: who'd been appointed chairman of the Board for the Corporation
[25:05] Speaker 1: by George W. Bush. Tomlinson had been pretty open about
[25:09] Speaker 1: his goal to inject more conservative viewpoints into public media,
[25:13] Speaker 1: and he'd been trying to hire Harrison as part of that.
[25:16] Speaker 1: Tomlinson resigned when this report came out, but Harrison stayed
[25:19] Speaker 1: on in her role. That is just a horrible This
[25:24] Speaker 1: is Nicholas Nick Johnson. He was an FCC commissioner from
[25:29] Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six to nineteen seventy three, during the time
[25:32] Speaker 1: when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was first formed. At
[25:36] Speaker 1: the time, he was something of a crusader for the
[25:39] Speaker 1: democratization of media and more public access to the airwaves.
[25:43] Speaker 9: I organized a picket line around the Corporation Broadcasting headquarters
[25:48] Speaker 9: with regard to who was being appointed to the board
[25:51] Speaker 9: of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and that it was
[25:55] Speaker 9: turning into a corporate and establishment board, and I wanted
[25:59] Speaker 9: somebody from the labor unions and some housewives and some
[26:03] Speaker 9: farmers and not all public figures.
[26:08] Speaker 1: In Johnson's opinion, Harrison's background should have disqualified her from
[26:12] Speaker 1: the position she now holds.
[26:14] Speaker 10: She should not have been appointed because of the appearance,
[26:19] Speaker 10: regardless of how wholesome she is and regardless of how
[26:23] Speaker 10: able she is to separate in her mind what she
[26:27] Speaker 10: does for the public relations firm to encourage faster climate
[26:33] Speaker 10: change and what she does as head of corporation for
[26:36] Speaker 10: public broadcasting devoted to trying to present facts on the issue.
[26:42] Speaker 1: Okay, so the person in charge of federal funding for
[26:46] Speaker 1: public media worked with front groups for the fossil fuel
[26:50] Speaker 1: and tobacco industries. Does it matter? Has it shifted coverage
[26:55] Speaker 1: in any demonstrable way? And how do we deal with
[26:58] Speaker 1: this sort of information? And knowing that there are various
[27:02] Speaker 1: forces attempting to influence the media constantly, what does the
[27:05] Speaker 1: media need to do to combat that influence? Can it?
[27:10] Speaker 1: These are all questions we're going to delve into next time.
[27:13] Speaker 1: Nick Johnson will be back to talk about some of
[27:15] Speaker 1: the ways he's seen media evolve and NYU professor and
[27:19] Speaker 1: media critic Jay Rosen will join us to talk about
[27:22] Speaker 1: what media outlets should be thinking about in our current
[27:25] Speaker 1: age of disinformation. Come back for that. Thanks for listening,
[27:29] Speaker 1: and we'll see you next week. Drilled is produced and
[27:47] Speaker 1: distributed by Critical Frequency. The show is reported, written and
[27:51] Speaker 1: produced by me Amy Westervelt. Our editor is Julia Ritchie.
[27:56] Speaker 1: Our editorial advisor is Rika Murphy. Sound design and school
[28:00] Speaker 1: by b Beman. Katie Ross created the amazing artwork for
[28:04] Speaker 1: this season special thanks to our First Amendment attorney, James
[28:08] Speaker 1: Wheaton and the First Amendment Project. The clips you heard
[28:11] Speaker 1: in this episode of E. Bruce Harrison were from the
[28:15] Speaker 1: Arthur W. Page Center's Oral Histories Project. Clips of Patricia
[28:21] Speaker 1: Harrison are from c SPAN. Drilled is made possible in
[28:24] Speaker 1: part by a generous grant from the Institute for Governance
[28:27] Speaker 1: and Sustainable Development. We appreciate their support. You can find
[28:31] Speaker 1: Drilled wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to leave us
[28:34] Speaker 1: a rating or review. It really helps people find the show.
[28:37] Speaker 1: You could follow us on Twitter at we are Drilled
[28:40] Speaker 1: and visit our website drillednews dot com for more reporting
[28:44] Speaker 1: on this subject and behind the scenes stories from this season.
[28:48] Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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