NP? Monsanto invented fake citizens to post messages on internet

[Doug Millison]

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-07/09monbiot.cfm
[...] Two weeks ago, this column showed how the Bivings Group, a PR company
contracted to Monsanto, had invented fake citizens to post messages on
internet listservers. These phantoms had launched a campaign to force
Nature magazine to retract a paper it had published, alleging that native
corn in Mexico had been contaminated with GM pollen. But this, it now
seems, is just one of hundreds of critical interventions with which PR
companies hired by big business have secretly guided the biotech debate
over the past few years. [...] Bivings is just one of several public
relations agencies secretly building a parallel world on the web. Another
US company, Berman & Co, runs a fake public interest site called
ActivistCash.com, which seeks to persuade the foundations giving money to
campaigners to desist. Berman also runs the "Centre for Consumer Freedom",
which looks like a citizens' group but lobbies against smoking bans,
alcohol restrictions and health warnings on behalf of tobacco, drinks and
fast food companies. The marketing firm Nichols Dezenhall set up a site
called StopEcoViolence, another "citizens' initiative", demonising
activists. What is fascinating about these websites, fake groups and
phantom citizens is that they have either smelted or honed all the key
weapons currently used by the world's biotech enthusiasts: the conflation
of activists with terrorists, the attempts to undermine hostile research,
the ever more nuanced claims that those who resist GM crops are
anti-science and opposed to the interests of the poor. The hatred directed
at activists over the past few years is, in other words, nothing of the
kind. We have been confronted, in truth, by the crafted response of an
industry without emotional attachment. [...]