SECRETS AND LIES
The anatomy of an anti-environmental PR campaign

Background information on the writers

Nicky Hager is best known in New Zealand for his role as a researcher and critic on public issues such as nuclear and military policy and intelligence. However his main work, for the last decade, has been as a writer. In 1998 he was judged fourth in a United States investigative journalism award and his 1996 book, Secret Power, documenting New Zealand’s role in a previously unknown international spy network, was a best seller. It has been published in translation in Europe and a revised version is due to be released in Europe and the US in 2000. World-wide publicity from that book earnt him the description of being the New Zealander who had ‘received the most overseas coverage in 1998’.

During 1997 and 1998, Nicky Hager gave some time to assist the environmental campaign to have all the public native forests of the West Coast reserved. His interest in this subject dates from the early 1980s when he worked for the DSIR Ecology Division studying and writing about these forests.

Nicky Hager was born in Levin and has degrees in physics and philosophy from Victoria University. He lives in Wellington.

Bob Burton is a journalist specialising in environmental issues and the PR industry. He has written extensively about public relations and the use of PR campaigns to counter public movements, including articles for Consuming Interest and US based magazines PR Watch and In These Times. He edits Mining Monitor, a quarterly newsmagazine on the mining industry in Australia, Asia and the Pacific for the Sydney based Mineral Policy Institute.

He was born and educated in Sydney, gaining an Arts degree from Sydney University. He has previously been a researcher for various Australian environment groups, publishing numerous papers on minerals and energy policy. He lives in Canberra.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>