A new book tells us how to fight back. We interview Grant Ennis, author of Dark PR: How corporate disinformation undermines our health and the environment.
How do you describe your expansive career?
I usually say I work in the NGO or charitable sector, but that’s a bit of an oversimplification. I’ve been really privileged to work and live in ten countries and on a wide range of issues. A decade ago, my work became much more focused on supporting governments to tackle issues through policymaking in areas related to the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, health, and others.
How do you explain what Dark PR is all about?
I explain it in a few ways, but one of my favourites is to say that it has three sections.
The Introduction begins with how corporations have lobbied to shape government policies in ways that kill us, and how we need to end those policies to save lives.
Part one then goes on to explain the kinds of Dark PR that corporations then use to cover these policies up. In this section I show that there is a playbook of nine different framing strategies used by corporations that span all industries, which is important because people tend to see everything as unique and different – but really the same playbook, that I expose in my book, is used everywhere.
Part two points out the ways in which we try to fight back that don’t work, why, and then explains how we should be organising and demanding political action.
Was there an especially impactful example of Dark PR that you saw, and which proved the catalyst to write this book?
In 2010 I was driving in San Francisco and saw a billboard that I’ll never forget, a blatant example of victim blaming individuals for global warming. It was a Chevron Oil company billboard with the picture of a face, and superimposed in front of the face were the words “I will use less energy.” Next to the words and the portrait was a large Chevron logo.
How can our readers arm themselves against the Dark PR tricks that abound in modern society?
In two ways. First, they can keep an eye out for the devious frames I mention in my book. Secondly, they can and must organise politically to end legalised and subsidised propaganda. Get together with your friends. Talk about politics. Then go the next day to your MPs office to talk about immediate steps possible to end the legalisation of advertising by harmful industries. If a ban is too far for Australians to stomach at the moment: As a first step, they can work together to end the subsidisation of propaganda, for example, why is the marketing of junk food to kids tax deductible in Australia?
What advice do you have for people to help combat disinformation, and to be effective citizen activists?
I recommend that people focus on being citizens after work. I think the way we make money and the way we make the world better need to be separate things with impenetrable firewalls. The suffragettes didn’t get the right to vote by making better clothes for women in the factory – they organised after work and were politically active. Corporations are constantly suggesting the opposite, funding all kinds of think tanks to suggest that you should “do good by doing well” or “do good through your work,” and I really think that’s been a very successful narrative in distracting people from doing good as citizens outside of work and outside of the remit of their livelihoods.
Head online to buy your copy of Dark PR: How corporate disinformation undermines our health and the environment, Daraja Press, 2023