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A front group is an organization that purports to represent one agenda while in reality it serves some other interest whose sponsorship is hidden or rarely mentioned -- typically, a corporate or government sponsor. The tobacco industry is notorious for using front groups to create confusion about the health risks associated with smoking, but other industries use similar tactics as well. The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries use front groups disguised as "patients rights" advocates to market their products and to lobby against government policies that might affect their profits. Food companies, corporate polluters, politicians -- anyone who has a message that they are trying to sell to a skeptical audience is tempted to set up a front group to deliver messages that they know the public will reject if the identity of the sponsor is known.
The shadowy way front groups operate often makes it difficult to know whether a seemingly independent organization is actually representing some other entity. That's why we need your help to research and expose them. Using the resources that we have listed here, it is often possible to identify publicize the hidden sponsor who lurks behind a front group. We need you to help in the search.
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 Video ads by the Center for Union Facts portray union organizers as thugs who invade workers' homes to intimidate them into joining. The Center for Union Facts is a secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman's family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute. The domain name www.unionfacts.com was registered to Berman & Co. in May 2005.
Campaigns
In May 2006 the Center for Union Facts, launched its first TV ad campaign. The 30-second spot, running on Fox News and local markets, has "actors posing as workers" saying "sarcastically what they 'love' about unions," like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles," and discrimination against minorities. The ad campaign cost $3 million, which was raised "from companies, foundations and individuals that Mr. Berman won't identify." [1]
The group planned to film another TV ad in June 2006. Labor and economics professor Harley Shaiken said the effort "to create an anti-union atmosphere" more generally, as opposed to business-funded ads against a particular union organizing drive or strike, "is a new wrinkle." An AFL-CIO spokesperson called the ad's accusations "unfounded and outrageous." [2]
In June 2007, the group campaigned heavily against the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation which "would give employees at a workplace the right to unionize as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted to do so." The Center for Union Facts has spent "$500,000 on newspaper and broadcast advertisements this week alone," reported the New York Times on June 20, 2007. [3] The group's print ads for the campaign compared union leaders to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling the bill a "scheme to eliminate workers' right to a secret ballot." [4]
The Center for Union Facts is behind the billboards with the web site TeachersUnionExposed.com which have been put up around Newark, New Jersey[5].
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- APCO Worldwide, a PR firm affiliated with the law firm of Arnold & Porter, has created front groups for the tobacco industry such as The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. Other tobacco industry front groups have included Associates for Research in the Science of Enjoyment, the Beverly Hills Restaurant Association, the California Political Empowerment Committee, Contributions Watch, the European Science and Environment Forum, and the Hospitality Coalition for Indoor Air Quality.
- Former Arkansas Governor and U.S. presidential candidate Mike Huckabee raised money to support his political career through a tobacco-funded front group called Action America.
- Lexington Communications, a PR firm based in the United Kingdom, has sponsored pro-biotechnology organizations in the UK including the Agricultural Biotechnology Council and CropGen.
- Alaska's Future is a front group created to promote a natural gas pipeline on behalf of companies including ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips.
- America's PAC, a conservative political action committee, has one of the top ten election-season advertisers in American markets, featuring vitriolic attack ads that attempt to discourage African-Americans from voting at all. Using a group that is not formally affiliated with the Republican Party to engage in negative campaigning is a tactic designed to minimize public backlash against this type of negative campaigning.
- The American Center for Voting Rights actually campaigned to make it harder for Americans to vote, under the guise of preventing "voter fraud."
- Funded by the chemical and food industries, the American Council on Science and Health campaigns to defend sugar, pesticides and chemical additives in foods.
- With funding from Enron, a group called Americans for Affordable Electricity campaigned in the 1990s for deregulation of the electricity market in the U.S., undermining the reliability of the electricity supply and trigging rising electricity prices and blackouts in California and the northeastern states of the US.
- Americans for American Energy, a front group created by Pac/West Communications to campaign for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, attempts to link environmental concerns to terrorism, accusing "liberal lawyers and environmental extremists" of subverting "America's access to vital energy supplies."
- Bureaucrash, an anti-regulatory website targeting a youth audience, is actually a project of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a corporate-funded think tank.
- Some front groups like to use the word "responsible" in the name they choose for their organization, usually as a weaselly way of positioning themselves to advocate against the cause that the rest of their name seems to support. Examples include the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions (which opposed environmental action to prevent global warming); the Citizens' Alliance for Responsible Energy (which advocates expanded oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge); and the Coalition for Responsible Healthcare Reform (created in 2007 by Blue Cross of California to oppose health care reforms being pushed by Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger).
- Climate Change Bill a Rorschach for Special Interests
The same day that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives, the oil industry examined the loopholes. The bill, which has yet to pass the Senate, would make refiners "buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter." So, oil companies "will probably cope ... by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports." In Canada, the bill's passage rattled companies invested in Alberta's tar sands, an especially carbon-intensive oil source. However, "we're delighted that low-carbon fuel standards are not in the Waxman-Markey bill," said an executive with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Meanwhile, Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality -- a former civil rights group that now accepts industry funding, including from ExxonMobil -- bemoaned the bill's impact on "poor and working families" while criticizing measures that would lessen household costs as "energy welfare payments." Lastly, Our Country Deserves Better, an anti-Obama political action committee with links to the PR firm Russo Marsh & Rogers, has launched a "stop cap & trade" campaign. Fundraising appeal emails from the group call Waxman-Markey a "big government, quasi-socialistic policy" that's "predicated on the fraudulent 'junk science' of global warming alarmism."
- Swiftboating Healthcare Solutions
Richard Scott, "a multimillionaire investor and controversial former hospital chief executive, has become an unlikely and prominent leader of the opposition to health-care reform," reports the Washington Post. But the public relations firm promoting Scott and his front group is a usual suspect. CRC Public Relations -- the conservative PR firm previously known as Creative Response Concepts -- is the firm "that masterminded the 'Swift boat' attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry." The firm is working with Scott and his group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights. "While disorganized Republicans and major health-care companies wait for President Obama and Democratic leaders to reveal the details of their plan before criticizing it, Scott is using $5 million of his own money and up to $15 million more from supporters to try to build resistance to any government-run program." The campaign includes television ads featuring "horror stories" of Canadian and British residents who "allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment" -- the same scare tactics industry groups used to respond to the 2007 Michael Moore movie "Sicko."
- Corporate Think Tank Dives into Water Policy
In May 2008, the major law firm Hunton & Williams launched the Water Policy Institute (WPI), a think tank-esque, industry-supported consortium formed "to address water supply, quality and use issues," according to its website. After the initial flurry of press releases, WPI appeared to languish. Then, ten months after its formation, WPI issued its first white paper. "Water Wars: Conflicts Over Shared Waters" (pdf) focuses on two river basins in the Southeastern United States. The paper urges the states involved -- Georgia, Florida and Alabama -- to put aside litigation and work with federal mediators to reach an agreement on water allocation. It also supports further study of seasonal water use, ecological issues and efficiency measures. The white paper's conclusions seem reasonable, even obvious. So much so that it's unclear why Hunton & Williams felt the need to recruit major public relations and corporate powerhouses when forming WPI -- and what they, and the law firm, get out of the effort. What is clear is that WPI, Hunton & Williams and their corporate allies have a long history of siding with (or being) polluters and attempting to undermine water quality safeguards. It seems reasonable, therefore, to worry that whatever WPI is up to, it's likely to do more harm than good. read more
- Climate Front Group Ignored Its Own Scientists
An internal document (pdf) of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) -- an industry front group that disbanded in 2002 -- reveals that when the group chose to promote doubt about the reality of global warming it was ignoring the views of its own scientific advisers. In a backgrounder distributed to members of Congress and journalists in the 1990s, the GCC stated that ?the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood," though it added the qualifier that scientists disagreed on the issue. However, an internal document obtained as part of a court action against the automobile industry indicates that the GCC's advisers disagreed. '?The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,? they wrote.
- Bottled Water Thirsty for Good Media
A front group for the UK bottled water industry, "which is perceived to be expensive and environmentally unsound," signed a "six-figure" contract with the public relations firm Munro & Forster. The Natural Hydration Council was "set up by Nestle Waters, Highland Spring and Danone Waters last September." Its new PR firm "will attempt to stop bottled water being compared with tap water," reports PR Week. Natural Hydration Council director Jeremy Clarke claims that the recent decline in bottled water sales doesn't mean more people are drinking tap water. "Rather, they were turning to obesity-causing soft drinks, he argued." Munro & Foster will try "re-educating consumers about the benefit of drinking water, as Clarke argued consumers had become 'fuzzy' about what they should be drinking. Further, the agency will handle stakeholder engagement, reaching out to the Government and environmental groups, and lobbying the health community." British media have run negative articles about bottled water, under headlines like "Bottled water is an eco no-no" and "Bottled water is immoral."
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