Straw-Clutching Campaigns on Industrial Espionage

What is the Activist Strategy behind Investigating a Small Consultancy?

Sep 30, 2024

French translation

Last week we witnessed another demonstration of an activist swarm. Cunning, deceptive and coordinated to ensure success, eighteen activists posed as journalists and used their global networks in media groups from Le Monde to the Guardian to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to simultaneously attack a small news monitoring consultancy, Bonus Eventus. Working in tandem with several US tort law firms (for confidential information from lawsuits against the consultancy’s clients) and two foundations (Agroecology Fund and the Oak Foundation) for up to $800,000 in funding, the coordinating NGO, Lighthouse Reports, has executed a masterclass in activist subterfuge.

Like many activist swarms, however, there were some issues. The activists were caught lying, not following basic journalistic standards of ethics and transparency and using twisted logic justified with emotional fear claims. (See the first part of this series on how the researchers broke six basic rules of journalistic integrity.) Perhaps most remarkably, after a year-long investigation, they could not provide any evidence to support their original premises.

But this did not stop them from going ahead and publishing their arguments without any information to back them up. Their claims were well-communicated, amplified with precision through their media networks, relentlessly on message and, even though none of their claims were true, the keywords and arguments were repeated throughout the media organizations with absolutely no editorial analysis or scrutiny.

It is truly fascinating how these despicable liars can so easily get away with selling baseless nonsense to a willing audience craving hate and outrage.

This article will examine the motives that would drive 18 activists from five continents to continue pushing a faulty logic and erroneous premise for more than a year? Why didn’t they just stop and admit they were mistaken? Why did the funding continue? Why did they publish a report with zero evidence? And why didn’t the other media groups amplifying their report actually read the empty arguments lacking any evidence?

An $800,000 Nothing Burger

The recent Lighthouse Reports publication on a small news monitoring and research service, Bonus Eventus, was perhaps the largest nothing burger that the anti-industry, anti-chemical activist community has ever had the misfortune to publish. Their premise was downright laughable, namely:

that this consultancy was secretly pulling the strings behind major industrial policies and global food system decisions and that they were running some sort of industrial spy ring – a cabal – seeking to poison the public and planet. But this small consultancy merely distributes news monitoring services to a subscriber email list. They provide information from public sources and there is nothing underhanded about the news clippings they distribute (except that it might include public information activists don’t want shared).
They want to show that Bonus Eventus is funded by US taxpayers. But they could not prove this because, well, they are not. And they were told there was no funding. But rather than dropping that claim, they tried, through an incredibly twisted logic, to justify their claim (see inset below) - that an NGO that received a government grant was using Bonus Eventus, ergo... The claim that the consultancy is government funded has been repeated at least 50 times by other news sources in the last three days, even though it is completely false and if any editors had actually read how this point was justified, they would have run far away from this nonsensical campaign.
Source: Pity the researchers could not provide any proof of this
They tried to portray the consultancy as releasing an army of lobbyists to personally attack anti-chemical campaigners by publishing profiles on them. But these profiles are generated via a database of publicly available information and includes all actors in the food system debate (including the author of this article).

Why did these activists continue down this rabbit hole? Why have they wasted so much time and money investigating a small news monitoring organization?

They spent a year pouring over their Freedom Of Information (FOIA) requests and court filings provided to them by class action litigators, and found practically nothing. What motivated them to keep looking? Or rather, what motivated foundations like the Agroecology Fund member, the Oak Foundation, to continue to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on such a stupid, twisted ideological conspiracy theory?

Of course, the activists are cleverly trying to play up what they could find in a year’s pointless endeavor of wasted research. Bonus Eventus covers chemical industry issues and reports on activist campaigns so they must be up to no good, right? Like most activists, they had their answers before they had started asking questions.

But I am a subscriber to this grossly mischaracterized “dark” news service. Every day I read the information they provide and I know what they do. What I can safely say is they don’t do what these activists want you to think they do. I am not a member of some dark cabal, there is no secret handshake and there is no diabolical plan to take over the world on behalf of industry. I get an email every morning that gives me a good survey of what is happening in the topics where I write these articles. They save me time and I appreciate them.

These activists spent a year investigating an information site they had never visited and apparently did not ask many subscribers what they felt about the news monitoring service. What is absurd is how many news organizations have reprinted their nonsensical nothing burger.

Zealot Motivations

I don’t think people like Carey Gillam, Margot Gibbs or Stéphane Foucart are irretrievably stupid. But I believe, as cunning zealots, they have an ulterior motive that pushed them to continue their investigation for over a year … even as it led them nowhere.

So, what did these activists hope to achieve in manufacturing their exposé? Here are some points I can come up with. They intended to:

open up a new front in the anti-industry, post capitalist campaign: consultancies controlling the information that defines the narrative. Activists should not just be attacking the polluting industries, but those polluting the minds, influencing decisions and controlling the message. A problem with this argument though is that this alleged industry front group has extensively included activist and other negative news claims made about industry alongside other reports.
Create a perception of the information being controlled from the shadows (an industry espionage network or spy organization). The consultancy has been painted as a dark campaign nerve center flying below the radar and outside of the traditional stakeholder groups. You have never heard of them because they are a secret weapon but now that incredible sleuth, St Carey of Kansas, has exposed them.
Portray the agency as the missing link that binds industry with government agencies and academics/researchers who are acting against the interests of NGOs and civil society. The activists are unwilling to accept that there is no coordination or secret cabal operating between these other societal actors or that any campaign failures they suffer are due to the weakness of their own ideologies.
The service is misleadingly perceived to be the source of many of the investigations into activist campaigns, funding and tactics. Shutting them down, the activists believe, would be a flanking strategy to allow the NGOs more free rein to run their campaigns by censoring any voices of dissent.
Bottom line is that the information and monitoring services Bonus Eventus provide are valuable and are compensating for the incapacity of the industry trade associations to do their jobs. When activists run emotional campaigns, especially related to food systems, the last thing they would want is for other stakeholders to have access to data, evidence and information. So the main motivation behind their swarm is to shut down Bonus Eventus.

None of these perceptions are true (except perhaps that most industries are indeed incapable of providing such a service today). Bonus Eventus is not some secretive cabal operating and controlling others from the shadows. They are merely a news monitoring research service struggling to survive by supporting an industry unwilling and unable to do the work themselves. Their reports and supplemental materials are all well-referenced and from publicly available sources. Articles on stakeholders influencing public debate and lobbying against agriculture solutions to problems are not secret files or spying, but simply making available to their subscribers supplemental context about the sources seeking to influence public debate and policy.

But for the activists, now extremely well-funded by foundations, dark donor-advised funds, organic marketing interests and mass tort litigators financing much of the mainstream media, facts are unnecessary. A series of articles, perhaps a spy movie/documentary and some well-invested campaigns, and the public will have a new area of the food system debate to be terrified of. This was their objective all along.

But they didn’t have to waste so much money or time. As noted in the first article in this series, they only needed to use three words: Industry, Monsanto, Lobbying … and the seeds of fear and outrage will have been deeply planted in the public psyche. And indeed they did.

Ancillary Advantages

So while there is method to their madness, the 18 activists and those paying their rent have also managed to profit very nicely from their straw-clutching campaign.

The activists will get a lot of media attention and be able to pose as experts in a new research field. Environmental health activists will now also have their own brand of private investigators (spy catchers) and an added level to their anti-industry fear campaigns. Carey Gillam had always thought of herself as some sort of Monsanto sleuth, but Monsanto no longer exists.
Tort law firms will be able to have a new target for court cases. If a company claims they did not know the risks of their product, this small service can be portrayed as the brains behind the operation that chose not to tell them. Law firms can more easily target the consultancies behind the industries.
Foundations will be able to expand their sphere of influence via fiscal sponsorships and non-transparent donor-advised funds acting behind these investigations while at the same time silencing any critics who might shed light on their own operations.
Research activists have a lucrative means to remunerate their services. In this particular case, Carey Gillam is being paid by foundations and others supporting Lighthouse Reports, foundations like the Open Society supporting the guardian.org project that will pay for publishing her articles in The Guardian and the foundations supporting her paid position at the EWG where she will publish the same articles in The New Lede. That is not even considering upcoming book advances, speaking fees or film rights. It is in the interest of these foundations and interest groups to coordinate via fiscal sponsors to oversee such a web of operations (otherwise Carey is just milking her cash cows dry).

What would happen if such news monitoring and research services like Bonus Eventus went out of business (as these activists intend)? We would have less access to a wider variety of ideas and information on innovative industrial solutions. We would have less data, less evidence and more ignorance. We would have a world where NGOs and campaign groups can say and act as they wish, impose their ideologies on an unsuspecting public with no reactions or critical analyses. We will be in a world where activists like Carey Gillam, Margot Gibbs and Stéphane Foucart will be able to profit from widespread ignorance and fear.

I don’t want to live in such a world defined by ignorance and cultish ideologues, so I choose to stand up to these zealots and reject their despicable, censoring swarm tactics.