Inadvertently or not, a Kentucky television station calls out the US Chamber of Commerce's Coalition for Workplace Safety as an Astroturf creation.
It’s a tried and true tactic on the right: creating a front group that seemingly espouses one set of progressive ideals and values while, in fact, working against those values at the behest of a hidden master, usually a corporation or coalition of corporate interests looking out for Number One – and recently, a Kentucky television station, either inadvertently or not, called out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for doing it again.
It’s called Astroturfing, and with the advent of social media tools, these front groups are utterly commonplace these days; indeed, today they’re a standard tactic of right-wing operatives working to protect corporate profits at the expense of the middle class.
But every once in a while, despite the best-laid plans of K Street’s best-paid strategists, the truth emerges, and that is exactly what happened recently when the media covered the first Congressional committee hearing on H.R. 5663, the Miner Safety and Health Act.
H.R. 5663, the Miner Safety and Health Act, would beef up the regulatory agencies that oversee workplace safety – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration – providing for, among other things, increased civil and criminal penalties for repeated, willful violations of workplace safety regulations; stronger protections for whistleblowers who call attention to unsafe working conditions; and a seat at the table for victims and survivors by allowing them to participate in the hearing process.
There’s no question that this sort of legislation is long overdue. One need look only as far as the recent headlines to see that: 12 workers killed in the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig; 29 miners at the Massey mine in West Virginia; 7 dead at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, WA; and 6 dead in Middletown, CT in the Kleen Energy plant explosion.
And yet despite this overwhelming evidence, corporate interests are ramping up their opposition, hoping to derail the bill and preserve the status quo – which brings us back to Astroturfing.
During the July 13 hearing in front of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor, chaired by Rep. George Miller (D-CA7), the members heard testimony from one Jonathan Snare, who was ostensibly appearing on behalf of a group called the Coalition for Workplace Safety.
In fact, Mr. Snare’s organization is not for workplace safety; they are for the status quo, where workers subsidize corporate profits with their lives. The organization is a textbook example of Astroturf, funded in large part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests not to increase workplace safety but to kill the legislation that would accomplish that objective.
More often than not, these Astroturf organizations are duly cited by the media as credible sources and quoted as such in the resulting coverage, and this was the case with the Mr. Snare’s July 13 appearance – except for one very telling, and perhaps inadvertent, example.
WYMT-TV, out of Kentucky – a big mining state, by the way – covered the proceedings and featured Mr. Snare in their story, identifying him not as a representative of the Coalition For Workplace Safety, but instead as a spokesman for the Coalition Against Workplace Safety.
Perhaps this was the work of an editor who simply couldn’t take it anymore and decided to call it as she saw it, or perhaps it was simply an error. Regardless, Mr. Snare may well have been disappointed with the attribution, but the fact is, WYMT nailed it. Mr. Snare’s organization most definitely stands against increased workplace safety, not for it, no matter what they call themselves.
Here’s a link to WYMT-TV’s story. The attribution occurs at 1:22.