Politics

"How Everybody Exists" Doesn?t Have To Be

By Wendell Potter

If you want to know how things really get done in Washington -- or don?t get done, depending on the desires of America?s corporate executives -- all you have to do is read a couple of paragraphs in a January 23 story in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Reporter Joe DiStefano quotes a vice president at APCO Worldwide -- one of DC?s most powerful and influential PR firms -- in response to questions about my book, Deadly Spin. Throughout the book, I disclose the previously secretive work APCO did for the health insurance industry to manipulate public opinion on health care reform, in part by trying to scare people away from a movie, Michael Moore?s 2007 documentary "Sicko".

The surprising gem in the Inquirer piece was that APCO VP Bill Pierce essentially agreed with me. He acknowledged that interest-funded pressure groups "are all over the place" in Washington. "That?s how everybody exists here," Pierce said.

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Full post as published by PR Watch on January 25, 2011 (boomark / email).