Things aren’t looking too hot for Monsanto (now Bayer).
The ongoing litigation against the company—18,000 cases and counting—has revealed some of the elaborate scheming and dealing Monsanto engaged in to discredit journalists and deceive the public over the years.
Our 2015 Spinning Food report with Friends of the Earth and US Right to Know touched on many of the tactics we are seeing revealed now. We can’t say we were surprised to discover that Carey Gillam, author of Whitewash, and US Right to Know founder and director Gary Ruskin were targeted by the Monsanto PR machine—but we were shocked by the lengths the company went to discredit them. The cost of the truth for large corporations like Monsanto is billions, but for people like Dwayne Lee Johnson whose lives are impacted by their lies, the cost of their life is incalculable.
In an opinion piece about the revelations in The Guardian, Gillam commented: “Truth and transparency are precious commodities, the foundations for the knowledge we all need and deserve about the world we live in. Without truth we cannot know what risks we face, what protections we must make for our families and our futures. When corporate power is so intensely brought to silence messengers, to manipulate the public record and public opinion, truth becomes stifled. And we should all be afraid.”
Above: Carey Gillam and Gary Raskin of US Right to Know on Democracy Now!
