Speaker 1: Everyone has a story I can learn from to be
Speaker 1: fearless like her, to have the confidence to achieve my dreams.
Speaker 2: To know this ad that you're hearing. It starts out
Speaker 2: with a little girl dressed in an Amelia Earhart outfit.
Speaker 2: Then it pans to a montage of women playing golf professionals. Clearly,
Speaker 2: nearly one hundred thousand girls are participating in lpga Usta
Speaker 2: Girls Golf. It's about so much more than golf. It
Speaker 2: sure is golf Lady, because this ad was paid for
Speaker 2: by Chevron, who sponsored the program. And it's not just
Speaker 2: Chevron either. Take a listen to this recent Conico Phillips ad,
Speaker 2: which sounds like it's actually advertising an education nonprofit.
Speaker 3: Who's gonna hold you back.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be a teacher. It was just
Speaker 1: something that came natural to me.
Speaker 4: If I knew I wanted to be a teacher when
Speaker 4: I was a middle schooler, and now I'm a teacher
Speaker 4: here at my old middle school.
Speaker 2: Ads like these and the activities behind them, from sponsoring
Speaker 2: sports events and teams to funding education initiatives or supporting
Speaker 2: women in stem have become so common that you might
Speaker 2: be wondering why I'd bother calling attention to them at all.
Speaker 2: But it's important to talk about why companies, and especially
Speaker 2: oil companies, spend so much money on stuff that is
Speaker 2: entirely unrelated to their core business and why you almost
Speaker 2: never see an ad that's about what they actually do.
Speaker 2: It's not so much about being a good corporate citizen
Speaker 2: as it is about seeming like a citizen period, someone
Speaker 2: with ideas and policy positions, morals, ethics, a philosophy, a reputation,
Speaker 2: and most of importantly, a personality that's mostly due to
Speaker 2: a guy. Longtime listeners of this podcast might recognize one
Speaker 2: of my long running obsessions.
Speaker 1: Herb Schmirtz.
Speaker 2: Here's what ol Herb had to say about the idea
Speaker 2: of companies doing philanthropy for philanthropy's sake.
Speaker 3: It shows a sophistication and awareness on the part of
Speaker 3: corporations that they can tie their business interests to other
Speaker 3: interests in the cultural and educational and philanthropic area and
Speaker 3: yet be able to show to whomever's interested, whether it
Speaker 3: be shareholders or whatever, that there is a bottom line
Speaker 3: payout for the giver.
Speaker 2: Herbschmirtz was a fascinating dude. He worked in military intelligence
Speaker 2: and as a labor lawyer, sorting out disputes, mostly on
Speaker 2: behalf of the government. In the nineteen sixties, he actually
Speaker 2: helped to end a major life Shorman strike. Here's LBJ
Speaker 2: and his labor secretary talking about it and.
Speaker 5: Wants order longshowman. That's the serious one, and I should
Speaker 5: I should sit down and bring you or give you
Speaker 5: a complete memorandum on that that one is not in
Speaker 5: good shape. The dock when is just not in good shape?
Speaker 5: What can we do beforeward through it? And it's very
Speaker 5: likely to bring it out. I had them in this
Speaker 5: last week. And the trouble is that the that the company,
Speaker 5: the employers want to settle it in Congress and the
Speaker 5: union want to sell it in the White House. About
Speaker 5: what it comes down to.
Speaker 2: Schmertz also helped run JFK's presidential campaign. Eventually he ran
Speaker 2: Bobby Kennedy's campaign too and Ted's. In between running campaigns
Speaker 2: for the Kennedys, Herb Schmertz had another job, VP of
Speaker 2: Public Affairs for Mobile Oil. Mobile initially hired Schmertz as
Speaker 2: a labor lawyer, but when he returned to work after
Speaker 2: taking a leave of absence to work on Bobby Kennedy's campaign,
Speaker 2: the company thought, hmmm, maybe someone so tight with the
Speaker 2: Democrats would be more helpful in their public affairs office.
Speaker 2: Schmertz thought the rough and tumbled tactics he'd learned of
Speaker 2: running campaigns in DC could be helpful to Mobil too,
Speaker 2: and so he got a promotion. It helped that the
Speaker 2: company's CEO at the time, a guy named Rolly Warner,
Speaker 2: had a lot in common with Schmertz. They were both
Speaker 2: Ivy League educated but good at talking to normal people,
Speaker 2: and they both thought it was important for Mobil to
Speaker 2: stand up for itself more often. In the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: with an oil crisis brewing and Americans pissed off about
Speaker 2: waiting in line for hours to get gas, the two
Speaker 2: hatched a plan to take charge of Mobile's public image.
Speaker 3: You have to find unconveyed no ways to communicate to
Speaker 3: the public. It's not a question of convincing the press
Speaker 3: of anything. It's a question of convincing the public. And
Speaker 3: to do the job properly, you have to really go
Speaker 3: around the press, or beyond the press, or against the
Speaker 3: press to get a story out so that the public
Speaker 3: focus is on it, not the press. If you're just
Speaker 3: going to limit yourself to getting the press to focus
Speaker 3: on You're not doing the entire job.
Speaker 2: At the time, issue advertising, this thing of an oil
Speaker 2: company doing an ad about diversity or environmental initiatives, it
Speaker 2: was relatively new. Schmertz eventually called it affinity of purpose marketing,
Speaker 2: not great branding, but he explained why in a speech.
Speaker 3: The term affinity of purpose marketing is a term that
Speaker 3: I developed because the American Express has caused related marketing.
Speaker 3: But it basically says the same thing.
Speaker 2: Affinity of purpose marketing cause related marketing. Today this is
Speaker 2: basically just marketing, But back then it was pretty revolutionary,
Speaker 2: especially in the oil industry. Schmertz thought the company needed
Speaker 2: to focus on ideas and issues rather than just selling
Speaker 2: gas at stations, and to do that it needed more
Speaker 2: than just the ideas themselves. Mobile needed a personality. Here
Speaker 2: he is a leader in life, describing that personality, well,
Speaker 2: it was multifaceted.
Speaker 6: It was a personality where we believed very strongly about
Speaker 6: the importance of public policiation. Secondly, we believed fervently that
Speaker 6: as a sort of a custodian of a large corporation
Speaker 6: and as custodians of vast resources and employment and everything else.
Speaker 6: That we were not doing our job if we did
Speaker 6: not participate in the marketplace of ideas. Third part of
Speaker 6: our personality was we believed in that a democracy is
Speaker 6: composed of a group of free institutions. We believed in
Speaker 6: free market, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, academic freedom,
Speaker 6: freedom to organize and participate in union activities.
Speaker 3: Government intrusion into the marketplace of ideas would limit our
Speaker 3: freedom of speech and distort the selection of our leaders.
Speaker 2: Wow, if Mobil was a person, they'd be kind of
Speaker 2: a Dick Ben Shapiro as a company. Anyway. You'll note
Speaker 2: too that a lot of these so called personality traits
Speaker 2: are more like policy positions. But over time, Schmertz started
Speaker 2: to do various things to build out a sense of
Speaker 2: who Mobile was, and he very intentionally did things that
Speaker 2: no other oil exec had really thought about doing. At
Speaker 2: one point he described his approach to this as being
Speaker 2: like a political campaign for a company. He sponsored a
Speaker 2: bunch of art exhibitions, for example, and started a literary prize,
Speaker 2: the Pegasus Prize, in nineteen seventy seven, to honor works
Speaker 2: from country whose literature is rarely translated into English. For Mobile.
Speaker 2: It also helped to strengthen the company's relationships with various
Speaker 2: Middle Eastern countries where it was hoping to drill for oil.
Speaker 2: Schmertz also hired writers to write weekly opinion pieces that
Speaker 2: he edited and paid to run them in The New
Speaker 2: York Times, and of course, he sponsored Masterpiece theater.
Speaker 5: The Bust of Base Theatre is brought to you by Mobile,
Speaker 5: proviting the fuel but helps public television.
Speaker 2: Run Hirschmertz wrote a whole book about his tactics. It's
Speaker 2: called Goodbye to the Low Profile. In Spanish, it went
Speaker 2: by the much better title Elsilenzio noesentable. Silence isn't Profitable.
Speaker 2: In it, Schmertz implores his fellow PR guys to stop
Speaker 2: being nice to the press, to stop being quiet about
Speaker 2: it when they think that the press is being unfair
Speaker 2: to them, and to start shouting their ideas from every
Speaker 2: corner of the public square that they can access. Schmertz
Speaker 2: gives a fascinating window into his whole process in this book.
Speaker 2: At one point he talks about commissioning a survey to
Speaker 2: gauge the public's opinion of Mobile before and after the
Speaker 2: launch of his big issue advertising push, and he remembers
Speaker 2: fondly how the survey taker said to him, Mobile must
Speaker 2: be the thinking man's oil company. Did the survey taker
Speaker 2: actually say that, We'll never know. The point is that
Speaker 2: was Herb's goal, classing up Mobile and making it the
Speaker 2: literary gentleman of oil companies. But while there is a
Speaker 2: lot of evidence to suggest that Herb really liked to
Speaker 2: hobknob with the creative elite, that wasn't the goal. It
Speaker 2: was just a fun side benefit. The point was humanizing Mobile,
Speaker 2: making him seem smart and trustworthy. Oh yeah, Mobil is
Speaker 2: definitely a hymn I bother making an oil company seem
Speaker 2: like a smart, trustworthy dude, so that when he came
Speaker 2: at you with ideas.
Speaker 1: Like, hey, why don't we be more off for drooling.
Speaker 2: You might be more likely to think it's not a
Speaker 2: terrible idea.
Speaker 7: According to the US Geological Survey, there may be sixty
Speaker 7: billion barrels of oil or more beneath our continental shelves.
Speaker 7: Some people say we should be drilling for that oil
Speaker 7: and gas. Others say we shouldn't because of the possible
Speaker 7: environmental risks. We'd like to know what you think, write Mobile,
Speaker 7: Pole Room six four nine one fifty East forty second Street,
Speaker 7: New York, one one seven. We'd like to hear from
Speaker 7: all of you.
Speaker 2: So, Okay, this is interesting history, right, but why are
Speaker 2: we talking about it today? Well, at a certain point,
Speaker 2: Schmertz and Warner ran into an obstacle. They wanted to
Speaker 2: take the advertorial program that they've been running with The
Speaker 2: New York Times and do it on TV.
Speaker 1: Two.
Speaker 2: Schmertz commissioned a few videos, and they went to the
Speaker 2: big three TV broadcasters, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Remember this
Speaker 2: was before cable was widespread and long before streaming. The
Speaker 2: three big broadcasters were a major source of information and
Speaker 2: entertainment for the American public.
Speaker 1: Two of the.
Speaker 2: Three, ABC and CBS turned the ad buy down flat.
Speaker 2: They said it would violate their ethics clauses and that
Speaker 2: it might run a foul of the fairness doctrine, which
Speaker 2: required broadcasters to present both sides of controversial issues. They
Speaker 2: told Schmertz that when it came to covering important political issues,
Speaker 2: they left that to their journalists. Running these new fangled
Speaker 2: ads of mobiles felt like broadcasting propaganda and they weren't
Speaker 2: into it. Let's all pause for a moment and appreciate
Speaker 2: in America in which met corporations had a shred of
Speaker 2: dignity for Mobile, though this was an all hands on
Speaker 2: deck moment. If the TV guys said this was propaganda.
Speaker 2: What if the New York Times started to feel weird
Speaker 2: about running it every single week. What if PBS decided
Speaker 2: its partnership with Mobile was no longer kosher. What if
Speaker 2: all that work on developing a personality, getting their ideas
Speaker 2: into the public square was just a waste of time.
Speaker 2: In the end, they couldn't have it, and so they
Speaker 2: developed a strategy that would protect their new human version
Speaker 2: of Mobile. And that is a problem we are still
Speaker 2: very much dealing with today. That's the story we're going
Speaker 2: to get into in this drilled mini series. Welcome to Yeah,
Speaker 2: Why Not herb? A three part mini series on the
Speaker 2: oil guy who popularized corporate personhood and how it's become
Speaker 2: one of the biggest problems facing climate action today. Part one,
Speaker 2: The Panic After this quick break.
Speaker 4: Mister Olsen, are you taking the position that there is
Speaker 4: no difference in the First Amendment rights of an individual?
Speaker 4: The corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator
Speaker 4: with inalienable rights, So is there any distinction that Congress
Speaker 4: could draw between corporations and natural human beings full purposes
Speaker 4: of campaign finance.
Speaker 8: What the Court has said in the First Amendment context
Speaker 8: New York Times versus Sullivan, Gross Chain versus Associated Press,
Speaker 8: and over and over again a corporations are persons entitled
Speaker 8: to protection under the First Amendment.
Speaker 2: That's the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg talking to Ted Olsen,
Speaker 2: former Solicitor General of the United States, a founding member
Speaker 2: of the Federalist Society and a partner in the corporate
Speaker 2: law firm Gibson Dunn, which represents Chevron along with several
Speaker 2: other companies in the fossil fuel business. To the extent
Speaker 2: that Americans think about the idea of corporate free speech
Speaker 2: at all, it tends to hinge on this one Supreme
Speaker 2: Court case from twenty ten, Citizens United versus the Federal
Speaker 2: Election Committee. It was a weird case. Basically, a tea
Speaker 2: party Republican group called Citizens United made a movie about
Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton, and they thought it was a documentary, but
Speaker 2: it was very obviously not. It was a bit of
Speaker 2: campaign marketing. It was called Hillary the Movie.
Speaker 1: She is steeped in controversy, steeped in sleeves. That's why
Speaker 1: they don't want us to look at our record.
Speaker 2: Obviously, this was not a movie that was going to
Speaker 2: get a theatrical release, but Citizens United had arranged to
Speaker 2: release it as a video on demand offering on a
Speaker 2: few cable channels right before the Democratic primaries in January
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, but it was classified as electioneering communication,
Speaker 2: which had been made illegal by the Federal Election Commission.
Speaker 2: The producers fed a lawsuit in the U. S. District
Speaker 2: Court for DC, trying to get a ruling that would
Speaker 2: allow them to show the film and various promotional ads
Speaker 2: for it. The District court judges ruled that there was
Speaker 2: quote no reasonable interpretation of the movie other than as
Speaker 2: an appeal to vote against Senator Clinton, so it clearly
Speaker 2: qualified as electioneering communication. The producers appealed to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: which took the case up. For some reason, it was
Speaker 2: a weird decision to begin with for them to even
Speaker 2: hear this case, because by the time they could hear it,
Speaker 2: the election would have been passed and the whole argument
Speaker 2: would be a mood point. When it ruled in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court upheld the District court on the fact
Speaker 2: that the film was in fact electioneering communication. But it
Speaker 2: applied what's called the strict scrutiny test to the First
Speaker 2: Amendment and concluded that because the money for this film
Speaker 2: wasn't being paid directly to a candidate for a campaign,
Speaker 2: it wasn't illegal under the FEC's laws. Just to make
Speaker 2: it clear, the Justices emphasize in their ruling that corporations
Speaker 2: and labor unions can spend as much as they want
Speaker 2: to convince people to vote for or against a candidate,
Speaker 2: and they don't have to disclose who's paying for what
Speaker 2: or to what end.
Speaker 9: It basically says that from now on, corporations can spend directly.
Speaker 1: From their treasuries.
Speaker 9: And that opens up this, I mean incalculable pool of money.
Speaker 2: This is Robert her a professor at the Journalism School
Speaker 2: at the University of Oklahoma. I went looking for Professor
Speaker 2: Kerr because he wrote two very detailed academic books about
Speaker 2: what he calls the corporate free speech movement, and one
Speaker 2: of them focuses entirely on mobile Oil's role in it,
Speaker 2: which we're going to get to in a minute. But first,
Speaker 2: more on the impact of Citizens United.
Speaker 9: All the business corporations in the world can now spend
Speaker 9: freely from their stockholders' money. Really, Over the years, because
Speaker 9: I wrote so much about it, people often ask me
Speaker 9: to participate in different kinds of discussions, and a lot
Speaker 9: of people first will say, well, I think corporations should
Speaker 9: have a right to speak, and that's a broadly held view.
Speaker 9: Corporations should have a right to speak. And then when
Speaker 9: I'll say, okay, but do you think they should have
Speaker 9: a right If you've invested in a corporation, should they
Speaker 9: have a right to spend your investment for political purposes?
Speaker 9: And they almost always say no. Almost everybody, whether they
Speaker 9: call themselves liberal or conservative, they almost always agree, well, no,
Speaker 9: I invested that because I wanted to make a profit.
Speaker 1: I don't want the.
Speaker 9: Corporation deciding which political side, because when people think about it,
Speaker 9: they realize, you know, wherever their personal political views lie,
Speaker 9: if a corporation can spend the stockholders' money, they might
Speaker 9: spend it for someone you support, but they could very
Speaker 9: well spend it for someone you don't.
Speaker 2: What a lot of people don't know is that there
Speaker 2: was a key case that came a few decades before
Speaker 2: Citizens United that was really the first domino to fall
Speaker 2: on corporate free speech.
Speaker 10: There was a pretty big effort to get a Supreme
Speaker 10: Court ruling that basically supported corporate speech and the right
Speaker 10: of corporations to do advertising of their not just product aising,
Speaker 10: but of their you know, positions.
Speaker 2: That's Brown University environmental sociologist doctor Robert Brule. The ruling
Speaker 2: he's referring to was a case called First National Bank
Speaker 2: of Boston versus Ballatti. It was brought by a bank
Speaker 2: that wanted to be able to advertise in favor of
Speaker 2: a ballot referendum that it had also backed financially. It
Speaker 2: violated a state law in Massachusetts that prohibited corporations from
Speaker 2: this sort of political funding, but the bank decided to
Speaker 2: challenge that law in a case that went all the
Speaker 2: way to the Supreme Court and won. It was the
Speaker 2: first time the Court had stepped in to define corporate
Speaker 2: First Amendment rights.
Speaker 10: I don't think people really appreciate how big of a
Speaker 10: deal that was in shifting the rules of speech in
Speaker 10: the public space that now suddenly corporations could use their budget,
Speaker 10: which are enormously larger than individuals, to advocate their position
Speaker 10: in the public space. And as a sociologist, I would
Speaker 10: say that what this did was it allowed for a
Speaker 10: systematic distortion of the public space. Is that it gives
Speaker 10: corporations basically a loudspeaker to amplify their voice above everybody else's.
Speaker 10: And in a media environment where there's many, many competing voices,
Speaker 10: the ability to get your message out repeatedly, over and
Speaker 10: over and over again an opposition to other voices is
Speaker 10: enormously influential in getting your viewpoint to be part of
Speaker 10: the public discussion and eventually become part of the taken
Speaker 10: for granted worldview.
Speaker 2: And here's where we bring it back to Mobile Oil
Speaker 2: and our old pal Herb Schmirtz.
Speaker 10: And Mobile was one of the leading corporations to fight
Speaker 10: for that legal right.
Speaker 2: That's why Robert Kerr wound up writing a whole book
Speaker 2: about Mobile's role in shaping free speech, a book he
Speaker 2: actually interviewed Herbsmirtz for.
Speaker 9: He was very pleasant, you know, a little bit argumentative,
Speaker 9: but not much. He said that looking back, he thought
Speaker 9: the Mobile op eds demonstrated that corporations can participate in
Speaker 9: the dialogue and that Mobile had achieved leadership.
Speaker 1: And that's basically true.
Speaker 9: They did nobody, no one else utilized The New York
Speaker 9: Times op ed page the way Mobile did.
Speaker 2: I don't think he meant it this way, but wooh,
Speaker 2: sick burn on the New York Times embarrassing. Anyway, Mobile
Speaker 2: didn't just shape public discourse by using the media as
Speaker 2: a tool. It also got involved in shaping the legal
Speaker 2: structures that would allow them to have more influence, to
Speaker 2: be the loudest voice in the room.
Speaker 9: He got into Bolotti some I don't think in his mind,
Speaker 9: at least many years later, he wasn't looking back like, yeah,
Speaker 9: we won that and that change history. He was on
Speaker 9: the side that won and it did change history. And
Speaker 9: of course that's the thing I can talk about endlessly.
Speaker 9: But he said the reason they got into it at
Speaker 9: first was that they saw the energy crisis of the
Speaker 9: nineteen seventies coming, and it was a big deal anyone
Speaker 9: who was alive then as I was, I mean, it
Speaker 9: dominated not just media discussions but popular discussions. And you know,
Speaker 9: man on the street, everybody was for years and years
Speaker 9: was talking about the price of gasoline going up, the
Speaker 9: long lines at the gas stations, and you know, sometimes
Speaker 9: the gas stations closed because they had no gasoline. And
Speaker 9: he said that Mobile felt that media in general were
Speaker 9: getting it wrong and that they had to come in
Speaker 9: and correct things.
Speaker 2: That's why mobile got into what they called issue advertising
Speaker 2: or affinity of purpose marketing. But they started to look
Speaker 2: for ways the law could protect that type of marketing
Speaker 2: because of one big threat to it in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. Here's Schmertz talking about that threat in a
Speaker 2: promotional video he made for the National Association of Manufacturers
Speaker 2: to circulate to executives at other big corporations.
Speaker 11: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
Speaker 11: or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom
Speaker 11: of speech or of the press, while the right of
Speaker 11: the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government
Speaker 11: for a redress of grievances. That was the first Amendment.
Speaker 11: And you may not be aware of it, but there
Speaker 11: are two constraints imposed by television networks that we contend
Speaker 11: are not consistent with these First Amendments, right, And I'd
Speaker 11: like to discuss these constraints with you.
Speaker 2: Yep, it was the TV thing I mentioned before. In
Speaker 2: the early nineteen seventies, high on the success of his
Speaker 2: Weekly New York Times advertorials, Schmertz tried to take a
Speaker 2: video version to the three big networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Speaker 2: AC and CBS turned it down flat. NBC accepted a
Speaker 2: couple of the ads, but asked for major edits. It
Speaker 2: was a huge threat to this plan that he and
Speaker 2: Mobile CEO Rolly Warner had cooked up to try to
Speaker 2: mitigate the impact of the energy crisis on Mobile's reputation
Speaker 2: and profits. But Schmertz sold it as a huge threat
Speaker 2: to all businesses and to the American way of life.
Speaker 11: The first constraint, what you may not be aware of,
Speaker 11: is that the television networks take the position that controversial
Speaker 11: issues of public importance should only be presented in formats
Speaker 11: determined by broad cash journalists. They contend that the public's
Speaker 11: interest will best be served by this limitation. The second
Speaker 11: constraint involves the ability to purchase time to present what
Speaker 11: we contend is issue or opinion advertising. The networks take
Speaker 11: the position that they will not sell commercial time to
Speaker 11: advertisers to present what they define as controversial issues of
Speaker 11: public importance. Now, some of the things that they have
Speaker 11: considered controversial are offshore drilling, oil company profits. The energy
Speaker 11: crisis itself has been considered a controversial relationship by one
Speaker 11: state station. Now When you put these two constraints together,
Speaker 11: the result is that the American people are not getting
Speaker 11: adequate information to make up their minds on a very
Speaker 11: crucial issue, namely, the energy crisis and the development of
Speaker 11: adequate energy for the United States.
Speaker 2: Schmertz and Warner immediately started talking to business groups like
Speaker 2: the National Association Manufacturer Is, the Chamber of Commerce, and
Speaker 2: various economics clubs about this looming threat against American business
Speaker 2: and with it, democracy itself. They wrote op eds, They
Speaker 2: went on the radio. They highlighted the problem in their
Speaker 2: weekly New York Times spot. They argue that TV was
Speaker 2: doing a superficial job at best of covering the energy crisis,
Speaker 2: and that by rejecting mobiles ads, they were robbing the
Speaker 2: American public of crucial information.
Speaker 11: And the result is that you get really superficial coverage,
Speaker 11: a visually attractive story, not one that really relates to
Speaker 11: what caused the shortage, what caused the crisis, and where
Speaker 11: do we.
Speaker 7: Go from here?
Speaker 11: Now, that would be all right if we were allowed
Speaker 11: to run the commercials that we think the people are
Speaker 11: entitled to receive and the information that we would like
Speaker 11: to impart to the American people, And indeed if others
Speaker 11: were allowed to present their views, so that the American
Speaker 11: people received a very wide spectrum of views and could
Speaker 11: get all the information and then make up their mind
Speaker 11: on these important natures. But we're not allowed to do that,
Speaker 11: as I said, Television networks say that they will not
Speaker 11: accept commercials that.
Speaker 1: Deal with controversial issues.
Speaker 11: So that means, as I said, that the issues that
Speaker 11: we want to present only can be presented in formats
Speaker 11: determined by broadcast journalists. We can't say it the way
Speaker 11: we'd like to say it. And you, the American people,
Speaker 11: really are not getting an adequate opportunity to get satisfactory information.
Speaker 2: We still hear arguments like this today. So let me
Speaker 2: just emphasize here that the First Amendment protects speech, it
Speaker 2: does not guarantee reach. Nowhere in the Constitution is every
Speaker 2: American promised a primetime TV slot. Here's an example of
Speaker 2: one of the ads that Mobile wanted to run.
Speaker 5: Well, I thought I'd never see this. This country is
Speaker 5: big and huge and it can do just about it anything,
Speaker 5: and let something like this happen. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 4: I find it very disillusioning to find that government seems
Speaker 4: to be as naive as all of us.
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It could be the oil company not being prepared for
Speaker 5: all the gas that we.
Speaker 11: Need, the people themselves, everybody.
Speaker 7: It's just we went crazy. Last twenty years has been nuts,
Speaker 7: you know, with cars, and I don't know what we
Speaker 7: could do about.
Speaker 5: It about the shortage.
Speaker 7: I think people are trying to use less gas themselves.
Speaker 3: I feel we can be very much self sufficient if
Speaker 3: we just tap our own resources. I don't feel that
Speaker 3: our own resources have been tapped enough.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Like I said, it was beautiful before, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: A standing line to get gas.
Speaker 5: We agree, and we're looking for oil everywhere we can,
Speaker 5: as fast as we can.
Speaker 11: This commercial was made during the period of long gas lines,
Speaker 11: and this version was rejected by all three networks because
Speaker 11: they contended a dealt with a controversial issue.
Speaker 2: Keep in mind, this was a pre bloody At the time.
Speaker 2: The networks relied in part on the fairness doctrine to
Speaker 2: justify rejecting ads from mobile It didn't necessarily prohibit the
Speaker 2: networks from taking these kinds of commercials, but it did
Speaker 2: give them cover to reject things they just thought were
Speaker 2: not appropriate.
Speaker 11: Now we've been running ads on the opposite the editorial
Speaker 11: page of The New York Times for about three and
Speaker 11: a half years. These, in effect, have been paid editorials
Speaker 11: where we have had an opportunity to present our views,
Speaker 11: views different, indeed frequently from the editorial policy of the
Speaker 11: New York Times. That hasn't caused the Times any problem.
Speaker 11: They've been delighted to receive these ads, and indeed they've
Speaker 11: been delighted to increase the spectrum of views.
Speaker 1: The networks, on.
Speaker 11: The other hand, have gone just the opposite direction. They
Speaker 11: have said that they will not develop a structure to
Speaker 11: accommodate a wide spectrum of views and have relied on
Speaker 11: the fairness doctrine and have said only broadcast journalists will
Speaker 11: present views.
Speaker 2: That difference, of course, was mostly to do with the
Speaker 2: fairness doctrine which applied to broadcast networks like ABC, NBC
Speaker 2: and CBS, but not two newspapers like The New York Times,
Speaker 2: which schmertz knew, of course, but acknowledging that fact would
Speaker 2: not have served his argument that the TV networks were
Speaker 2: being uniquely unfair to mobile.
Speaker 9: I asked him did he sell Mobile on this, and
Speaker 9: he insisted no, it was the other way around. That
Speaker 9: management came to him Raley Warner, who was the CEO
Speaker 9: back then, had a pretty good interview with him. A
Speaker 9: lot of things he said were consistent with what Schmert said,
Speaker 9: and he did say that, yes, I was angry about
Speaker 9: the way the media were getting everything wrong and I.
Speaker 1: Wanted us to be a bigger voice.
Speaker 2: What it did, Warner confirm what Schmert said about Ballotti.
Speaker 9: You know that he sort of.
Speaker 2: Put that on Schmertz's radar.
Speaker 9: Yes, I think they saw it as just sort of
Speaker 9: a organic piece of what they were doing with trying
Speaker 9: to speak out more in general, because they really got
Speaker 9: active about seventy two with their op eds, and then
Speaker 9: Bellotti probably came on the radar when it was first
Speaker 9: kicking around the Lower Court, so they would have picked
Speaker 9: up on it even though it didn't involve the petroleum
Speaker 9: industry in any way. They just saw it as chance
Speaker 9: of expand First Amendment rights for corporations.
Speaker 2: And they didn't stop there next time. How Mobile turned
Speaker 2: the tide on corporate personhood, why Exon kept that work
Speaker 2: going once the two merged, and how it all played
Speaker 2: out in Nike's sweatshops in the nineties. Drilled is an
Speaker 2: original Critical Frequency production. This season is produced and sound
Speaker 2: designed by Mark Saltz Austwick. Our sound engineer is Peter Duff.
Speaker 2: Additional reporting by Julia Manipela, fact checking by Woodan Yan.
Speaker 2: Our first Amendment attorney is James Wheaton. Marketing is handled
Speaker 2: by Maggie Taylor. Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. The
Speaker 2: show is written and reported by me Amy Westervelt. Primary
Speaker 2: documents and additional information related to this series are available
Speaker 2: on our website at drilled dot Media. You can also
Speaker 2: sign up for our weekly newsletter there.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to.
Speaker 2: Support our work, you can upgrade to a paid subscription
Speaker 2: to the newsletter, or subscribe on Patreon or Apple for
Speaker 2: early and ad free episodes plus bonus content. There are
Speaker 2: lots of ways to support us for free too. You
Speaker 2: can share the show. You can leave us a rating
Speaker 2: or a review that really helps us find new listeners.
Speaker 2: Linking to the show on social media is great too.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening and supporting us. We'll see you next time.