The Final Front?

I'd like to believe that the "Center for Consumer Freedom" is the death rattle of a dying industry.

The Center has all the hallmarks of a good, old-fashioned front group, an industry organization constructed to defend the interests of giant corporations, while providing an utterly generic--and utterly misleading--name for them to hide their true identities behind.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a front group for the beverage industry. It's responsible for a campaign against New York City Health Department, which has launched a campaign designed to highlight the role sugary sodas play in the obesity epidemic, and another effort claiming that high-fructose corn syrup has been "acquitted" of charges that it is "a unique cause of obesity."

You'll note that even though high-fructose corn syrup is being acquitted by the very companies pushing it on consumers, the only way they can make the "acquittal" anything other than a flat-out lie is with the clever wording of the "charge." To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever suggested HFCS is a "unique" cause of obesity. It is, however, a significant cause of obesity--and the CCF's ad doesn't actually try to deny that fact.

If you want further evidence of the fundamental dishonesty of the CCF campaign, note the last sentence of the latter article: "Rick Berman, executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, declined to specify which companies or trade groups fund his organization's activities."

The role of Berman in the organization is one giveaway. The fact that the group won't reveal its funding is the biggest giveaway. The companies and trade groups paying for the message are too ashamed to stand behind it. Or they want to play both sides: undermining public health messages via the CCF while simultaneously pretending to play a constructive role in the public health debate.

In an age of transparency, the Center for Consumer Freedom is opaque. In an age of authenticity, it's unashamedly fake. At a time when consumers are demanding to be treated with respect, it wears its contempt for consumers' intelligence with pride.

I'd love to see this campaign blow up in the faces of those who foisted it upon the public. But even if it doesn't, the next campaign to use these tactics, or the one after that, will. Because this level of corporate duplicity and mendacity is simply not sustainable in the 21st century.