E. Bruce Harrison

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The name E Bruce Harrison often refers both to an anti-environmentalist PR practitioner, and the company he established in 1973 --the E Bruce Harrison Company -- which led the early fight against the early environmental activism on behalf of the chemical industry. It later became well known for the establishment of policy groups and associations which were funded and controlled by coalitions of companies with polluting and poisoning problems.

Despite the patriarchial company name, this company was very much a partnership between Bruce and his wife Patricia (ex-Patricia de Stacy). Bruce Harrison appears to have been the public relations/anti-environmental strategist, while Patricia focussed on political contacts and the establishment of pseudo-grassroots 'counter' organisations. She later co-chaired the Republican National Committee.

E. Bruce Harrison himself is often referred to as the inventor of "environmental public relations."

A former journalist in Alabama and Georgia, and press secretary to a member of Congress from Alabama, Harrison was PR director at the Chemical Manufacturers Association and vice president of Freeport Minerals Company (now Freeport McMoran) in New York, before establishing the E. Bruce Harrison Company with his wife Patricia Harrison in Washington, D.C., in 1973.[1] [2] In 1996 the company was sold to Ruder Finn and ceased to trade independently. [3]

In 1991 Harrison was elected to be a member of the College of Fellows of the Public Relations Society of America, and was recognized by PR Week in 1999 as one of the 100 most influential public relations professionals of the 20th Century. He was selected in 2000 to the Public Relations Hall of Fame, established by the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

Harrison and Environmental PR

Harrison's career began when, at the Manufacturing Chemists' Association, he helped the pesticide industry in responding to Rachel Carson and her classic 1962 environmental book, Silent Spring. He was appointed "manager of environmental information" by the association's public relations committee, comprised of major chemical company PR people, to coordinate the scientific defenses being mounted against the book's assertions.

In 1973, following service in New York as chief communications officer at Freeport Minerals (now Freeport-McMoran), Harrison established a consulting firm headquartered in Washington, D.C., which specialized in mining, energy, and environmental policy issues.

The company operated independently, adding offices in New York, California, Texas and Europe (Brussels), for nearly 25 years, before it was sold to Ruder Finn in 1997.

Coalition foundations

For many years the Harrison company specialized in the creation of 'umbrella' activities and coalitions involving company as well as some labor interests. An example was the Clean Air Act Project, which for many years pushed the case for economic and jobs consideration while the old Air Pollution Control Act was being modified by Congress. Harrison's consultants pushed similar public policy positions for their clients when federal authorities addressed water, resource recovery, indoor air quality and other environmental issues in the 1980s and 1990s.

Greenwashing

By the 1980s, however, Harrison began counseling clients that attacking environmentalists had its downside, and began exploring the art of corporate pro-green positioning--a strategy that environmental groups have labeled "greenwashing." The greenwashing strategy emerged at the same time that the environmental movement was undergoing an internal transformation. What began as a popular grassroots movement began to institutionalize itself. A handful of giant organizations emerged as "leaders" within the movement, paying six-figure salaries to their executives and raising hundreds of millions of dollars per year from direct mail campaigns, foundations and corporate donors.

"The activist movement that began in the early 1960s ... succumbed to success over ... the last 15 years," Harrison proclaimed in his 1993 book, Going Green. He observed that although the big environmental groups are formally incorporated as nonprofit organizations, their size and inertia have transformed them into business ventures themselves. Fundraising, he observed, had become their real primary mission. As he put it, the environmental movement's most pressing need was "not to green, but to ensure the wherewithal that enable it to green." The need for money and a "respectable" public image, he said, provided the motivation for green bureaucrats to sit down and cut deals with industry.

In the eight years since Harrison wrote Going Green, his advice has become gospel not just in the corporate suites of his clients, but in the offices of the large, Washington-based environmental groups he wrote about. Corporate partnerships have come to be viewed not just as a source of funding but even as a source of legitimation, as a sign of "success" and accomplishment. An environmental group that forms a partnership with McDonald's or International Paper usually gets some kind of concession from the company, however trivial, which the organization can tout as proof of its ability to tame the corporate beast.

Current

After the sale of his company Harrison worked as a part-time Executive Director of the Arthur W. Page Society, a position he resigned from in June 2000. Jack O'Dwyers Newsletter' reported that Harrison said he would work fulltime on "my corporate counsel practice" in Washington. D.C. [4] He now runs his own Washington. D.C. PR company Harrison Consulting. His website describes him as "the founder and international franchiser of EnviroComm." [5]

In April 2005 Harrison was nominated to continue in the role as Treasurer of the Washington D.C. Professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. [6] A statement in support of his candidacy states that he is "chairman of EnviroComm International, is a former newspaper reporter, Congressional press secretary and public relations professional, who has been a member of SPJ/SDX since 1960. He co-chaired SPJ's national Project Watchdog project, served as informal PR counsel to the national Board, hired former SPJ President Jim Plante to head up E. Bruce Harrison Company's New York office, and provided office space in Washington for the First Amendment program when Dick Kleeman ran it." [7]

In January 2007 he was one of the participants in a one-day seminar organised by the PR Coalition and the U.S. State Department titled the 'Private Sector Summit on Public Diplomacy'. [8] (Pdf - see page 32). The seminar was designed to advise business on how it could help rehabilitate the public standing of the U.S. abroad in the wake of its disastrous invasion of Iraq.


Bruce Harrison now advises corporations through speeches and books, and his new focus is on carbon/energy and climate change. His wife is active both in the Republican Party (mainly women's isues) and the Bush II Administration (Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs) and was elected President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in June 2005.


Book

  • E. Bruce Harrison, Environmental Communication and Public Relations Handbook, Government Institute, 2nd edition December 1992. ISBN 0865873216
  • E. Bruce Harrison, Going Green: How to Communicate Your Company's Environmental Commitment, Irwin Professional, April 1993. ISBN 1556239459

Articles by Harrison

  • E. Bruce Harrison, Superfund: Compliance and communication, Public Policy Committee of the Public Relations Society of America, 1988. ASIN B00072NO9U
  • E. Bruce Harrison, "Reject a green cold war", Public Relations Quarterly, Volume: v37 Issue: n4 Page: p26 (2), December 22, 1992.
  • E. Bruce Harrison, "Assessing The Damage: Practitioner Perspectives On The Valdez", Public Relations Journal 45, 10 (1989): 40-45. ASIN B000731H0W. (Pdf file).

Other SourceWatch resources

External links

Articles By Harrison

General Articles

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