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Drilled

Herb, Ep 2: A Legal Strategy

Drilled

Critical Frequency

True Crime, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Science

4.82.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Worried that all their work creating Mobil's personality and a multi-pronged issue advertising campaign to go with it would go to waste if the TV networks deemed it all "propaganda" Herb and his boss looked to the courts for protection. In this episode we follow the "corporate free speech" movement through the courts, where it got a big assist from tobacco lobbyist-turned-Supreme Court justice Lewis F. Powell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The First Amendment's primary concern, and therefore the courts' concern, always has been

0:11.5

the preservation of free and uninhibited dissemination of information and ideas.

0:20.2

If the restrictive view of corporate speech taken by the Massachusetts court were accepted,

0:28.7

the government would have the power to deprive society of the views of corporations on all issues,

0:35.9

other than those that could be proved to affect adversely their property or business interest.

0:44.6

Corporations thus could be prohibited from expressing views by advertisements otherwise on all

0:51.1

matters of general public interest.

0:54.6

Review the Massachusetts court's decision as seriously restricting public access to major

1:02.0

sources of ideas and educational information.

1:08.9

That is the late Justice Lewis Powell, reading his majority opinion in the Supreme Court case

1:15.0

first National Bank of Boston versus Bellotti.

1:19.3

It was April 1978.

1:22.6

The US had just weathered the OPEC oil embargo but was about to be plunged into another

1:27.6

energy crisis spurred by revolution in Iran.

1:32.1

President Jimmy Carter was in the White House pushing energy efficiency programs and installing

1:36.5

solar panels.

1:38.1

Exxon was ramping up research on renewable energy, lithium batteries, and this new thing

1:43.9

called the greenhouse effect.

1:46.4

At mobile oil, Herb Schmarts was focusing on controlling the narrative, which required

1:51.7

bending, not just the media itself, but also the law's governing media to his will.

1:58.4

It seems to me that society has given the press a great privilege.

2:03.2

That privilege is embodied in the First Amendment.

...

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