‘Berman Exposed’—the Facts Behind the Smoke and Mirrors

by Seth Michaels, Jan 14, 2009

Did you hear that mercury in fish isn’t dangerous, that earning a minimum wage is bad for workers and that Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a menace to society? If you have, chances are you’ve heard that from mega-lobbyist Richard Berman.

Now, a new website is shining a light on the man and the money behind many, many myths.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has launched “Berman Exposed,” a great new website detailing Berman’s background and just how he winds up in the middle of so many controversial issues.

Berman is an award-winning spinner of distraction, disinformation and outright falsehood. We’ve written frequently about Berman, because he’s an influential political mercenary, the guy the biggest corporations hire when they want to keep their fingerprints off a misleading and nasty public relations campaign.

He hides behind self-created organizations with deliberately misleading names like “Center for Union Facts” and “Center for Consumer Freedom.”

Through these front groups and the op-eds and advertisements placed under their rubric, Berman is an industry unto himself—and a driving force behind some of the misleadingly named front groups leading the charge against the Employee Free Choice Act. When Big Business wants to hide its agenda, Berman is there to take the call—and the big check.

Yet it seems the press must have Berman on speed dial, too. It’s all too rare that a news story on the Employee Free Choice Act doesn’t give the first quote to Berman or another corporate shill.

“Berman Exposed” is a useful corrective to the corporate-funded disinformation campaigns that are distorting our public debate. Thanks, CREW, for shining a light on the creepier corners of how Big Business tries to mask its influence on public policy.

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