Tag Archives: Richard Berman

Don’t let Berman steal Christmas from animals

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During December, the “season of giving,” many people donate to charitable causes like the Humane Society of the United States.  It’s no surprise then that Rick Berman — Washington DC’s best-known PR hit man — has purchased a slew of December attack ads smearing the HSUS and its president, Wayne Pacelle. These ads are nothing more than Berman’s clumsy ploy on behalf of those who profit from abusing animals.

Share this graphic to let your friends know that HumaneWatch is nothing but a clumsy ploy by DC’s best-known PR hit man on behalf of those who profit from abusing animals.

Share this graphic to let your friends know HumaneWatch is nothing but a clumsy ploy by DC’s best-known PR hit man on behalf of those who profit from abusing animals.

The HSUS holds a 4-star rating with Charity Navigator, the highest possible ranking. The BBB’s Wise Giving Alliance certifies that the HSUS meets all 20 standards for charitable accountability. Worth Magazine named the HSUS one of the 10 most fiscally-reponsible charities. And Guidestar’s Philanthropedia website voted the HSUS as the top high-impact animal protection group in the country.

The HSUS has almost 60 years of experience to back up its standing as the nation’s most effective animal protection organization. The HSUS  top 13 achievements of 2013 demonstrate exactly how donations help animals.

Although the HSUS provides grants to other animal welfare organizations, that is not and never has been its purpose. The HSUS has its own programs and is not a pass-through organization. Supporters of the HSUS expect it to tackle the root causes of cruelty and defend all animals, and that is what the HSUS has been doing since 1954.

Opponents of the HSUS want them to focus solely on mopping up the damage caused by Rick Berman’s clients, rather than confronting and stopping industrial animal abuse. In addition to this important advocacy work, the HSUS provides hands-on care for more animals than any other group –- dogs like Ricky Bobby and Stella, rescued from a North Carolina puppy mill –- and it drives transformational change to prevent cruelty before animals end up in distress.

Here are just a few areas where the HSUS helps animals:

  • Aiding shelters when natural disasters and cruelty cases overwhelm their capacity to respond.
  • Leading the nation’s most ambitious projects to reduce pet overpopulation and thereby reduce pressure on local shelters and rescues.
  • Providing sanctuary, rehabilitation, veterinary treatment, and other direct care for more than 100,000 animals in 2013 alone.
  • Combatting puppy mills, organized animal fighting, wildlife poaching, commercial seal slaughter and many other large-scale animal abuses.
  • Managing a coast-to-coast network of nature preserves.
  • Working to end the suffering of street dogs in countries around the globe.
  • Combatting the trade in wildlife and fighting for endangered species here and abroad.
  • Joining with corporations like McDonald’s, Safeway, Kroger, Campbell’s, Kraft, and dozens more, to reduce the suffering of farm animals in their supply chains.
  • Supporting sustainable family farmers who answer to higher animal welfare standards – both in the United States and developing world.

See for yourself what the HSUS does at humanesociety.org.

So, who is this corporate front-man behind the attack on the HSUS?

Rick Berman is a Washington, D.C., lobbyist and PR operative. He learned his trade as a paid defender of the tobacco industry, and never changed. Independent news investigations have repeatedly exposed his underhanded schemes to protect corporate profits by attacking public interest groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and HSUS. You can find a list of exposes here, including coverage by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ABC, CBS, NBC, Bloomberg, Salon, and many more.

Berman’s nonprofit schemes are the subject of a pending complaint with the IRS, and the rating agency Charity Navigator has issued donor fraud advisory alerts against several of his front groups.

If you follow the money trail, you’ll find more than 90 percent of the funds that flow into Berman’s web of tax-exempt organizations go to him or his for-profit PR firm. That’s a jaw dropping figure, almost unheard of in our nation. It’s a self-enrichment scheme of the worst kind.

When it comes to animal cruelty, there are only two sides: You’re against it, or you defend it. You know where the HSUS stands, and you know where Berman stands. Show Rick Berman that you won’t let him steal Christmas from animals!

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Innuendo

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We can do the innuendo
We can dance and sing
When it’s said and done
We haven’t told you a thing…
— Don Henley, Dirty Laundry

Although libel and defamation are exceedingly difficult to prove in court, even the most unethical front groups will avoid unnecessary (and costly) litigation.

That’s why organizations like Richard Berman’s “HumaneWatch” avoid direct statements — which are legally actionable — and instead couch their false accusations in sly winks and innuendo — which generally are not.

The easiest way to turn a libelous claim into an innuendo is to phrase it as a question. Consider these headlines and comments from HumaneWatch:

  • Is HSUS engaging in a little creative accounting? (Oct. 21, 2011)
  • Is HSUS purposely hiding the ball and diverting millions to a purpose that its ads don’t address? (Feb. 19, 2011)
  • HSUS: Token help for pet shelters? (Feb. 27, 2012)
  • Is HSUS really just a business? (Feb. 25, 2010)
  • Is HSUS becoming a political liability? (Oct. 28, 2010)
  • Hot air from HSUS? (Jun. 11, 2010)
  • Would Wayne Pacelle approve of shooting this horse? (Aug. 28, 2013)
  • Is Wayne Pacele the Bernie Madoff of the charity world? (Apr. 5, 2013)
  • Is HSUS taking advantage of Americans’ goodwill toward cats and dogs? (Mar. 17, 2011)
  • Is HSUS up to no good in Nebraska? (Nov. 13, 2010)
  • Is HSUS hiding the ball? (Nov. 8, 2010)
  • Another ALF Supporter in HSUS’s Leadership? (Feb. 11, 2012)
  • Is HSUS really on the side of the 99 percent of Americans who aren’t vegan? (Nov. 13, 2010)
  • Did HSUS violate the lobbying disclosure act? (Nov. 28, 2011)
  • Where does [the HSUS’] money go? (Jun. 27, 2013)

The pages of HumaneWatch are crawling with disingenuous question marks; they are scattered through their blog posts and op-eds like a bad case of worms. But rarely do they include an answer to go with their leading questions. They leave their readers to fill in the blanks, providing them just enough misleading information, vague rumor, and unrelated finger-pointing to ensure that those blanks are filled in with the wrong answer.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on social media.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/innuendo

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Phony Op-Eds

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I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America… and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.
— Herbert Bayard Swope, creator of the op-ed page

Op-eds and letters to the editor were intended to reflect the opinions of the American public.

Unfortunately, not only are these voices dwindling, they are being increasingly co-opted by corporate interests.

The pages of prominent newspapers are littered with propaganda from Richard Berman’s industry-funded front groups — including the Center for Consumer Freedom (also known as “HumaneWatch”), the Center for Union Facts, the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, the American Beverage Institute, and the Humane Society for Shelter Pets. These sham organizations subvert op-eds and letters to the editor, displacing opinions of real people with the PR spin of Berman’s corporate donors.

These are not opinions. They are advertisements and spin, purchased by corporations, professionally written by Berman and Company, and disseminated by unwary dupes in the media.

This deceptive tactic is another form of sockpuppetry. A Berman and Company employee masquerades as a concerned member of the public, but is, in fact, mouthing the words of its corporate client. It’s a lie that Berman took to the level of farce when the millionaire posed as a blue collar worker in an ad undermining worker benefits.

Opinion pieces are a key means by which Richard Berman funnels “nonprofit” donations into his personal and corporate bank accounts, in what former IRS director Marcus Owens called a “clear violation of the requirements for tax-exempt status.” Since 2006, Berman and Company has charged its “nonprofits” hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, flooding media outlets with more than 1600 deceptive op-eds and letters to the editor.

When you see a phony op-ed or letter to the editor from Richard Berman, Will Coggin, J. Justin Wilson, Sarah Longwell, or another Berman and Company employee, please call attention to the fact that the publication is being exploited by a notorious front group for corporate interests.

Share the graphic below. And let the public know that these “opinion pieces” are nothing more than paid propaganda defending the unsafe, unethical, and inhumane practices practices of Richard Berman’s clients.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on social media.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/op-eds

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Legal Intimidation

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We always have a knife in our teeth.
–Richard Berman

Online promotion for Center for Consumer Freedom’s failed anti-lawyer campaign, LawsuitAddiction.com.

Richard Berman despises trial lawyers, and his front groups frequently rage against “frivolous lawsuits,” “fat-cat lawyers,” and a “cabal” of attorneys.

But apparently, that loathing only applies to lawyers working for the public good.

When news came out that Berman was attempting to smear animal welfare groups through a phony “shelter advocacy” group, shelters were outraged by the deception. Berman then attempted to silence them through a campaign of legal intimidation, sending cease and desist letters to a number of shelters and animal welfare bloggers, including Washington Animal Rescue League, Humane Society of Berks County, Richmond SPCA, San Francisco SPCA, Ecorazzi, and Ohmidog.

Many of these shelters took down their comments rather than be faced with defending a meritless, but costly lawsuit.

In order to cast doubt on the victim’s words, Berman and his front groups focus on trivial errors, or even create bold misstatements of fact. In response to Time Magazine’s coverage of Berman’s underhanded tactics in which they stated that HumaneWatch.org paid for advertisements attacking the Humane Society of the United States, Berman’s attorneys objected, claiming that it was the Center for Consumer Freedom that paid for them.

HumaneWatch is an alias of the Center for Consumer Freedom. (Source: 2011 Form 990 tax return)

In reality, HumaneWatch.org is the Center for Consumer Freedom, and is actively doing business as HumaneWatch. Berman’s attorneys protested that Berman is not a lobbyist: he’s a former lobbyist (at least, on paper). They protested the claim that CCF represented the tanning bed industry: it was another of Berman’s deceptive campaigns that failed to downplay the dangers of tanning beds.

Despite nitpicking from Berman’s attorneys, the essence of the article is correct, just as animal shelters’ outrage over Berman’s phony shelter group was correct. Although Berman protested that “HSSP isn’t my group,” HSSP is operated by Berman and Company staff, out of Berman and Company’s offices. As with Berman’s other front groups, a significant portion of its “nonprofit” donations were funneled into Berman’s PR firm and into Berman’s pockets.

The purpose of this legal intimidation is clearly not to set the record straight, but to use Berman’s ill-gotten wealth to bully whistleblowers into silence.

In the case of Richard Berman — an attorney himself — crying crocodile tears about legal intimidation while simultaneously using it to harass animal welfare advocates is doubly offensive.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your computer, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/intimidation

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Manipulating Numbers

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On average, people should be more skeptical when they see numbers. They should be more willing to play around with the data themselves.
–Nate Silver

Richard Berman’s smear campaigns like the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Union Facts frequently rely on distorted numbers to give their corporate spin the illusion of credibility. In fact, the core of Berman’s HumaneWatch campaign is its easily-repeated claim that the Humane Society of the United States gives less than 1% of its funds to pet shelters.

However, when you look beneath the glib summary and examine the numbers yourself, you find that those numbers have been blatantly misrepresented.

In order to reach that figure, HumaneWatch ignores any form of aid other than a hand-out of cash. They exclude grants for animals other than cats or dogs, as if those were the only animals worthy of care. They disregard dozens of animal welfare programs, including shelter and adoption advocacy programs.

To artificially minimize the work of the HSUS, HumaneWatch reduces its program expenses — expenses in excess of one hundred million dollars — to an arbitrary subset of those expenses, the one million dollars in direct cash grants made to dog and cat shelters. And of that amount, they randomly ignore programs vital to saving shelter pets, such as spay/neuter programs, veterinary care assistance, feral cat trap/neuter/return, and pet retention programs.

Despite the availability of HSUS tax returns and program expenses, few people bother to check the numbers for themselves. As a result, the 1% myth is one of Berman’s most successful distortions.

Deception and distortions of this kind are one of the primary weapons of Berman’s smear campaigns, but they only work when the readers are unfamiliar with Berman’s legacy of deceit. That’s why we’re releasing a series of graphics exposing the unethicals weapon in Berman’s arsenal of character assassination. Each graphic in the series will highlight a different deceptive scheme, perfect for reposting under a Berman op-ed, letter to the editor, or in response to a HumaneWatch supporter who may not understand the false nature of that smear campaign.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/manipulation

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.