Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 04
1 chosen to try to silence their critics and inhibit debate
2 about what must be a very influential and important company
3 that the public have not only the right but the duty to
4 scrutinise in an unfettered way their business practices.
5
6 So, as we have discovered in the lead-up to this trial,
7 dozens, if not hundreds of groups, individuals,
8 organisations, press, trades unions, whatever, have been
9 sued by McDonald's and no-one has ever fought a case in
10 court, and it became apparent to us that libel laws
11 constituted the way they are being used in this country, as
12 a draconian form of mass censorship which is largely in
13 secret, largely self censorship, because people want to
14 avoid getting writs, and generally ending up with fake
15 apologies as people seek to avoid a court case, and the
16 right to criticise the rich and powerful who dominate the
17 world's economy in our lives is ever more essential in the
18 late twentieth century, particularly multi-national
19 corporations and particularly in this case the food
20 industry, because of their central role in people's lives.
21
22 It is not just McDonald's in the London Greenpeace fact
23 sheet and in this case that have been focused on. It is a
24 whole type of economy, type of approach, type of culture,
25 which multi-national corporations are promoting and
26 projecting and enforcing upon society. And McDonald's has
27 an important role in a wide range of issues because it has
28 been a pioneering corporation in many respects and, of
29 course, very influential through its sheer size and its
30 aggressive expansion strategy.
31
32 Now, McDonald's issued a press release on the eve of the
33 trial in which, amongst other things, they accused the
34 defendants of distributing lies, but also they said -- I
35 cannot find it now -- they said that the case was about,
36 I think the words they used were 'the public perception of
37 McDonald's'. Yes, used the words 'public perception of
38 McDonald's', and the public perception of McDonald's is a
39 completely manufactured one because of the sheer weight of
40 their advertising and promotion and their influence, and
41 their relations with the media. They can put their view
42 about themselves over to the public, and I think this is an
43 important point in this case because they have to show, we
44 believe, that their reputation has been lowered or damaged
45 and we say that their reputation is a manufactured,
46 artificial construct as regards where it corresponds to the
47 image that they are promoting of themselves.
48
49 Further, despite that artificial construct, we believe they
50 have another reputation, a more realistic one, amongst
51 parents of young children, amongst anyone that has worked
52 for them or knows anyone that has worked for them, amongst
53 people that are fed up with seeing their environment/index.html">litter all over
54 the pavements. The public reputation, not the one maybe
55 that appears in the media, although later we will have
56 quite a bit about publicity, but that is another matter.
57 The real reputation, if you like at the grass roots, about
58 McDonald's is that they are a fairly mediocre company who
59 sell junk food, who are responsible for causing environment/index.html">litter, who
60 exploit their works in Mcjobs and who bombard children with
