The Corporation Documentary: Unmasking Corporate Impact

The Corporation Documentary - Optimized Transcription:

  The Corporation Documentary:

150 years ago, the business corporation held little significance. Today, it permeates society, rivaling the Church, Monarchy, and Communist Party in dominance. This documentary delves into the corporation's evolution, nature, impacts, and potential trajectories. How did it amass such immense power over our lives?

As scandals ignite discussions about inadequate public oversight of corporate giants, our inquiry commences.

"I sense a lingering distrust in the market," remarks one observer, highlighting the presence of both honest businesses and "bad apples."

Media debates on corporate ethics devolve into a game of "follow the leader," masking a deeper crisis of confidence in business.

Diverse voices—CEOs, whistleblowers, brokers, and outsiders—present the corporation as an enigma: a wealth generator with hidden, far-reaching detriments.

The corporation fits like a piece in society's puzzle, incomplete without it, yet unsustainable if it monopolizes.

In analogy, it resembles a sports team with varying roles working toward a collective goal—success.

Comparable to a familial unit, a corporation's participants collaborate for shared achievements.

Like the ubiquitous telephone system, corporations possess immense transformative power, shaping lives positively on balance.

A soaring eagle symbolizes noble principles—a logo representing a principled company.

Beyond the symbolism, though, corporations can act as artificial creations, prioritizing profit extraction above all else.

This parallels Dr. Frankenstein's creation overpowering its creator, akin to the corporate form's sway over society.

The word "corporate" often carries negative connotations, tied to a supposed nefarious agenda. Alternate, fairer terms like "business," "company," or "business community" offer a more accurate portrayal.

Remarkably, despite years teaching in a business school, defining a corporation remains an unaddressed challenge.

A corporation serves as a form of business ownership, where individuals collaborate to generate profits for shareholders.

The modern corporation emerged from the industrial age's drive for efficiency and profit maximization.

Originally, corporations were created by states for specific functions, serving the public good.

The 14th amendment, intended to safeguard the rights of freed slaves, unintentionally granted corporations personhood status.

Corporate citizens lack moral conscience and exist solely to secure short-term profit for shareholders.

Motivated by profit, corporations externalize costs, sidestepping accountability for their societal impact.

Corporations exploit desperate labor pools in developing nations, perpetuating a cycle of impoverishment.

Export processing zones offer cheap labor but contribute little to local economies or workers' well-being.

The petrochemical era birthed synthetic chemicals, some linked to cancer and toxic effects, raising concerns.

A disturbing cancer epidemic, where one in two men and one in three women experience cancer, can be attributed to corporate actions.

Towards the end of 1989, I received an anonymous box of Monsanto documents at my office. Among them were files detailing toxicological testing of cows given rBGH.

BST, known as Posilac, was used in over a quarter of U.S. dairy herds, affecting milk consumed by a significant portion of Americans. The FDA declared it safe for cows and humans four years prior.

Contrary to Monsanto's claims of no adverse effects and no antibiotics, the files revealed chronic inflammation in cows' organs, reproductive issues, and more.

Independent assessments concluded that BST caused unnecessary pain and suffering for cows, contradicting its purpose of increasing milk production.

Monsanto's product was a futile attempt, given the global milk surplus. The obsession with profits led to poor decisions, disregarding the environment and well-being.

Monsanto's history includes the devastating use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, causing birth defects, cancers, and suffering for thousands. Veterans sued and received settlements, but Monsanto never admitted guilt.

Corporate crimes of the 1990s revealed a pattern of unethical behavior. Large corporations faced fines for pollution, fraud, and antitrust violations, showing that legality often hinges on cost-effectiveness.

The metaphor of a doomed flight illustrates humanity's unsustainable course. Our civilization is heading for a fall, with declining ecosystems and life support systems, impacting countless species.

Corporate psychopathy is a stark reality. Corporations lack a moral compass and exploit for profit. However, individuals within them hold moral responsibility.

CEOs may genuinely care about the environment, but corporate structures prioritize profit. Profit-driven decisions disregard the majority's needs and ecological balance.

The pursuit of limitless profit drives destructive practices. Terminator technology, disregarding seeds and ecosystems, exemplifies the unethical pursuit of wealth.

A profound shift occurred when facing environmental questions. A task force assessed the corporation's environmental impact, leading to an awakening about responsibility.

Reading "The Ecology of Commerce" transformed a plundering mindset into one focused on sustainability. Some products should not be made sustainably, and there's a realization that plundering must become illegal.

The September 11th attacks were a devastating event, prompting reflection on the gravity of such actions.

But, every trader will tell you, who was not in that building, and who was buying gold and who owned gold and silver, that when it happened, the first thing you thought about was, well how much is gold up? The first thing that came to mind was, my God, gold must be exploding! Fortunately for us, all our clients were in gold. So when it went up they all doubled their money. Everybody doubled their money. It was a blessing in disguise. Devastating, crushing, heart-shattering, but on a financial sense, for my clients that were in the market, they all made money. Now, I wasn't looking for this type of help, but it happened. When the US bombed Iraq back in 1991, the price of oil went from $13 to $40 a barrel for Christ's sake! Now we couldn't wait for the bombs to start raining down on Saddam Hussein. We were all excited. We wanted Saddam to really create problems. Do whatever you have to do, set fire to some more oil wells, because the price is going to go higher. Every broker was chanting that, there was not a broker that I know of that wasn't excited about that. This was a disaster, this was something that was, you know, catastrophe happening. Bombing, wars. In devastation, there is opportunity.

The pursuit of profit is an old story, but there was a time when many things were regarded either as too sacred or too essential for the public good to be considered business opportunities. They were protected by tradition and public regulation. Firefighters started as private companies, yes, and lots of other people need the fire department too. And if you didn't have the medallion of a given firefighter brigade on your house and it was on fire, those firefighters would just ride on by because you didn't have a deal. Well, we gradually evolved a public trust for the provision of safety on that very specific level. This is important. We should not go back from that and start saying, "Well, you know, why don't we put that back in the market and see what that does? Maybe it will make it more efficient."

Privatization does not mean you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny. Public institutions have many side benefits. For one thing, they may purposely run at a loss. They're not out for profit. They may purposely run at a loss because of the side benefits. So, for example, if a public steel industry runs at a loss, it's providing cheap steel to other industries, maybe that's a good thing. Public institutions can have a counter-cyclic property. So that means that they can maintain employment in periods of recession, which increases demand, which helps you get out of a recession. Private companies can't do that. In a recession, throw out the workforce 'cause that's the way you make money.

There are those who intend that one day everything will be owned by somebody and we're not just talking goods here. We're talking human rights, human services, essential services for life. Education, public health, social assistance, pensions, housing. We're also talking about the survival of the planet. The areas that we believe are must be maintained in the commons, or under common control, or we will collectively die. Water and air, even in the case of air, there's been some progress. And here the idea is to say, look, we can't avoid the dumping of carbon dioxide. We can't avoid the dumping of sulfur oxides, at least we can't at the moment afford to stop it, so we're dumping a certain amount of stuff into the environment. So we're going to say with the current tonnage of sulfur oxides, for example, we will say that is the limit. And we'll create permits for that amount and we'll give them to the people who've been doing the polluting and now we will permit them to be traded. And so now there's a price attached to polluting the environment. Now, wouldn't it be marvelous if we had one of those places for everything?

It sounds like you're advocating private ownership of every square inch of the planet. Absolutely. Every cubic foot of air, water. It sounds outlandish to say we want to have the whole universe, the whole of the Earth owned. That doesn't mean I want to have Joe Bloggs owning this square foot. But it means the interests that are involved in that stream are owned by some group or by some people who have an interest in maintaining it. And that, you know, that is not such a loony idea, it's in fact the solution to a lot of these problems.

Off into space. Man, that takes real teamwork. And here's a team of junior spacemen with an out-of-this-world breakfast. Comparing the marketing of yesteryear to the marketing of today is like comparing a BB gun to a smart bomb. It's not the same as when I was a kid, or even when the people who are young adults today were kids. It's much more sophisticated, and it's much more pervasive. It's not that products themselves are bad or good. It's the notion of manipulating children into buying the products.

In 1998, Western International Media, Century City, and Lieberman Research Worldwide conducted a study on nagging. We asked parents to keep a diary for three weeks and to record every time, you could imagine, every time their child nagged them for a product, we asked them to record when, where, and why. This study was not to help parents cope with nagging. It was to help corporations help children nag for their products more effectively. Anywhere from 20% to 40% of purchases would not have occurred unless the child had nagged their parents. That is, we found for example, a quarter of all visits to theme parks wouldn't have occurred unless a child nagged their parents. Four out of ten visits to places like Chuck E. Cheese would not have occurred. And any parent would understand that, you know, when I think of Chuck E. Cheese, oh my goodness, it's noise, and there's so many kids. Why would I want to spend two hours there? But if the child nags enough, you're going to go. We saw the same thing with movies, with home video, with fast food. We do have to break through this barrier where they do tell us, or they say, they don't like it when their kids nag. Well, that's just a general attitude that they possess. It doesn't mean that they necessarily act upon it 100% of the time. You can manipulate consumers into wanting and therefore buying your products. It's a game.

Children are not "little adults"; their minds aren't developed. And what's happening is that marketers are playing to their developmental vulnerabilities. The advertising that children are exposed to today is honed by psychologists, it's enhanced by media technology that nobody ever thought was possible. The more insight you have about the consumer, the more creative you'll be in your communication strategies. So if that takes a psychologist, yeah, we want one of those on staff. I'm not saying it's wrong to make things for children, you know, and I also think it's important to acknowledge that there's also a lot of really good advertising that's out there, too. You know, advertising has done a lot of wonderful things. Advertising is like science in a way, it can be used for good or for bad. It can save lives, it can destroy them. It depends on how it's used, and that depends on who's using it.

Just as Disney recognized children's power over their parents' wallets, so did another pioneer of American advertising, Henry Ford. It's the man who knows the word "cannot" is the man who will. The all-steel body of the 1949 Ford proved Ford's point. Yes, we're emotional people, and we often will buy a product not just because it's the cheapest, and not just because it's the best, but because it's the one that we feel the best about. And sometimes that's where advertising comes in. Advertising is part of the process of saying, "Hey, I have this great product. I hope you'll feel good about it, and maybe you'll buy it." So I would defend it on that level.

To a certain extent, we all have that choice, you know, but it's not necessarily a free choice. You know, because we're so controlled by the things that we're taught, and so controlled by the advertising that we see. So that the notion of having a choice about the kind of lifestyle that you want, you don't really have that choice, you don't have that choice in the same way that you don't have that choice when it comes to the economy. There are things that are controlled by the business community, and there are things that are controlled by the state. But the one thing that they have in common is they're not controlled by you and me. That's the point. They're not controlled by you and me.

To an extent, I think the corporations have already won. You know, the consumer, the middle-class, the guy that used to represent the interest of the people, they don't represent the interests of the people anymore. I mean, in Europe, they even have this democratic deficit. And what that means is that you, the consumer, have no political representation whatsoever. And I think what we need to do is we need to be re-politicized, we need to learn the rules of the game that corporations have used to totally dominate our lives.

There's a tendency to think of corporations as an afterthought. They're just there. They're not. They're a very powerful institution in our society. And I don't think we can simply abandon our responsibility for our society by letting a bunch of unelected people control the direction that it's going in. Inevitably, the question is not about reform, but about fundamental change.

"It could be absorbed by the body and, therefore, did have implications for human health. Mysteriously, that conclusion was deleted from the final published version of their report. I personally was very concerned that there's a very serious problem of secrecy, conspiracy, and things of that nature. We have been pressured and coerced to pass drugs of questionable safety, including the rBST... We wrote the story. We had it ready a week beforehand. They bought ads... Farmers in the milk industry say it's safe, but studies suggest a link to cancer. Don't miss this special report from The Investigators.

That Friday night before the Monday, the series was to begin, the fax machine spit out a letter from this very high-priced lawyer in New York that Monsanto had hired. It contained a lot of things that were just off the wall false. Just demonstrably false, but if you didn't know the story and you didn't know how we had gone about producing, it would have scared you as a broadcaster, as a manager. And they decided that they would pull the story, and they would just check it one more time. But the bottom line was that there were no factual errors in that story. Both sides had been heard from, both sides had had an opportunity to speak.

One week later, Monsanto sent the second letter and this was even more strongly worded. And it said there will be dire consequences for FOX News if the story airs in Florida. And this time, they freaked. They were afraid of being sued and they were also afraid of losing advertising dollars, at all of the stations owned by Rupert Murdoch. And he owned more television stations than any other group in America. That's twenty-two television stations, that's a lot of advertising dollars for Roundup, Aspartame, NutraSweet, and other products.

So we got into a battle. And, uh, the first deal was the new general manager -- And his name's Dave, and Dave is a salesman. And, you know, he'd pump your hand, 'How ya doin', how ya doin'?' Called us upstairs to his office and he said, 'What would you say if I killed this piece? What if it never ran?' And we said, 'Well, you know, we wouldn't be very happy about that.' And he said, 'Well, I could kill it, you know.' and we said, 'Yes, of course; you're the manager, you could kill it, it would never air.' And he's hemming, and he's hawing, he's back, and he's forth. And we couldn't figure out what is this all about and finally, he blurted out, 'Look, would you tell anybody?' You know, I said, I'm not going to lie for you.

About a week later, he calls us back to the office and says, 'Okay, we'd like you to make these changes. In fact, you will make these changes.' We said, 'Well look, let us show you the research that we have that shows that this information you want us to broadcast isn't true.' To which he replies, 'I don't care about that.' I said, 'Pardon me?' And he said, 'Well, that's what I have lawyers for. Just write it the way the lawyers want it written.' I said, 'You know this is news, this is important. This is stuff people need to know.' And I'll never forget, he didn't pause a beat, and he said, 'We just paid three billion dollars for these television stations. We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is.'

I said, 'I'm not doing that.' And he said, 'Well,' he said, 'If you refuse to present this story the way we think it should be presented, you'll be fired for insubordination.' I said, 'I will go to the Federal Communications Commission, and I will report that I was fired from my job by you, the licensee of these public airwaves, because I refused to lie to people on the air.' And it's, thank you very much, you'll hear from us right away. Well, 24 hours came and went and we didn't hear a thing. And about a week later, he calls us back and now we've changed strategies. 'How about if we pay you some money and you just go away?' And I said, 'How much money?' Because you know when somebody offers to bribe you like that, I always want to know if it might be worth it.

He was going to offer us the rest of our year's salary if we agreed not to talk about what Monsanto had done. To not talk about the Fox corporate response in suppressing the story. And, to not talk about the story. Not talk about BGH again anywhere. Not take this story to another news organization. Zip up. I said, 'You mean, if I want to go to my daughter's PTA meetings and explain what's in the school milk at the school lunch program I, I can't?' 'No. You can never speak about this anywhere.'

And Steve says, 'Okay write it up.' And I'm like what are you talking about, 'write it up'? And I didn't say anything. And Dave, he wrote it up! And he FedExed it to us a couple of days later. And he said, 'Are you going to sign?' And we said, 'Nah Dave, we're not going to sign that.' And he said, 'Well send it back okay?' We said, 'Naw, Dave, we're not going to send that back.' It was, 'Okay we can't buy you out, we can't shut you up. Let's get the story on the air in a way that we can all agree it will go on the air.' And we started rewriting and editing with their lawyers.

Well, during this eight-month re-review process, I say jokingly, they did things like, for example, they wanted to take out the word 'cancer'. You don't have to identify what the potential problem is. Just say 'human health implications.' Any criticism of Monsanto or its product, they either removed it or minimized it. And it was very, very clear, I would say, almost every edit they made to the piece, that was the aim. And we changed this and this and this. And then, that wasn't good enough, okay now change this and this and this. Now change this and this. Version after version after version. 83 times. Eighty-three times is unheard of, it doesn't happen, you shouldn't have to rewrite something 83 times. Obviously, they didn't want to put the thing on the air, and they were trying to drive us crazy and get us to quit or wait until the first window in our contract so that they could fire us.

They, in effect, announced that they were going to fire us for no cause. Well, this was a little much. And Steve wrote a letter to the lawyer in Atlanta, whose name is Caroline Forest, the FOX corporate lawyer. And I said, 'You know this isn't about being fired for no cause. You're firing us because we refused to put on the air something that we knew and demonstrated to be false and misleading. That's what this is about. And because we put up a fight, because we stood up to this big corporation and we stood up to your editors and we stood up to your lawyers. And we said to you, look, there ought to be a principle higher than just making money.'

And she wrote a letter back and said, you are right that's exactly what it was. You stood up to us on this story and that's why we're letting you go. Big mistake. Big mistake. That says retaliation. You can't retaliate against employees if they're standing up for something that they believe is illegal, that they don't want to participate in. So that gave us the whistle blower status that we needed in the state of Florida to file a whistle blower claim against our employer. Two or three years later, we got the trial. Five weeks of testimony led to a jury verdict of $425,000, in which the jury determined that the story they pressured us to broadcast, the story we resisted telling, was, in fact, false, distorted, or slanted. Fox News appealed the verdict. Five major news media corporations filed briefs with the court in support of Fox's appeal. You may recall that Jane Akre, a former reporter here, sued FOX 13 in a whistle blower lawsuit, claiming she was fired for refusing to distort her report. The appeals court today threw that case out, saying Ms. Akre had no whistle blower claim against the station based on news distortion. FOX 13 Vice-President and General Manager, Bob Linger, says the station has been completely vindicated by the ruling. What Fox neglected to report is this: Jane sued Fox under Florida's whistleblower statute, which protects those who try to prevent others from breaking the law. But her appeal court judges found that falsifying news isn't actually against the law. So they denied Jane her whistleblower status, overturned the case, and withdrew her $425,000 award. Canada and Europe have upheld the ban on rBGH. Yet it remains hidden in much of the milk supply of the United States. The prospect that two-thirds of the world's population will have no access to fresh drinking water by 2025, has provoked the initial confrontations in a worldwide battle for control over the planet's most basic resource. When Bolivia sought to refinance the public water service of its third largest city, the World Bank required that it be privatized. Which is how The Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco gained control over all of Cochabamba's water, even that which fell from the sky. The price this beleaguered country paid for World Bank loans was the privatization of the state oil industry, and its airline, railroad, electric, and phone companies. But the government failed to convince Bolivians that water is a commodity like any other. Bolivia was determined to defend the corporation's right to charge families living on two dollars a day as much as 1/4 of their income for water. The greater the popular resistance to the water privatization scheme, the more violent became the standoff."

"As today's Chairman of Goodyear Tire knows, corporations no longer need a coup to dominate governments. Corporations have gone global, diminishing government control. Today, governments lack the power and leverage they had decades ago over corporations.

A trade agreement draft aiming to privatize various resources faced opposition from grassroots organizations. Business lobbyists dismissed dissent. Global citizens gather with a unified voice.

Corporate social responsibility is a market-driven tactic, not a deep shift. Accountability lies in the marketplace, shareholders, and public perception.

However, defining social responsibility and letting corporations decide is questioned. Government, not corporations, should make decisions affecting society.

People must accept responsibility for collective actions and harm to the Earth. Alternatives are being created through collective efforts.

Sustainable change requires a better story, a vision of doing no harm, reusing materials, and renewable energy. We can scale the mountain of sustainability.

It's essential to acknowledge the cracks in corporate structures and work together for positive change.

Corporate power can be challenged through various means like litigation, legislation, and social investment. Ultimately, a collective vision is crucial.

Change requires rethinking, redesigning, and reshaping capital and property. Communities worldwide are already creating systems that nourish the Earth and humanity.

Even within corporate-controlled media, dissenting voices can make a difference. Capitalism's greed flaw can be exploited for positive change.

While some believe people won't take action, others are convinced that change will be driven by those who leave theaters or couches inspired to make a difference."