Chemical Lawfare: Lessons From Carey Gillam & Robert Bilott's Battles to Expose Monsanto & DuPont

2/23/2021

Foreign Press Association USA
Press Briefing
Monday February 21st, 2021
Chemical Lawfare:
Lessons From Carey Gillam & Robert Bilott's Battles to Expose Monsanto & DuPont

How did investigative journalist Carey Gillam expose the health risks of Monsanto’s glyphosate and attorney Robert Bilott, DuPont’s pollution of waterways with PFAS forever chemicals? By a persistent focus on exposing the facts that both companies went great lengths to hide.

In the latest Zoom briefing for the FPA, Gillam and Bilott share how they wrestled with the companies that are now ordered expected to pay billions in costs and damages, the efforts that were made to discredit them, the failures of the Environmental Protection Agency and lessons for journalists.

Interviewed by Foreign Press Association President and award-winning journalist Ian Williams, the Zoom discussion is a must watch for journalists, journalism students, whistle blowers and environmentalists. It is also a warning to corporate leaders of the consequences of reckless attitudes to public health on brands and bottom lines.

TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE HERE

Takeaways include:

Where there may be a lot of grey, hard facts are essential for telling the story, which in these cases involved many years of persistent reporting and investigating. In both the Monsanto and DuPont cases the companies’ internal memos shows they discussed and knew the risks, but covered them up.

Journalists must seek out independent scientific perspectives and not rely on research paid for or supported by corporations which try to dominate the agenda.

The companies went to great lengths to discredit and bully Gillam and Bilott. They engaged PR experts and other organizations campaigns and tried hard to woo and even buy journalists and media organizations.

Despite media coverage, books and even a Hollywood documentary about Bilott’s pursuit of DuPont (Dark Waters), both of them confess surprise at the lack of public attention to these cases despite the millions of Americans at risk from these chemicals.

Gillam shares the importance of journalists doing what they are supposed to do: not to reprint press releases, but to standup and ask the tough questions. She also highlights the challenge for media organizations of not becoming beholden to corporate interests.

As Ian William’s shares in the webinar, when the former FPA President, David Michaels turned down expelled Executive Director Thanos Dimadis’ efforts to give Bayer AG influence over our organization and engage in a secret discussion to compensate himself, Dimadis left, sabotaged the FPA, took membership lists and engaged in an effort to defame the FPA,
(see Gillam’s Guardian article), setting up a Potemkin organization with funding from the pharmaceutical and chemical giant.

Robert Bilott - Exposure

Carey Gillam: The Monsanto Papers

2 Comments

Eric Bjerregaard

2/25/2021 06:35:19

Gillam has exposed no problems or risks concerning glyphosate. Use of the chemical saves countless
Hours of manual labor, keeps food cost effective, saves diesel fuel, helps make no till feasible, and reduces use of other herbicides. As the AHS, thousands of other studies, the not rising NHL rates and rulings by the worlds regulators show. It is not a probable carcinogen. Both the IARC and
Gillam are bald faced nasty
Liars on that topic. She is not a journalist. She is a
Publicist that works for the dishonest agency called usrtk. Interviewing her was a mistake that will damage your organization.

David Zaruk link

2/25/2021 17:38:42

Shouldn't a press association research the people they are giving a microphone to? Carey Gillam is an activist for US Right to Know, an NGO that campaigns against chemicals. She claims she is a journalist but USRTK pays her over 100,000 a year and she uses HuffPost, The Guardian and activist media pages to publish her campaign material. She introduces herself as "a researcher that does FOIAs" (but doesn't even mention the name). Well ... No. US Right to Know pays journalists and researchers to publish materials they ghostwrite (also in Europe) and then amplify in their media webs. When I tried to get them to declare who received the tens of thousands of dollars in their IRS filings (for publishing their campaign materials), they refused to be transparent. And yet you allow her to bang on about how industry is immoral in how they are not transparent and ghostwrite materials.
The worst thing about Carey Gillam is how she is working with tort law firms that have been caught secretly paying scientists like Chris Portier to go to IARC (the WHO cancer agency) to get a monograph stating that glyphosate might be a carcinogen, and on the basis of that publication, use it to extort 11 billion USD from Bayer even though there is no other scientific body to have come to that same conclusion. These same scientists (whom Carey also socializes with) are then paid $500/hr to serve as litigation consultants in these cases against Bayer. One glyphosate tort lawyer Carey regularly associated with was Tim Litzenberg, now in prison for trying to extort a company for 200 million. If the company did not pay up, Litzenberg threatened expose the company in the media (using some trusted activist "journalist" no doubt).
And now these little nasties are using your microphone to bang on about how we need NGOs and lawyers to keep us safe (and you are even helping them fundraise).
How terribly amateur and embarrassing for a press association to allow themselves to be hoodwinked.

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