Readers have asked us to take a look at a West Virginian organization calling themselves the "Friends of Coal." [2]
According to their website, the Friends of Coal [3] is a "... volunteer organization that consists of both West Virginians and residents from beyond our borders." Sounds all very grassroots. Just a group of citizens joining together to cheer on the glories of coal.
For a volunteer organization Friends of Coal are very well-heeled - how many volunteer groups have a sponsored race car, [4] run television ads [5] and send logo-ed frisbees to the troops in Iraq? [6]
Not many.
It didn't take long though to figure out where all that money is coming from. The Friends of Coal is a thinly veiled front group of the main coal industry lobby group in West Virginia, the West Virginia Coal Association. [7] Most obvious is the logo in the bottom left hand corner of the Friends of Coal website (but no disclosure of their involvement) and a quick domain name search finds that the Friends of Coal website is registered [8] to the West Virginia Coal Association.
The membership of the West Virginia Coal Association [9] is the who's who of the coal industry.
The technique is called astroturfing and it's one of the oldest public relations ploys in the spindoctor play-book. While most people inherently mistrust big industry, they do trust their neighbors and groups who do not appear agenda-driven and that's why astroturfing works.
At least it does until pesky sites like DeSmogBlog start to poke around!