Lies, Incorporated: how big business has created 'alternative facts' for decades

Recent history suggests that Donald Trump is not so much an originator as a more outrageous heir to a school of lying that has been well used by others to obfuscate truths and avoid accountability. For example, the invasion of Iraq, under the pretext of searching for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, rested on "alternative facts" from the start. London and Washington heavy-hitters made sizeable dents in political credibility as they scrambled to justify the unjustifiable and defend the indefensible. Chilling, indeed, was British prime minister Tony Blair's curt dismissal of evidence contrary to his position – "I only know what I believe" – to a disbelieving Labour Party conference in 2004. How can you argue at all logically with a statement like that?

But even more alarming was what emerged across the Atlantic when United States officials were faced with questions about Iraq. In an interview with The New York Times' Ron Suskind, a senior White House aid (unnamed, but widely thought to be then president George W. Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove) offered what amounts to a philosophical underpinning of alternative facts.

When Suskind put contrary evidence about Iraq to the aide, he was told bluntly that people like him (Suskind) were "in what we call the reality-based community". The official put Suskind among the "people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality".

To a stunned Suskind, the official continued: "That's not the way the world works any more ... We're an empire and, when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too, and that's how things will sort out."

The official manoeuvring prompted British political journalist Peter Oborne to write a book, The Rise of Political Lying, in which he says the consequences of the behaviour of the two governments are startling: "It gives Bush or Blair total freedom to make whatever statements they like about Iraq, about weapons of mass destruction, or for that matter to attest that the moon is made of green cheese."

But a more recent book looks beyond the purely political sphere to uncover a culture of lying, falsification and disinformation that permeates American corporate culture and its toxic effects on public policy.

Radio presenter and commentator Ari Rabin-Havt, in conjunction with non-profit media research centre Media Matters for America, have produced a book called Lies, Incorporated, which lifts the lid on the burgeoning multibillion-dollar industry that had grown up to organise and disseminate misinformation in crucial areas of public debate in the service of (often hidden) political agendas.

Lies, Incorporated, in its diligent investigation, traces how this industry has crippled or subverted legislative progress on a wide range of issues of high public concern, including tobacco regulation, healthcare, climate change, gun control, immigration, abortion and marriage equality. If there were any lingering doubts that policymaking has been hijacked by special interests, this book swiftly dispels them.

The industry Rabin-Havt characterises in the book's title, was born on December 15, 1953, when the heads of the big tobacco companies met in New York City to discuss a report recently published by the respected Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research about a study linking cigarette tar to cancer in mice.

Addressing the concerned tobacco chiefs was John Hill, founder of public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, who urged Big Tobacco not to just deny the claims but to fight back. With Hill's know-how and big tobacco's money came the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, whose job, apart from furnishing "alternative facts", was to exploit the caution of scientific probability and sow public confusion. In this way, genuine scientific research was undermined, legislative action was stalled or attenuated, and public interest was most certainly not served.

Rabin-Havt observes that "Hill & Knowlton's efforts to cast doubt on the dangers of tobacco is one of the most successful public relations campaigns in history". This provided a playbook that has been used repeatedly over the years, most recently in seeking to arrest action on climate change.

Another tactic that Lies, Incorporated draws attention to is the ubiquitous front organisation, masquerading as a disinterested professional body, research institute or thinktank.

One such example is the serious-sounding Employment Policies Institute, whose report on the effects of increasing the minimum wage even found its way into the august and influential pages of The Wall Street Journal, which quoted the study's author as saying: "There's never a good time to raise the minimum wage."

The institute, dignified by the WSJ as "a right-leaning thinktank", actually had no employees, no office and operated out of the headquarters of notorious public relations man Richard Berman. Its entire funding came from the fast-food industry. Berman, who wears with pride the "Dr Evil" tag his detractors have applied to him, has, according to Rabin-Havt, effectively blurred the lines between political operatives, corporate lobbyists, and the thinktank world, sowing confusion on behalf of his clients.

Somehow, this might not be the Washington swamp that Trump has vowed to drain.

Dr Norman Abjorensen is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Crawford School of Public Policy, and author of The Manner of Their Going: Prime Ministerial Exits from Lyne to Abbott. norman.abjorensen@anu.edu.au

Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics, by Ari Rabin-Havt and Media Matters for America, is published by Anchor Books (2016). RRP: $27