FREEDOM OF INFO

BOOK REVIEW - THE PLAYBOOK

The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, And Make a Killing in The Corporate World by Jennifer Jacquet 2022. Published by Pantheon ISBN: 9781101871010

As librarians, we are proud to be seen as unbiased providers of accurate and reliable information, but not everyone is playing by the same rules. When faced with knowledge that poses a risk to their business, corporations typically deploy a range of tactics and strategies designed to undermine faith in experts and delay the implementation of evidence-based policies and regulations that could hurt their bottom line. Imagine if we had access to the playbook of corporate lying, setting out all the cynical tricks and tools that businesses use to spread disinformation and deny the truth? Thanks to Jennifer Jacquet, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University and director of XE: Experimental

Humanities and Social Engagement, we now have such a playbook, or at least the next best thing.

In the absence of an actual corporate playbook, Jacquet has given us her own version, based on much research and years of shuffling through the detritus of corporate greed and denial. And the message is alarming, to say the least. In the corporate world, where truth is of no concern, and the only goal is to make profits for shareholders, denial is seen as a fiduciary duty. By denying scientific facts, companies can delay the introduction of regulations and laws that would hurt them and prevent them from making money.

Corporate denial pays big (there are some eyewatering numbers in this book). Companies can afford to invest huge sums of money on media messaging, public relations, lobbying politicians, paying off experts, and setting up fake community groups, think tanks, and consulting firms, all with the aim of swamping genuine research with lies, deceit, and misinformation on an enormous scale.

The strategy set out in this playbook is a four-step process, with the stakes getting higher at each turn. Firstly, the aim is to challenge the problem. This is the outright denial stage where the message is that “there is no problem”. When sufficient evidence has accumulated to make this untenable, then challenge the causation – “there is a problem, but it’s not our fault”. When that stops working, challenge the messenger. This is where things get really nasty. Lastly, when all else fails, challenge the policy as too costly, ineffective, arbitrary, or even more depressingly, too late. Anything that slows down regulatory, or policy change is fair game. For each of these stages, Jacquet lays out an astonishing variety of tactics that have been used in a range of industries including tobacco, oil, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, backed up a damning chargesheet of horrific examples and illuminating case-studies.

Perhaps most interesting is the section on ‘Outside Opportunities,’ which lays out ways that independent ideas arising outside the corporation can unwittingly help to “sow doubt, redirect blame, or push the problem aside” (p.153). For example,

claims that issues such as climate change are complex and that human nature does not equip us well to solve them, play into the hands of the corporation. They obfuscate, giving a false sense of uncertainty and making it harder for policy makers and regulators to make a case for change.

I wonder if there’s a lesson here for librarians? Does our admirable commitment to represent all competing knowledge claims and points of view make us unwittingly complicit in the corporations’ cause? Librarians and archivists like to claim that they are objective and impartial. But the truth is that curation and interpretation have always been part of what we do, and ‘archival power’ has often been deployed in the service of the state or other vested interests1. Perhaps we should ask ourselves if our supposed neutrality helps corporations to deny and obscure the truth that we value so highly and try so hard to be good custodians of. Many libraries use MUSTIE criteria for weeding and deselection. But do we need a wider interpretation of ‘Misleading’ that acknowledges the ways that businesses weaponize information to normalise misleading ideas that support their own agendas?

There is some hope in this book. The final section sets out several near-term threats that corporations face, such as increasing pushback from their own employees (aided by technological innovations that make whistleblowing easier and safer). Student activism and disclosure policies for university staff who choose to work with and take money from industry. And a rise in the implementation of disinformation policies within organisations and disinformation reporting in the media2. Does your library, or the wider organisation it is part of, have a disinformation policy? What influence could your library have in this?

In summary, I can’t recommend this book highly enough to anyone in the library profession who wants to understand the motivations and methods of businesses that undermine our ability to reliably assess the information used to make decisions about how they should be controlled and regulated. This book contains so much useful insight and information, it’s just a real shame that it doesn’t have an index!