This document has been posted in July of 2000, but it is so extensive I have covered different items of interest in this posting.
This 1985 speech from Philip Morris (PM) reveals much about PM's corporate manipulation of governments, the media and even smokers. According to the document, PM's relationship with newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch (a long-time member of Philip Morris' board) went a long way towards erasing anti-tobacco coverage from newspapers around the world:
"...Another area we intend to exploit more fully is the ad agencies and media proprietors....As regard the media, we plan to build similar relationships to those we now have with Murdoch's News Limited with other newspaper proprietors. Murdoch's papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles these days...."
PM also cultivated "favorable press" about secondhand smoke by organizing journalists conferences where PM "educated" reporters on how to write "balanced" articles on secondhand smoke issues:
"...Turning now to primary and passive smoking...To get more favorable press, we are contemplating organizing another journalists' conference similar to the one we put together in Madrid for Latin American journalists in 1984."
In PM's evaluation of their enemies and their allies, the PM official who gave this speech acknowledged that the medical profession and government health ministers were their "formidable adversaries," and even acknowledged that most smokers wished they could stop smoking:
"I think we have to face up to the reality that the smoking and health lobby is winning. The anti-smoking zealots are becoming more vociferous, more experienced, better organized, and generally more effective. The medical profession is a formidable adversary. Health ministers sincerely believe smoking is bad. And, more important than all of this, is the fact that smokers wished they didn't smoke.
Perhaps we can't ever shift the balance back in favor of the industry but we have to keep trying..."
Despite acknowledging that most smokers would like to quit, rather than sympathize with this, PM believed they needed to use their control over smokers to organize them to help protect the tobacco industry:
First we must work harder at getting smokers to help the industry. If we are to have any success at changing the climate of opinion, we have to get the smokers more on our side, or at least enough of them to start to make a difference.