The McLibel media strategy arose from a simple premise: this story has to
be told. Most people have been affected by McDonald's in one way or
another - working in a store, being nagged by children, stumbling through
litter, suffering ill-health or enjoying their burgers - and the
corporation's influence continues to increase as they relentlessly pursue
their "global domination strategy" (to use their own words). Two people
investing their lives to stand up to such a force has got to be a great
story in anybody's book.

Not so the British media's flimsy paperback, it seemed. Five years ago,
when I first got involved, the trial had been running for six months and
was being pretty much ignored by the mainstream media. I initially assumed
this was because they couldn't see a dynamite story if it went off in
their psions, but I soon learnt that the reality was much more sinister.

Over the last 15 years McDonald's have employed a very successful
censorship strategy. It works like this. Almost anyone who says anything
critical about them gets a legal letter. For example, in 1984 the BBC
suggested in a programme in their 'Nature' series that McDonald's is
connected with the destruction of tropical rainforest. McDonald's legal
letter demanded a retraction of the criticisms and an apology. Not wanting
a court case or damages - which can potentially cost millions - the BBC
backed down and apologised. Crucially, the allegations about rainforests
were never tested in court. Some time later, Prince Philip allegedly made
a similar comment about McDonald's and the rainforests ("So you are the
people who are tearing down the Brazilian rain forests and breeding
cattle"). The legal letter he received referred to the BBC having already
apologised over the same allegation. He backed down. Various other
organisations later apologised after getting similar letters. And so,
without ever having to prove whether they ARE actually involved in
rainforest destruction, McDonald's successfully intimidated the media into
avoiding the subject. The same tactic worked across a whole range of
criticisms levelled at the company, as the company went about threatening
more than 90 groups with legal action. Everyone from The Guardian, Daily
Mirror and The Sun to the Scottish Trade Union, New Leaf Tea Shop and a
children's theatre group received a legal letter. Not one of them defended
their criticisms in court.

Of course, we will never know how deliberate this strategy was on
McDonald's behalf - whether they fully realised the long-term effects or
whether they were just knee-jerking to each individual case as it arose.
Either way, the effects have been extraordinary in silencing the media and
creating a climate of self-censorship. I came across this attitude time
and time again over the years. Several TV stations and newspapers pulled
McLibel stories at the last minute and chat-show producers briefed me that
I couldn't mention "the issues". (It feels fairly ridiculous talking about
fighting a company that produces burgers without being allowed to explain
why.)

McDonald's also use the power of their advertising dollars to stop
negative stories being told. The Corporation allegedly threatened to
remove 80,000 pounds worth of advertising from The Independent (ho ho)
after the newspaper ran a front-page story about a secret settlement
meeting. This was a particularly clever move on McDonald's behalf, as The
Independent had been one of only two UK papers covering the trial in any
depth. Not any more.

All of which meant that, in mid-1995, it was a small group of media
lawyers who were deciding what the public could hear about McLibel. And
there isn't much chance of a lawyer risking their job by recommending that
their newspaper go ahead and print an article which could land them in
court. As our own lawyer (ho ho 2) says, "One has the distinct feeling
that if the (programme/article) were not about McDonald's but Joe's Cafe,
the broadcasters' editorial courage might return."

Luckily those good people at the US Military had invented us a solution.
The internet. Fast, global, accessible, uncensorable. Over a six month
period, about twenty core volunteers built 'McSpotlight', a website
dedicated to 'McDonald's, McLibel, Multinationals'. This time was
impossibly exciting for all sorts of reasons: we were in uncharted waters
and had free rein over the new media; we were finally going to get the
story out the way we wanted to tell it; there was nothing McDonald's could
do; everyone was shagging each other. I guess that last part isn't
crucial (or accurate) were the official story ever to be told. By great
fortune, we bumped into the xs4all crew online and they swept us off our
feet. Not only did they agree to host the site - which was crucial as it
had to be based outside the reach of the UK's ridiculous libel laws - but
they also quickly brought us up to speed on internet law. Fresh from their
run-in with the Scientologists, they were full of ideas on how to prevent
McDonald's from ever censoring the story again. In particular, they came
up with the then unheard-of idea of using mirror sites - whereby exact
copies of McSpotlight would be running from different servers in different
countries. If McDonald's chopped off one head, another could grow
somewhere else. Another key idea was 'the kit', which is a squashed
version of the site available for anyone to download onto their own
harddisc and keep safe. After a week or two there were a couple of hundred
copies scattered around the world. This must have been pretty galling to
McD's, as their original motivation for suing Helen and Dave way back when
was to stop the information in the leaflets getting to the public.

McSpotlight was previewed in January 1996 at the first Next Five Minutes
conference. The response we got there gave us an inkling of what was to
come when Helen and Dave officially launched the site in London that
February. We now like to claim that we've had the most press coverage of
any website in the world ever. Which might just be true. Time magazine,
der Speigel, Sydney Morning Herald, Times of India, Tagezeitung, Wired,
Daily Mail, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Australian, LA Times,
Helsingen Snomat and so many others that we ran out of cardboard boxes to
store them in. And then America's largest selling paper, USA Today, put
McSpot on the front cover and the world's biggest documentary show, 60
Minutes', did a feature. The site has also been mentioned in quiz shows,
studio debates, opinion pieces, legal text books, PhD thesis, court cases
and parliament.

Web stats don't mean nuffink, of course, but hey. The main xs4all site has
now had over 70 million hits - not including the US mirror, which has
contributed at least the same again - and it's still getting 2 million
hits a month. One particular regular visitor was "mcdonalds.com", which
accessed McSpotlight over 2000 times in the first week. Many people cite
the publication of the Starr Report as the day the internet came of age,
but we prefer to think it was on the week of the McLibel verdict, when we
had the result up within 10 minutes of the Judge's ruling - a good 20
minutes before any other media outlet - and when 2.2 million people
dropped in.

There are many reasons for this success. Firstly, burgers. We couldn't
really have picked a more high-profile opponent - everyone wants to hear
the dirt on success stories of their calibre. Add that to the trial, which
was fast becoming legendary, and we were guaranteed mega-hits. Secondly,
content. Certainly at the time of the launch, most websites were happy to
show off their gifs and <hr>s, but none seemed concerned about whether
their existence had any point. With all the research from the trial -
witness statements, legal documents, press cuttings, interviews - at our
disposal, we soon had 10,000 pages online. (Actually that may not be true.
Noone can remember how many it was.) After a year or so it jumped up to
200,000 when we added all 313 days of court transcripts - a first in many
respects. Thirdly, wit. We didn't want to suffer a similar fate to many
of the activist websites of the time, through which only the hardiest
fanatic could wade. Our task was not difficult as the McDonald's ethos
provides such rich pickings. Hopefully this attitude also translated into
the design, which aimed to be confident, intuitive and impressive in its
own right and which was generally being overlooked at this time. Fourthly,
nerds. McSpotlight was groundbreaking in many ways and attracted a lot of
publicity and traffic from the geek population. For example, the "Tour of
McDonald's website", not only utilised the brand-new frames function, but
also invented the technique of mixing two sites in one - we linked to
pages from McDonald's own website on one side and displayed our commentary
on the other. Wired called it "truly inspirational". We were also quick
off the ground to incorporate a Debating Room into the site, which has
proved immensely popular to this day. Fiftly, people. We were inundated
with professionals offering to contribute corporate code/ designs/ skills/
enthusiasm to something with a bit of a point. But probably the largest
reason for its success is censorship. Here was a genuine example of
censored material finding a new audience via an uncontrollable new medium.
And who doesn't want to see what it is that the Big Boys don't want us to
know?

However, for me, McSpotlight was just a diversion from the real reason I
got involved with McLibel: to make a TV documentary about the trial.
Throughout the whole saga I was convinced that the mainstream TV would
welcome such a film with open arms - especially given the dross that goes
out day after day - as it has all the elements needed for a top
documentary. From spies and secret recordings to global icons versus the
underdogs, I felt there was no way the TV companies would reject our
proposals. But reject them they did. So we decided to go ahead and make
the film off our own backs, with no funding. (For selfish reasons, I was
quite glad they wouldn't commission at this early stage as there's no way
a first-time film maker would have been given the opportunity to handle
such an important story for a major network.) The film was made over two
and a half years, by a volunteer crew which included the acclaimed
director Ken Loach. (Get yourself off to 'My Name is Joe' if you haven't
seen it yet. It's truly staggering.) He directed the courtroom
reconstructions for us, ashamedly admitting during filming that he had
once made a McDonald's commercial. Towards the end of the trial, the BBC
decided to buy our film for a slot directly after the verdict. We were
delighted. But a few days before transmission it was pulled for legal
reasons. Channel 4 picked it up but, again, the lawyers put a stop to the
broadcast. The film had become a victim of the very thing it portrayed:
McDonald's censorship of the media.

So we turned to new forms of distribution: home video, cable & satellite,
film festivals, mobile solar-powered cinemas and, of course, the internet.
(Watch the whole film at www.spanner.org/mclibel/vdo). Last month we held
a 'Global Screening' to celebrate the start of the defendants' appeal in
the High Court. From just one email message, 104 screenings in 19
countries were held and we estimate that about 8 million people watched
the film. Which kind of makes me think that there's a lot of untapped
potential in email. As a result of the screening, we have also secured our
first 'real' broadcast, although I won't tempt fate by mentioning which
country.

Not that I believe our efforts are going to make any inroads into
McDonald's runaway success. Only yesterday someone said to me that some
friends of his had stumbled across McSpotlight and were so outraged that
from now on they'll only go to Burger King. Oh dear. All we hoped to do
was to provide easily-accessible information to anyone who wanted to make
informed choices about whether to give their money to multinational
corporations. We never forced anyone to visit McSpotlight or watch the
film. Which contrasts nicely with McDonald's attitude of spending 2
billion dollars each year on ensuring that no-one can turn on a TV, walk
down a street, participate in sports or go to school without a red-wigged
clown barging into their consciousness. Mammals and dinosaurs.

One last point. Did you know that the concept of the Ronald McDonald
Houses for sick children was invented by an advertising agency?

McSpotlight
http://www.mcspotlight.org

McSpot guided tour of McDonald's website
http://www.mcspotlight.org/tours/

McLibel documentary
http://www.spanner.org/mclibel/

Watch the film
http://www.spanner.org/mclibel/vdo

Upcoming screenings of the film
http://www.spanner.org/mclibel/distribution/globalscreeninglist.html

The making of the documentary
http://www.spanner.org/mclibel/reviews/press/guardian_jun98.html

- To unsubscribe, send the message "unsubscribe n5m3-debates-l"
- to majordomo@waag.org
-
- Archive: http://www.n5m.org/mail-archive/hypermail2/