Friends of Coal, Friends of Coal Industry

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Readers have asked us to take a look at a West Virginian organization calling themselves the โ€œFriends ofย Coal.โ€

According to their website, the Friends of Coal is a โ€œโ€ฆ volunteer organization that consists of both West Virginians and residents from beyond our borders.โ€ Sounds all very grassroots. Just a group of citizens joining together to cheer on the glories ofย coal.

For a volunteer organization Friends of Coal are very well-heeled – how many volunteer groups have a sponsored race car, run television ads and send logo-ed frisbees to the troops inย Iraq?

Notย 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. 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 to the West Virginia Coalย Association.

The membership of the West Virginia Coal Association is the who’s who of the coalย 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 astroturfingย works.

At least it does until pesky sites like DeSmogBlog start to pokeย around!

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Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a โ€œGreen Heroโ€ by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the โ€œTop 50 Tweetersโ€ on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevinโ€™s research into the โ€œclimate denial industryโ€ and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Kochโ€™s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea partyย networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a โ€œCertified Expertโ€ on theย political and community organizing platformย NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the worldโ€™s best e-Content and innovative ICTย applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

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