Given the fact that many in the media are skeptical of business, companies and industry groups should expect that their actions on public policy matters will be scrutinized. If the businesses are perceived to be large and powerful, any steps they take may be judged by a different standard.
The sugar industry's decision last week to hold a counter-demonstration outside of the location where a fundraiser was planned by a group advocating ballot measures targeting the industry drew a scathing editorial from the Miami Herald.
After the Coral Gables, Fla., fundraiser was canceled because the host site was concerned about traffic problems the counter-demonstration by the sugar industry might cause, the paper's editor, Jim Hampton, labeled the move "out-and-out intimidation." He asserted that the call by a sugar industry PR counselor, Ray Casas of Wragg & Casas, Miami, to the Coral Gables police notifying them that a counter-demonstration would bring hundreds of protestors into a quiet neighborhood was meant to quash the fundraiser, which was to raise money for ads in favor of the ballot measures.
When Fairchild Tropical Garden, the host of the fundraiser, was contacted by local police, it chose to cancel the meeting, to avoid neighborhood disruption. Wrote Hampton:
"Big Sugar blithely attempted to portray itself as merely holding a hot-dog cookout for workers from the sugar industry outside the garden gates while the 'swells' ate lavishly within. That just won't wash. This was rank, blunt, intolerable intimidation, pure and simple."
Contacted by PR NEWS, Ray Casas declined to comment, and referred us to his response to the Herald, printed on Oct. 15, two days after the Hampton editorial.
Casas wrote that his call to the police was standard policy for a public demonstration, and was not meant to be intimidate. "As an experienced event organizer, I knew that the call to the police was the first step in assuring a safe, nondisruptive, nonconfrontational event, similar to many we have executed." Casas wrote that, after speaking with authorities about the planned sugar rally, the number of participants was reduced to 250, from 1,000.
A short response by Hampton was printed at the bottom of Casas' letter, in which he apologized for not calling Casas before he ran his editorial. But Hampton did not alter his position that the sugar industry tactic amounted to intimidation and interference with First Amendment rights to free speech.
While it is hard to know if the sugar industry intended to halt the meeting, a clear lesson for corporations from the event is that they must tread carefully in public debates. Otherwise, they are likely to be roundly and publicly criticized--which can only damage the cause they are pursuing.