Chevron Blogger Dumped by San Francisco Chronicle for Ethics Lapse

Zennie Among Several Paid By Chevron To Fake Positive News Coverage

The San Francisco Chronicle has finally thrown blogger Zennie Abraham off of its website City Brights after his ties to a Chevron operative were disclosed.

Recently, The Chevron Pit, exposed Zennie and his connections to Sam Singer, a Chevron media consultant based in San Francisco. Singer clearly pays Zennie to write positively about many of his clients, including Chevron. See this post here. Yet, Zennie never disclosed that he was paid to shill for Singer's clients.

The Chronicle’s decision to take a more ethical look and ultimately terminate Zennie should be applauded. Considering that Chevron often uses underhanded methods to buy positive media, the hometown newspaper of the San Ramon-based company is no longer being used as an unwitting instrument of the oil giant.

Chevron has a long and sordid history with writers like Zennie who pretend to be something they are not, so Chevron can circulate its deceptions about the company’s intentional contamination of the Ecuadorian rainforest.

Given the oil giant’s horrific record of contamination in both Ecuador and the U.S, paying for good news is about the only way for Chevron to get any. This year an Ecuador court awarded a group of indigenous tribes $18 billion for damages related to oil contamination left by Chevron in the rainforest. Several months later, a U.S. court denied efforts by Chevron to avoid paying the judgment.

Chevron, though, sees itself above the law of the land and doesn’t hesitate to resort to such tactics as:

Allowing the spouse of a Chevron employee to fake being an independent journalist so he could attack the legal case of the Ecuadorians.

Pro-Chevron blogger, Alex Thorne, tried to pass himself off as a legitimate journalist by emailing questions to environmental groups about their funding of the San Francisco-based Amazon Watch, a supporter of the Ecuadorians. Thorne claimed to be working on an “article” for a publication that he refused to specify. He also did not use his last name in the email, signing it only as “Alex.” The e-mails then asked the funders “if it is time” to “reevaluate” their support for Amazon Watch in light of Chevron’s phony charges of fraud in the lawsuit.

But Thorne failed to acknowledge two major points in his emails to the environmental groups. First, he is married to Kristen Thorne, Chevron’s senior policy advisor on environment and energy issues. Second, he has operated a pro-Chevron website critical of the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit against Chevron.

After these facts came to light, Thorne closed down his blog.

Trying to pay a journalist to spy on the Ecuadorians.

In 2010, Chevron tried to pay a real journalist $20,000 to spy on sick Ecuadorians to determine if they really had illnesses. Chevron wanted the reporter, Mary Cuddehe, to lie to the Ecuadorians saying she wanted an “interview” about their medical condition when really she would be reporting back to Chevron. Recruited by Kroll – a private investigative firm hired by Chevron – Cuddehe considered the offer. Her conscious got the best of her, though. She turned Chevron down and then wrote about the whole thing, exposing Chevron’s deception.

Faking a television newscast sympathetic to the company.

In 2009 when Chevron learned that a potentially damaging report about the company’s oil contamination in the Amazon rain forest was being prepared by 60 Minutes Chevron executives hired former CNN correspondent, Gene Randall, to produce a misleading report espousing solely Chevron’s point of view but appearing to be objective.

In the video produced by Chevron, Randall, interviewed Chevron’s managers and consultants but completely ignored the arguments of the plaintiffs. The fake news report ends with the deceptive voiceover “Gene Randall reporting.”

The “news cast” remains on Chevron’s web site and appears in Google searches.

As for Zennie, we can only hope that one day he’ll get a real job.

Read More

Chevron’s Favorite Blogger, Zennie Abraham:

Is He On The Chevron Payroll Or Just A Punk for Corporate Interests?
 Should The San Francisco Chronicle Disclose Zennie’s Conflict of Interest?

Zennie Abraham, a San Francisco-based blogger who has been quick to judge other people’s “ethics” around seemingly unrelated controversies, may have his own ethical, if not, legal problems, a source tells The Chevron Pit.




Zennie Abraham

Out of respect for the source’s wishes, we won’t repeat the details of his problems now but, when made public, they may end Zennie’s bizarre association with many Bay Area companies that he defends and praises in his online rants, including the country’s third largest corporation, Chevron.


Chevron has a long and sordid history with writers, like Zennie, pretending to be something they are not so Chevron can circulate its deceptions about the company’s intentional contamination of the Ecuadorian rainforest. Just recently a pro-Chevron blogger, Alex Thorne, tried to pass himself off as a serious journalist by emailing pro-environment groups questions about their funding. He recently closed down his blog because of the controversy. And, then there was the classic Chevron stunt of trying to pay a real journalist $20,000 to spy on sick Ecuadorians to determine if they really had illnesses. She declined and then wrote about it! And, we can’t forget Chevron’s hiring a former CNN anchor to fake a newscast sympathetic to the company.


As for Zennie, he has been throwing Google bombs our way for years. His blogs are predictable and usually worth ignoring.


But, our source’s latest bit of news motivated us to take a closer look at Zennie’s blogs, which on the surface appear to be this random selection of Bay Area controversies mixed in with sports news and inappropriate videos of women.


After about 15 minutes of playing mix and match online, it wasn’t hard to figure out the common denominator: Sam Singer.


Sam Singer, a San Francisco public relations executive, promotes himself as “The Fixer” and lists a number of corporate clients on his web site that he has “fixed” things for, including Chevron and, oddly enough, The San Francisco Chronicle which, by the way, runs Zennie’s blog regularly on its City Brights site.



Sam Singer

Singer came to our attention in 2008 when Chevron retained him to smear the highly-respected Goldman Foundation and its award of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize to Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo, two Ecuadorian leaders in the effort to cleanup the contamination that Chevron left behind in the rainforest.


For the most part, Singer didn’t have much luck with his smear campaign, but Zennie came to his rescue scoring critical blogs about the two award-winning Ecuadorians and many other blogs related to their lawsuit against Chevron.


Zennie has come to Singer’s rescue of his corporate clients many times before and since:

Singer also represents the California Pacific Medical Center. Zennie writes favorably about the California Pacific Medical Center.


Singer also represents Page Mill Properties. Zennie writes favorably about Page Mill Properties.


Singer also represents Recology. Zennie writes favorably of Recology.


Singer also represents Calpine. Zennie writes favorably of Calpine.


We quickly grew weary, mixing and matching Singer’s client list with Zennie’s blogs, but you get the picture.


Zennie disavows any financial relationship with Singer or his clients, saying he simply believes in these companies’ positions. As you might have guessed by now, we don’t believe him.


We are not the only ones either. San Francisco’s alternative online newspaper, Beyond Chron: The Voice of the Rest, was the first to notice.


We would encourage the other San Francisco newspaper, The Chronicle, to require Zennie to disclose his relationship with Singer and his clients, given that Zennie has no other explanation for this odd alignment of interests other than “coincidence.”


And, based on our sources, The Chronicle may want to take a closer, “ethical” look at one of their most prolific bloggers before they, too, have some explaining to do.

Read More

Chevron’s Favorite Blogger, Zennie Abraham:

Is He On The Chevron Payroll Or Just A Punk for Corporate Interests?
 Should The San Francisco Chronicle Disclose Zennie’s Conflict of Interest?

Zennie Abraham, a San Francisco-based blogger who has been quick to judge other people’s “ethics” around seemingly unrelated controversies, may have his own ethical, if not, legal problems, a source tells The Chevron Pit.




Zennie Abraham

Out of respect for the source’s wishes, we won’t repeat the details of his problems now but, when made public, they may end Zennie’s bizarre association with many Bay Area companies that he defends and praises in his online rants, including the country’s third largest corporation, Chevron.


Chevron has a long and sordid history with writers, like Zennie, pretending to be something they are not so Chevron can circulate its deceptions about the company’s intentional contamination of the Ecuadorian rainforest. Just recently a pro-Chevron blogger, Alex Thorne, tried to pass himself off as a serious journalist by emailing pro-environment groups questions about their funding. He recently closed down his blog because of the controversy. And, then there was the classic Chevron stunt of trying to pay a real journalist $20,000 to spy on sick Ecuadorians to determine if they really had illnesses. She declined and then wrote about it! And, we can’t forget Chevron’s hiring a former CNN anchor to fake a newscast sympathetic to the company.


As for Zennie, he has been throwing Google bombs our way for years. His blogs are predictable and usually worth ignoring.


But, our source’s latest bit of news motivated us to take a closer look at Zennie’s blogs, which on the surface appear to be this random selection of Bay Area controversies mixed in with sports news and inappropriate videos of women.


After about 15 minutes of playing mix and match online, it wasn’t hard to figure out the common denominator: Sam Singer.


Sam Singer, a San Francisco public relations executive, promotes himself as “The Fixer” and lists a number of corporate clients on his web site that he has “fixed” things for, including Chevron and, oddly enough, The San Francisco Chronicle which, by the way, runs Zennie’s blog regularly on its City Brights site.



Sam Singer

Singer came to our attention in 2008 when Chevron retained him to smear the highly-respected Goldman Foundation and its award of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize to Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo, two Ecuadorian leaders in the effort to cleanup the contamination that Chevron left behind in the rainforest.


For the most part, Singer didn’t have much luck with his smear campaign, but Zennie came to his rescue scoring critical blogs about the two award-winning Ecuadorians and many other blogs related to their lawsuit against Chevron.


Zennie has come to Singer’s rescue of his corporate clients many times before and since:

Singer also represents the California Pacific Medical Center. Zennie writes favorably about the California Pacific Medical Center.


Singer also represents Page Mill Properties. Zennie writes favorably about Page Mill Properties.


Singer also represents Recology. Zennie writes favorably of Recology.


Singer also represents Calpine. Zennie writes favorably of Calpine.


We quickly grew weary, mixing and matching Singer’s client list with Zennie’s blogs, but you get the picture.


Zennie disavows any financial relationship with Singer or his clients, saying he simply believes in these companies’ positions. As you might have guessed by now, we don’t believe him.


We are not the only ones either. San Francisco’s alternative online newspaper, Beyond Chron: The Voice of the Rest, was the first to notice.


We would encourage the other San Francisco newspaper, The Chronicle, to require Zennie to disclose his relationship with Singer and his clients, given that Zennie has no other explanation for this odd alignment of interests other than “coincidence.”


And, based on our sources, The Chronicle may want to take a closer, “ethical” look at one of their most prolific bloggers before they, too, have some explaining to do.

Read More

Zennie: The Lies That Destroy Your Credibility

Last week our friend and pro-Chevron blogger Zennie Abraham at zennie2005.blogspot.com took a page from Chevron's talking points and went on yet another ill-informed rampage against the 30,000 rainforest residents suing Chevron. The point of Zennie's rant? That one of the lawyers for the Amazonian communities supposedly "destroyed" the case against Chevron with a single statement, as shown in film outtakes from Joe Berlinger's documentary CRUDE.

Zennie makes his usual outlandish claims – ranging from those relating to the film outtakes (the "statement that destroys the case") to wholesale and paternalistic condemnations of entire countries ("under-developed nations like Ecuador…don't take steps to make life better for their poorest people [but instead] allow them to be exploited by [lawyers] for their own personal gain.") At one point he claims that the video shows consultants to the communities stating that they don't have evidence of groundwater contamination and the lawyers saying it doesn't matter because the case is all "smoke and mirrors."

But Zennie and Chevron are wrong again. It turns out that the video that created this manufactured outrage are heavily-edited clips that were, predictably, spliced and diced by Chevron to mislead the court. In reference to Chevron's court filings, filmmaker Berlinger told Fortune magazine
that he was ""dismayed at the level of mischaracterizations... The footage citations are being taken out of context and not being presented to the court in its entirety, creating numerous false impressions, precisely what we feared when we were first issued the original subpoena."

Once the plaintiffs finally got a chance to look at the same outtakes (which in an amazing violation of protocol Chevron had refused to turn over to the Lago plaintiffs), their response shredded Chevron's claims. An excerpt from the brief from the communities:

Now it is clear why Chevron hid the full outtakes from the Court and from Plaintiffs, and pressed to have this motion decided before Plaintiffs could even review the evidence. Chevron and its counsel have rushed to mislead the Court and the public with a McMotion based on sound-bites and highly-edited, de-contextualized snippets constituting less than 0.1% of the outtakes. It did so while concealing massive evidence in the outtakes of its own misconduct. And it did so in plain violation of a Second Circuit order.

Zennie's claims that the scientists for the communities said that there is no evidence of the damage to the region? The actual quotes from the film scene show the consultants really said just the opposite:

"[W]e also have water with very, very high contents of carcinogenic minerals .... The contaminants are located all over. If you just go through the area and you look at a small stream you will see the sheen of the oil on the water. Which means it's still going on."}; "The ground water is contaminated. How much? How far? You know, we know that Texaco is wrong, Chevron's wrong, you know, it's definitely some ground water contaminated, there's discharges that go right in the waterways .... They destroyed this area. It's done."

Zennie, why the animus toward the thousand of rainforest residents? What in your fragile psyche makes you lie on behalf of an American company trying to cover up its crimes?

We hope you are smart enough to get paid handsomely for your undying service to Big Oil's cause.

Read More

Chevron's Blogger Propagandists: Accuse First, Ask (No) Questions Later

(Originally posted by Amazon Watch over at www.chevroninecuador.com)

Chevron's Blogger Propagandists: Accuse First, Ask (No) Questions Later

We've written before about the motley crew of bloggers who fervently defend Chevron in its ongoing effort to run from a multibillion dollar liability for environmental disaster in Ecuador. Chevron is certainly not an easy company to stick up for, given its long and sordid history in Ecuador. Chevron's predecessor, Texaco, showed up in the pristine Amazon rainforest in 1964 and left a huge swath of it devastated and polluted by 1990. Chevron acquired Texaco, and its liability in Ecuador, in 2001 and is now the third largest U.S. corporation, with a 2008 profit of $24 billion. And yet this behemoth of an oil company loves to, ludicrously, play the victim card, and when it does, these are the bloggers who fall in line with PR-brushes in tow.

Chevron's blogger allies went into overdrive mode in September, trumpeting Chevron's claims when the oil major announced it had uncovered a $3 million bribery scandal that would implicate the Ecuadorian judge in corruption and, they claimed, prove government interference in the lawsuit. When the news hit, the pro-Chevron bloggers ran wild, crying foul, and trumpeting the Chevron line that a fair trial in Ecuador was impossible.

The only problem was, the smoking gun backfired. Instead of revealing a scandal, the videos themselves–and Chevron's role in presenting them to the media–became the scandal. As my colleague Han Shan documents in his thorough deconstruction of the company's allegations on Huffington Post, the whole "scandal" was nothing but a bizarre set up. By the end of October, it was clear that there was no actual bribe and no actual government officials were involved. Instead the videos merely document what appears to have been a plan to entrap judge Juan Nuñez and get him removed from the case. The man who presents himself as a businessman isn't, though he is a convicted drug-trafficker. The man he purports to bribe in the video is a phony government official (actually a car salesman). And the contracts they discuss were never signed and were proposed for a business that doesn't exist. Nice try, Chevron, but...

Since the bribery scandal imploded, there's been a curious silence from Chevron's merry band of bloggers. This isn't surprising. They're following a well-known propaganda strategy: make dramatic accusations with little supporting evidence, spread those accusations far and wide, then offer no retraction or apology when your claims are later proven to have been wildly off base...

More after the jump

Read More

Chevron’s New Shills

In a sign of frustration over their inability to convince any journalists with a semblance of independence or journalistic integrity to publish their talking points, Chevron has turned to paying faux journalists and bloggers to parrot the company's talking points and to do the company's dirty work in lobbing baseless accusations against the people bringing a landmark environmental lawsuit against the company.

In yet another instance of the company treating it's $27 billion legal liability in Ecuador as an image problem to be managed, rather than as an environmental and human rights crisis to be dealt with, Chevron has taken extreme measures over the recent past: hiring disgraced former-CNN anchor Gene Randall to put together a high-priced faux-news story that tries to fool viewers into thinking it's an independent news video, and paying for an all-expense paid trip for bloggers (including Carter Wood of Shopfloor.com, Bob McCarty of BobMcCartyWrites.com, Gail Tverberg of theoildrum.com, and Roger Alford of opinojuris.com) to Ecuador to participate in the company's propaganda tour.

[Update/Editor's Note: In the interest of clarity and fairness, while Roger Alford attended a trip paid for by Chevron, he has not written anything about this lawsuit, or otherwise opined on the issue.]

The result of Chevron's efforts? A number of posts that purport to be "news" that simply parrot Chevron's P.R. messages at the expense of any journalistic integrity that the "reporters" may have had.

Already Gene Randall, who traded on his familiarity as a former CNN anchor to create a fraudulent report for Chevron, has been publicly reprimanded in the New York Times, the Columbia Journalism Review, and On The Media, among other prestigious journalism publications. From interviews published in On The Media it appears that Randall has already resigned himself to counting his silver pieces to justify his loss of any public credibility that he may have had: "I didn't choose to leave CNN," Randall said, "and now that I have, I have to make a living somehow. So I offer my ability to use 'journalistic techniques' to clients who need to present their messages."

But perhaps more egregious than Randall's willingness to trade on his former association with CNN as part of Chevron's effort to manipulate public opinion, is the wholesale sale of their credibility that has occurred in the blogs over the past few weeks. The company has admitted to taking several bloggers on an all-expense paid trip to Ecuador to indoctrinate them in the company's messaging on the Ecuadorian lawsuit. The bloggers returned from the propaganda trip armed with a wealth of baseless accusations that they have lobbed at the indigenous people of Ecuador and the lawyers working with them. In true blogger fashion, almost none of these internet "journalists" bothered to consult with anyone other than Chevron before they started making their allegations. Instead, they simply sold whatever credibility and integrity they may have had to Chevron in return for a nice trip to Ecuador (or in McCarty's case – since he didn't actually go when he had to cancel, just the promise of a trip).

It will be interesting to see if the loss of integrity and credibility is worth the free flight that Chevron provided (hey – it might have even been first class…after all, the company did make $23.8 billion in profit last year).

Read More