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Radio 4,28 Jul 2020,14 mins

The Tobacco Playbook: 2. 鈥楧oubt is our product'

How They Made Us Doubt Everything

Available for over a year

At a secret meeting, a plan is drawn up to fight claims that smoking causes cancer. In 1953, the tobacco industry was hit by a major storm. 鈥楽alesmen in the industry are frantically alarmed and the decline in tobacco stocks on the stock exchange market has caused grave concern鈥, claimed an internal memo. A study linking smoking to cancer was getting a lot of attention. We鈥檒l take you to the meeting where the PR response was planned. It鈥檚 an important meeting. The strategy developed there turned out to be so effective, it would be used again and again and again. From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. This 10 part series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change. With the help of once-secret internal memos, we take you behind boardroom doors where such strategies were drawn up and explore how the narrative changed on one of the most important stories of our time - and how the marketing of doubt has undermined our willingness to believe almost everything. Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev Producer: Phoebe Keane for 麻豆社 Radio 4

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