| The accurate quote: "For considerable sums of money, public opinion can
be molded, constituents mobilized, issues researched, and public officials button-holed,
all in a symphonic arrangement."
was never written or spoken by Mr. Joshua
Reichert, Pew Charitable Trust's Environment Program Director.
It was misattributed to Mr. Reichert by writer
Mark Dowie in his book, Losing Ground, published in 1995 by MIT Press.
Mr. Dowie is the former editor-at-large of InterNation,
a transnational feature syndicate based in New York. He is a former publisher and editor
of Mother Jones magazine, the magazine of the Foundation for National Progress,
which is funded by large private foundations, including the Arca Foundation, the Joyce
Foundation, the Schumann Foundation, the Streisand Foundation and others. Mr. Dowie has
won fourteen major journalism awards, including an unprecedented three National Magazine
Awards.
In a congressional hearing in February, 2000, Undue
Influence author Ron Arnold cited the above quote as it appeared in Mr. Dowie's Losing
Ground. Mr. Reichert responded to the chairman of the congressional committee denying
that he ever wrote or said the quote, and requesting that the quote be retracted. Mr.
Arnold stood by his story, saying the quote had been known to the public and to Mr.
Reichert for five years without challenge. Mr. Arnold held firm subject only to any actual
evidence that Mr. Reichert's denial was true.
In April, 2000, Mr. Dowie sent the Pew Charitable
Trusts' chief attorney the following correction and apology:
Mark Dowie
12642 Sir Frances Drake
Point Reyes Station, CA 94956
April 11, 2000
Joy A. Horwitz, Esquire
Director, Legal Affairs and General Counsel
The Pew Charitable Trusts
One Commerce Square
2005 Market Street
Suite 1700
Philadelphia, PA 19103-7077
Dear Ms. Horwitz:
I am writing to acknowledge a misattribution on
page 51 of my book, Losing Ground, regarding the block quote attributed to Joshua
Reichert, director of The Pew Charitable Trusts' Environment program, in footnote 25.
Although Mr. Reichert has said to me in an interview that he strongly believes that
environmental groups need to respond more effectively to the tactics of environmental
opponents, to my knowledge, the quotation was not written or spoken by him. Nor does it
appear in the document entitled "Environmental Strategies: Concept Statement"
(December, 1993), which I inadvertently listed as the source of the quotation.
The quoted language appeared in a report on
environmental issue campaigns prepared by four individuals, including Tom Wathen, then an
Environment program officer at Pew. Specifically, the quoted language was presented in a
list of the most frequently cited reasons given by members of the environmental community,
who had been interviewed by the report's authors, explaining why the environmental
movement had failed to employ its assets as effectively as it might have.
I am sorry if this matter has caused you undue
hardship.
Regards,
(Signature)
Mark Dowie
Mr. Dowie recently
completed a book,
American Foundations. The
Foundation for Deep Ecology gave Mr. Dowie an individual grant of $3,500 on February 16,
1996 for "travel expense to Rockefeller Foundation Archives." |
