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Front groups

A "front group" is an organization set up to hide the true interests of its creator. For example, a group of casino owners that did not want legalized gambling in an adjacent states might create a group that claimed to oppose gambling on moral grounds, when they actually opposed gambling in adjacent states because they thought it would hurt business. Front groups use the well known tendency of people to put more faith in information that appears to come from a source that apparently has no direct interest in an issue. A related strategy is the "third party technique" in which a supposedly independent expert is actually paid indirectly by an interested party (Rampton and Stauber pages 17-20). Also popular are "astroturf groups" that appear to have been formed as citizen groups but have actually been formed by vested interests, and the "think tanks" which appear to be scholarly institutes but are often heavily funded by special interests..

Front groups, often formed with the help of public relations firms, have become increasingly popular in recent years. Often these groups have deceptive names; for example both the Environmental Conservation Organization and the National Wilderness Institute are actually anti-environmental "wise use" organizations. The now defunct Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (predecessor of the Junk Science Home Page}, supposedly created to fight "junk science" was actually created to try to discredit the since linking smoking and disease (see How Big Tobacco Helped Create "the Junkman"} Many of these groups are relatively short lived, once their mission is accomplished or their true purpose is discovered they disappear, often to be replaced by yet another group.