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. ‘Salesmen in the industry are frantically alarmed and the decline in tobacco stocks on the stock exchange market has caused grave concern’, claimed an internal memo. A study linking smoking to cancer was getting a lot of attention. We’ll take you to the meeting where the PR response was planned. It’s 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.

Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev