Comic, author, presenter, activist, reporter: it’s hard to describe Mark Thomas in one word. The South London jack-of-all trades just published a new book, ‘Belching Out the Devil’, about Coca-Cola and its malpractices. Orangelog.eu took the chance to talk to Thomas at the European Investigative Journalism Conference in Brussels, where he was one of the keynote speakers.
In your new book you take on Coca-Cola. Why exactly did you choose to write about this particular company?
There are lots of reasons. One of them is because they are the biggest brand in the world. They are not the biggest company, but they are the biggest brand. Every year they win brand recognition and best brand awards. Secondly, they are not an arms company, they are not a tobacco company and they are not an oil company, so they are not the usual suspects. So for those two reasons I wanted to do what is almost a case study on globalization and the way multinationals work and deal with their responsibility. And also, I used to love Coca-Cola as a kid. They spend 2.5 billion dollars on advertising a year, and some of that money was spent on me. So they came after me first, and now I am going after them.
Is it also because they are an icon of Western capitalism?
Yes, but it actually goes beyond America. People often think of Coca-Cola as an American company, but it’s an international company. In 2006 I worked out that because of their “tax efficiencies”, they pay 22.8% tax instead of the usual 35 %. Because a lot of their activities are offshore and things like that. That means America is losing a billion dollars a year from Coke. I wouldn’t call that an American company.
It is a very serious topic to write about. How do you seduce people into reading the book?
One way is to go to all the places and meet all the people and talk to them firsthand, so that all the voices of people at the bottom of the pile come through. Their stories are incredibly strong and moving. They’re not just moving because of the plight they’re in, but they’re moving and inspiring because of the action they took to finally beat the company. That’s really exciting. So you end up with all sorts of really interesting people. I think the most important thing is to tell the story of it as well, so that it becomes a journey. And because I started my career as a comic, I sort of see things in a certain way. I notice things that you would notice as a comic and then pick on them. Some of the things are genuinely bizarre and weird and some of them are very funny. Hopefully those observations are funny enough to keep the reader interested.
So humour plays a very important role. Isn’t there a risk that it also undermines your credibility in a way that people think “Oh, he’s just having a laugh”?
I think people can do that, but humour also highlights the disparity between what is important and what is not. When you are looking at something which is incredibly serious and incredibly important, then the fact that you’ve been mucking around a few pages earlier doesn’t matter. Life is like that anyway. Life isn’t black and white, it’s not funny and sad. It’s a mixture of things and it’s all part of the journey. Two of my favourite filmmakers are Ken Loach and Mike Leigh and their stories are always funny and always sad. So if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.
You obviously put a great deal of research into the book. Were you nevertheless surprised by some of the stories that you encountered on your trips?
Yes, very much so. When I went out to places like India, I didn’t know exactly where the story was going to be. I knew that we were going to start at one place, but I didn’t know where it was going to go or who I was going to meet. I met one fantastic guy whom we followed back to Jaipur and when we were following him, another guy dragged us away and told us: you’ve got to come and have a look at this. He introduced us to temporary workers who were forced to handle chemicals without masks, protective clothing or safety equipment, all for Coca-Cola. The only time when they saw safety equipment, is when the auditors came round. That was shocking, because it is these people’s lives and you cannot mess around with that. To a certain extent you can say that fizzy pop and bad marketing is one thing, but actually endangering people’s lives takes it to another level.
I get the impression that you find it very important to put a human face to the issues you discuss.
Yes, absolutely. All these stories are human, they’ve all got human beings in them. And if people can’t relate to these human stories, then you’re going to get fewer and fewer people reading them and you will just reach the really obsessive or interested niche. I want as many people as possible to read the book. I want people to know that Coca-Cola’s biggest problems come from ordinary people. The people who have fought back against Coke’s extremities and malpractices are ordinary people who have been put in situations where they have to fight. And they’ve done a fantastic job.
You are here today to speak at a conference on investigative journalism. How do you see the future of investigative journalism evolving?
I think it will evolve online and what I think may happen is that you’ll see a fracturing. So you’ll get internet communities and online hosting not creating news, but actually becoming repositories for news that are outside the standard mainstream media. Mainstream media turn more and more to outsourcing its stories: the Press Association (British national news agency, ed.) for example will write a story and then send it out to all the regional press. And that’s what they are interested in. The amount of time, the budgets and the space that is given to investigative journalism is really under the thumb. We’re losing that battle. Where we are winning it is in cyberspace. There is still great journalism being practiced in mainstream media organizations, but increasingly we will see it online. What I think we will also see, is smaller groupings outside the mainstream media that will start to flourish.
If you say that the future lies online, are you then also talking about more grass-roots journalism?
Yes, but I think citizen journalism has to grow up. There is a real problem with it at the moment: anyone can get on the internet and anyone can say whatever they like. Which means a load of fucking idiots get on there who actually make this shit up and put ideology before the facts. So it has to grow up. And the interesting thing is that, as it develops, people will begin to trust the content and it will become branded. Indymedia has already got a mixed perception on it. It is perceived as making a lot of mistakes, but it’s also perceived as a very interesting tool for getting information out. And I think it will find its own way of creating some kind of quality control on the journalism that goes on there.
Posted in | 25.11.2008
By: Yannick Brusselmans
