Pro-Yucca advertising was overwhelming

Friday, June 20, 2003 | 9:39 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Pro-Yucca Mountain special interests overwhelmingly out-gunned the project's opponents in issue advertising aimed at congressional lawmakers before a key vote in Congress last year, a research group said this week.

Of all the Yucca Mountain advertisements that ran in the Washington area in 2001 and 2002, a whopping 96 percent urged approval of the project, with just 4 percent urging opposition, according to a report released by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

The center studied more than 5,000 print and television advertisements on a dizzying array of issues, and more than 670 organizations spent about $105 million on the advertising designed to influence policy-makers, according to the report.

The center also studied 12 issues, including Yucca Mountain, in which lobby and special interest groups targeted the White House, Congress or a government agency. In 10 of the cases including Yucca Mountain, the side that produced the lion's share of the advertising eventually got the vote or decision it wanted.

The report revealed that while energy interests spent $1.53 million during 2001 and 2002 to advertise on issues related to national energy policy, environmental groups spent just $10,000.

"Our primary goal in designing this research was to determine whether the voices reflected in advertising about issues that face the nation have equal reach," the report concluded. "Generally speaking, this was not the case."