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Ey or enjoying their burgers - and the corporation's influence continues to increase as they relentlessly pursue their
“global domination strategy" (to use their own words). Two people investing their lives to stand up to such a force has got
to be a great story in anybody's book.

Not so the British media's flimsy paperback, it seemed. Five years ago, when I first got involved, the trial had been running
for six months and was being pretty much ignored by the mainstream media. | initially assumed this was because they
couldn't see a dynamite story if it went off in their psions, but | soon learned that the reality was much more sinister. Over
the last 15 years McDonald's have employed a very successful censorship strategy. It works like this. Almost anyone who
says anything critical about them gets a legal letter. For example, in 1984 the BBC suggested in a programme in their
'Nature' series that McDonald's is connected with the destruction of tropical rainforest. McDonald's legal letter demanded
a retraction of the criticisms and an apology. Not wanting a court case or damages - which can potentially cost millions -
the BBC backed down and apologised. Crucially, the allegations about rainforests were never tested in court. Around the
same time Prince Philip as head of the World Wildlife Fund allegedly made a similar comment about McDonald's and the
rainforests ("So you are the people who are tearing down the Brazilian rain forests and breeding cattle"). After 'reassur-
ances’ from McDonald's, he sidestepped the issue. However, various other organisations later apologised after getting let-
ters stating that the BBC and Prince Philip had ‘exonerated’ the Corporation. And so, without ever having to prove whether
they ARE actually involved in rainforest destruction, McDonald's successfully intimidated the media into avoiding the sub-
ject. The same tactic worked across a whole range of criticisms levelled at the company, as the company went about
threatening more than 90 groups with legal action. Everyone from The Guardian, Daily Mirror and The Sun to the Scottish
‘Trade Union, New Leaf Tea Shop and a children's theatre group received a legal letter. Not one of them defended their crit-
icisms in court. Of course, we will never know how deliberate this strategy was on McDonald's behalf - whether they fully
realised the long-term effects or whether they were just knee-jerking to each individual case as it arose. Either way, the
effects have been extraordinary in silencing the media and creating a climate of self-censorship. | came across this atti-
tude time and time again over the years. Several TV stations and newspapers pulled McLibel stories at the last minute and
chat-show producers briefed me that I couldn't mention “the issues”. (It feels fairly ridiculous talking about fighting a com-
pany that produces burgers without being allowed to explain why.)

McDonald's also use the power of their advertising dollars to stop negative stories being told. The Corporation allegedly
threatened to remove 80,000 pounds worth of advertising from The Independent (ho ho) after the newspaper ran a front-
page story about a secret settlement meeting. This was a particularly clever move on McDonald's behalf, as The
Independent had been one of only two UK papers covering the trial in any depth. Not any more.

All of which meant that, in mid-1995, it was a small group of media lawyers who were deciding what the public could hear
about McLibel. And there isn't much chance of a lawyer risking their job by recommending that their newspaper go ahead
and print an article which could land them in court. As our own lawyer (ho ho 2) says, “One has the distinct feeling that if
the (programme/article) were not about McDonald's but Joe's Cafe, the broadcasters’ editorial courage might return."
Luckily those good people at the US Military had invented us a solution. The internet. Fast, global, accessible, uncen-
sorable. Over a six month period, about twenty core volunteers built 'McSpotlight’, a website dedicated to ‘McDonald's,
McLibel, Multinationals’. This time was impossibly exciting for all sorts of reasons: we were in uncharted waters and had
free rein over the new media; we were finally going to get the story out the way we wanted to tell it; there was nothing
McDonald's could do; everyone was shagging each other. | guess that last part isn't crucial (or accurate) were the official
story ever to be told. By great fortune, we bumped into the xs4all crew online and they swept us off our feet. Not only did
they agree to host the site - which was crucial as it had to be based outside the reach of the UK's ridiculous libel laws -
but they also quickly brought us up to speed on internet law. Fresh from their run-in with the Scientologists, they were full
of ideas on how to prevent McDonald's from ever censoring the story again. In particular, they came up with the then un-
heard-of idea of using mirror sites - whereby exact copies of McSpotlight would be running from different servers in dif-
ferent countries. If McDonald's chopped off one head, another could grow somewhere else. Another key idea was 'the kit’,
which is a squashed version of the site available for anyone to download onto their own harddisc and keep safe. After a
week or two there were a couple of hundred copies scattered around the world. This must have been pretty galling to