Another Filthy Front Group

A faux environmental ad campaign is ending. The ads "featured a series of somber models with smudged faces peering over a headline that said 'Face It, Coal is Filthy.' The ads ran in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and several newspapers serving Capitol Hill, as well as on local buses and in the subway system," reports John Fialka. The ads were placed by the "Clean Sky Coalition," which "was set up by the chairman of Chesapeake Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City natural-gas-production company." Some ads claimed that Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club had "joined" the coalition -- a claim that both environmental groups deny. Chesapeake Chair Aubrey McClendon said the coalition had other members, but wouldn't name them. He defended the ad campaign as part of "the American way for a company to try to increase their market share." The ads were produced by Strategic Perception, a Hollywood advertising firm that lists California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and President Bush among their past clients.