Agendas Everyone has an agenda. You must know the agenda of the person or organization you're dealing with before you can assess the value of the information they're presenting. Most people instinctively distrust anything from the tobacco industry. This makes sense, considering that Big Tobacco not only has an agenda of protecting themselves and promoting its product, but also a long history of presenting misleading information and outright lies. But these same people are often quite willing to blindly accept any numbers presented by government agencies or charity organizations, shrugging off their built in agendas or even denying that they exist.
Most government agencies have a published agenda, a purpose that is stated up front.
But they also have another agenda - the desire to increase their funding and their influence. More influence brings in more money, more money brings in a bigger staff, nicer offices, and the ability to pass more rules and regulations, which increases their influence and justifies more funding, and on and on until a huge bureaucracy is created, then expanded. The goal of increasing funding and power has led many government agencies to commit fraud on levels that would land the officers of private companies in jail, or at least in the unemployment office. We provide a concrete example of that on this site. Charities also have agendas beyond their stated causes.