Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry

by John Stauber, Sheldon Rampton, Mark Dowie (Introduction)

Overview

Common Courage’s number one seller blows the lid off of today's multi-billion-dollar propaganda-for-hire PR industry, revealing how public relations wizards concoct and spin the news, organize phony "grassroots" front groups, spy on citizens and conspire with lobbyists and politicians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567510607
Publisher:	Common Courage Press
Publication date:	07/01/2002
Edition description:	1st ed
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.50(d)

Editorial Reviews

Stauber and Rampton cite a classic example of image manipulation in this chilling analysis of the PR business. During the aftermath of the 1975 Three-Mile Island nuclear accident, a company spokesman said that a spark in the accumulated hydrogen bubble could result in a ``spontaneous energetic disassembly''otherwise known as an explosion. The authors trace certain specious practices of the $10 billion PR business to P.T. Barnum, who in 1836 wrote anonymous pro and con letters to editors about himself, generating heated interest. Modern public relations has evolved ``crisis management'' and ``anti-'' PR campaigns including sabotaging the tours of authors who challenge industry clients, for example, Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef. The new euphemism for sewage sludge, ``biosolids,'' is part of a campaign to convince the public that municipal sludge, replete with an astounding array of toxic substances, is good for farm soil. The authors point to Business for Social Responsibility, an organization that includes The Body Shop, Ben & Jerry's and others, as now containing ``some of the most environmentally destructive corporations on the planet.'' Giant agencies extend their contracts to selling national policies, as Hill & Knowlton did in selling the Gulf war to the American public. Although most large news organizations at least rewrite PR materials, many smaller markets ``rip and read'' prepackaged video news releases. This is a cautionary reminder that much of the consumer and political world is created by for-hire mouthpieces in expensive neckties. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The authors, editors of the journal PR Watch, show how the public relations (PR) industry helps corporations and the federal government manipulate the institutions of democracy, and detail the workings of phony grassroots campaigns, video spots broadcast as news, and other tools of America's private-sector ministries of propaganda. They look at cases, and offer guidelines for recognizing the presence of PR in the news and examples of effective citizen's campaigns. Paper edition (060-4), $16.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

The author's prove themselves to be well versed in the subject matter and write with a comfortable, if not opinionated, style that makes reading the book enjoyable.

Industrial Ecology