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Summary: PR-Watch is paying attention!
Review: "Have you forgotten about Alar?" writes another reviewer, explaining that you can't trust Stauber and Rampton to be unbiased. Well, indeed, it seems many people have forgotten about Alar, or rather what Alar really was. The authors actually bother to do the research about this incident and many others, showing (in this case) that although the original controversy over Alar was caused somewhat by PR, the fierce rebuttal that turned Alar into a synonym for bad marketing was /completely/ manufactured. And don't think that what you're reading in this book is a disortion; I've seen some of their examples repeated in books on science and others in books on business, and the fact that P.R. figures heavily in our lives can be verified by simply turning on your television or reading the newspaper.This book is a must-read for anyone who wonders if the Independent Institute is really independent or how many members of the Concerned Mothers are really mothers.
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Summary: Believe none of what you hear....
Review: ...and only half of what you see. That's how an old friend paraphrased some public figure many years ago. And this book makes that statement far less cynical. While "Toxic Sludge is Good for You" by the same authors was a fine book, this is somewhat of an evolution. It's even better. So, let's see, you may have been impressed with the findings of a study that has been in all the major daily newspapers and network news. After all, the findings were applauded by the Association for Warm Cuddly Chemicals, they were endorsed by your favorite authors, and, after all, what would we do without the wonderful products available that were the subject of the study? What the trusty newspapers and networks didn't tell you is that the aforementioned association--the list of such front organizations will boggle your mind--is a front for the manufacturers of the chemicals making up the product they're endorsing, and the "study" written up by professional PR flacks. (I took a writing course six years ago in which the instructor, who claimed to be well-informed, was astonished when I told her the percentage of column inches in the most well-read newspapers in the US have been composed by PR "professionals.") As the structure of a text means a lot to me, this is one I endorse on that ground too. It starts with a history of the public relations industry. Of course, Edward Bernays--an old New Deal liberal, incidentally--was PR's patron saint. The authors dissect the PR process brilliantly. For instance, PR professionals have their consultants to call upon. I was amazed and amused by the process our favorite software manufacturer used to minimize the allegations of monopoly. One of the "consultants" called upon was a former Supreme Court nominee who has vigorously argued against antitrust laws. Once hired by the corporation, though, he issued a 7,000 word tirade against federal prosecutors in favor of the company. Various other politicians, also getting paid by the company, were also enlisted as spokespeople for the company. Shocked, huh? There's a valuable analysis of how industry has taken the route of "risk analysis" rather than a principle of precaution, i.e., go for it because the consequences are likely minimal vs. let's wait until we find the product is safe before we release it. Industry pushes the former, though you think they--and we--would learn what with the number and amount of settlements in law suits against drug manufacturers, for example. In addition to that level of commentary, the text reminds the reader of the perils of things like global warming. These are items industry goes out of its way to deny. After all, were we to face the consequences of our excess consumption, we might buy less! Oh, and there?s lots in the text to be learned about bovine growth hormone and its manufacturer/promoter. You'll learn a lot about things we've been prodded to take for granted. A further complication of our perception is that there is a genre of commentator that a fellow skeptic refers to as "crank skeptic," i.e., an author or commentator who claims to challenge norms or speak for reality but who actually has an ideological motive. This text mentions a few of them whose names I'll let you get from the text. The only thing I wish the book had covered more of is how the PR industry has infected the electoral process in the United States. In contemporary elections, ISSUES are meticulously avoided so that we can discuss the essentially meaningless (e.g., "character," whatever that is.) But I must admit that's probably the subject of a dozen books, and a slightly different focus than that of this book. Were I taking notes while reading the book, there is far more I could have written. But I'd rather you take the time to read the book than my comments thereon. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. We MUST know how the PR process works, how we are influenced by it, and who controls the media by which we are ostensibly "informed."
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Summary: A toolkit to save us all from the PR tar-pits
Review: A lot of people know that the mass media spin stories, people, events, and opinions. But few of us can get an inside look at how the PR and opinion industries work with the mass media. How they use science, social science, and pseudo-science to sell toxic products, to ignore their devastating impacts, and to undermine democracy coldly, deliberately, and cynically. This powerhouse of a book is first aid for those of us weary of all that, but still hoping for a sane, reasonable way to respond and arm ourselves with the real truth. In /Trust Us, We're Experts/, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber continue as America's number one watchdogs of the PR industry. This book gives you permission to smell something stinky in the fishy proclamations of media-hyped experts who are wooing our wallets...even when it's packaged as roses, peddled in big showy bunches and enthusiastically delivered to your door using everything from direct mail to the Internet to letters to the editor of your local newspaper to products carefully and expensively placed in your supermarket. And the book leaves the reader with a sense of passion and hope, rather than feeling defeated. What an accomplishment! /Trust Us, We're Experts/ is meticulous in detail, painstaking in its research, unrelenting in its patient disentangling of complicated issues. Yet it's hugely, easily, fabulously readable, the kind of book I kept quoting portions of out loud to anybody within earshot. The kind of book where you howl aloud on public transit, and people lean over and ask what you're reading, and before you know it, a cluster of folks are engaging in a spontaneous citizen-to-citizen democracy-building session. Just the kind of thing the big PR firms fear, because citizens armed with the truth stop listening to spinmeisters paid handsomely to tell them what and when to buy. What I liked best about /Trust Us, We're Experts/: it's immediate and concrete-not a heady bunch of theory. The authors' examples come from today's news-global warming, genetic engineering of food, big tobacco, pharmaceuticals, Microsoft, and more. Never mind what you've heard about conspiracies or subliminal programming-Rampton and Stauber show how the most powerful engineering of consumer awareness operates right under our noses, but cloaked in wiggle words, misinformation, and outright lies. How can we get clear of the tar-pits of opinion, packaged as fact, that "neutral" "third-party" "experts"have flung us into? Read this book, and you will walk away with a tar-pit-rescue toolkit that the La Brea Coast Guard would envy. I give it five stars, though want Rampton and Stauber to know they're not finished yet, and must keep writing for years and decades to come! Thank you, authors, for this book. Michele Gale-Sinex
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Summary: Excellent!
Review: A most excellent and throught provoking book guaranteed to enrage the reader. Rampton and Stauber detail the history and mechanics of PR(or spindoctoring) with plenty of examples. There is also a good history of the father of propaganda - Edward Bernay. Whose work inspired Joseph Goebbels among others. They detail the rise of Junk Science - corporate funded scientists and hacks like John Stossel or Lomborg who do hatchet jobs on people/topics that may impinge on corporate profits. And how Junk Science has terribly confused people on what's real and not. The examples they use are well documented and are not afraid to name those who pretend to be experts but are nothing but PR hacks for hire. Many of those they name are "experts" that corporate conservatives(like Prager, Limbuagh, etc) call on to spin doctor tobacco, asbestos, global warming and pollution as harmless or overblown. Some reviewers consider the authors leftist - but only to those who believe that corporations know what's best for us. But IMO it's non-political for the most part(I'm a social conservative). It seemingly picks on conservative only in that they use more PR hacks than other group. Or could it be that these so-called conservative spokesmen are corporate PR hacks themselves? The book's only weak point is the chapter on what to do about it. It does not really give the detail on how to defend yourself against well done spin. Nor how to protect our children against it. Be that as it may, it's the best book out there on it. After reading it, you'll definityly question pundits and so-called experts who magically appear everytime there is a public protest against something or the news in general. Also you may find yourself both depressed and angry at the extent of PR in our society and how it coopts grass roots movements and trends.
They manage our tastes in clothes, cars, politicians, mindless fads, etc. It's really quite enraging when you realize that a entire industry(340 billion a year) has sprung up to manipulate the ordinary American for greed and political gain, irregardless of the moral, ethical and environmental consequences. Another book I highly recommend that deals with the mechanics of propaganda and how to defend yourself against it. Is Langauge in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa.
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Summary: just say know
Review: another mind cracking tome that feeds your starving neurons some nutrition, for once. Though many of these ideas will make you mad, you'll be glad you gained the wisdom after trading in the ignorance-is-bliss mentality of the typical drone. It's nice to know what's really going on in this country.
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Summary: These guys are far better than Michael Moore
Review: It is a bit sad that in our society the loudest mouth gets the most publicity. This is where Michael Moore comes in. If you want to get the real scoop from two fellows that are pretty apolitical and tell it to you how it is, get this book. You won't trust any thing you read anymore the way you use to. Whenever you read about a new medical study, you will seek who funded it. You will make direct links between the source of funding and the conclusion of the given scientificy study. You may loose a bit of sleep, but this type of collective critical thinking is one of the most powerful tool of a well developed democracy. On this count, one could easily argue that ours is not a well developed one, as overall our critical thinking skills are not what they should be on a communal level. This book will help.
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Summary: Questioning authority.
Review: Several reviews below prompted me to read this book. This is not so much a book about pseudoexperts and their opinions, as an expose of the public relations industry and its attempts to deliberately deceive us with "junk science." The authors tell us they "have written this book both to expose the PR strategies used to create many of the so-called experts whose faces appear on the TV news shows and scientific panels, and to examine the underlying assumptions that make these manipulations possible" (p. 4). Along the way, this book becomes a meticulously researched "catalogue of disturbing trends and failures to live up to the promise of an informed, democratic society" (pp. 311-312). Using the theories of Sigmund Freud, Edward L. Bernays, "the father of public relations," believed that "people are not merely unconscious, but herdlike in their thinking" (p.43), and that the public is "irrational and pliable" (p. 208). In his elitist view, Bernays believed that the "average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own 'logic-proof compartments,' his own absolutism, are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction" (p. 43). Similarly, major corporations and "snake oil salesmen" alike are using "the mantle of science" not only "to market all kinds of potions and remedies" (p. 222), but to sell us tort reform, cigarettes, genetically-modified foods, and to tell us that global warming, well, that just isn't happening. The same PR industry is labeling anyone who disagrees with its tactics "infantile" (p. 209), "neurotic" (p. 210), or a chicken little. In their book, Rampton and Stauber are to be commended for encouraging us to question the PR spin doctors behind the Oz-like curtains, and to think for ourselves. G. Merritt
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Summary: The good and the not-so-good
Review: Stauber and Rampton have written an expose of the PR arm of corporate America that on the whole is valuable. After reading this book, you will never look at an "expert" defending a product in quite the same way again. The best service this book provides is to enlighten the reader to techniques used by the PR industry to sway public opinion.
Having said that, the authors seem to hate big business and all that it stands for. Their arguments are usually one-sided and tend to ignore completely the way corporations have improved the lives of people all over the world. For instance, the chapter dealing with GMOs (genetically modified organisms), list many of the questions about these products that still need to be fully answered; however, the authors completely ignore how GMOs have allowed companies to produce foods that are more tolerant of poor growing conditions which has allowed third-world farmers to grow foods they never would have been able to before. You would have a difficult time convincing an African farmer not to use seeds produced by Monsanto because he may develop cancer in thirty years when those same seeds are now the only thing allowing him to feed his family.
The authors also fail to provide any solutions to the problems posed by the PR industry. Government officials beholden to special interests hardly have a better track record for the truth than corporate mouthpieces. Allowing the government to crack down on certain businesses usually only helps other businesses that are willing to use the same techniques to sell their products. The only solution to this problem is to insure that customers have access to reliable, unbiased information and that they are willing to research that information for themselves. Michael Crichton has advocated a research agency operating in a double-blind status such that contributing businesses do not know who is doing the research, and researchers do not know where their funds are coming from. This would seem to be the best way to get access to reliable product data.
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Summary: Patterns Give Away Deceit
Review: The bulk of this book is given over to detailing the consistent patterns big money has used to manipulate the flow of knowledge from those who have it to those who need it. In practice, this means the book details how "industry" (a term used but never clearly defined) is standing in the way of public health, environmental concerns, and more. Perhaps this book was printed with soy ink on recycled paper? Or are publishers not an industry? That quibble aside, Stauber and Rampton attempt to demonstrate, primarily through pattern recognition, how easy it is to see through PR-motivated lies and hucksterism if we simply know what to look for. Uncomfortably cozy relationships with "independent" third parties are an obvious example, as is a tendency to divert attention from the credibility of the statement to the credibility of who makes the statement. In fact, an elementary knowledge of the rules of formal debate are well rewarded in reading this book, since you quickly discover that, if an "expert" is defying these rules, that expert is probably trying to take you to the cleaners. The book is patently left-leaning. The authors are idealistic about human nature, for example, believing people would do the greatest good for the greatest number if they knew how to do it. The authors also appear to believe that government regulation is the necessary answer to inevitable government excess. This seems awfully naïve in its sheer repetition at times. In Chapter Nine, the concession is briefly made that "public advocacy" groups will sometimes distort facts and figures to achieve their desired ends, but that assertion is ultimately deemed less important than the tendency of conservative forces to distort. The ultimate chapter actually goes into some pointers for seeing through distortion and arming yourself to stand up for your beliefs. At least one previous reviewer seems to have missed this fact. This isn't just a list of information, there are actual pointers for action in here. Don't be shy about standing up for what you believe in, that's the message of this book, and one worth repeating, since we Americans allow ourselves to forget it all too easily. This book shouldn't be sought out by anybody too in love with their conservative beliefs, their love of mass manufacturing, or a belief that prosperity must come on the heels of pollution. Despite its leanings, it maintains no sacred cows. Those willing to allow themselves to be challenged, however, will be richly rewarded by going out on a limb. This sophisticated, well-documented book tries to show the point where truth and lies intersect, and it is a view you will not soon forget.
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Summary: Okay, So Now What Do We Do?
Review: The most revealing aspect of this book is the fact that many scientists are being paid to give "evidence" that conforms to the wishes of corporations, as part of the vast PR industry and its efforts at saving corporate profits. This is sad because these scientists, simply for the money, violate the scientific method by reaching a conclusion first (whatever is best for the corporation) then structuring their so-called research to match that conclusion. Therefore we have "scientists" proclaiming that global warming doesn't exist and that tobacco isn't addictive and doesn't cause cancer - theories that clearly fail under the evidence and even under common sense. We also learn in this book that one of PR's biggest strategies is to condemn scientific evidence that may harm profiteering as "junk science," while stating arrogantly that the reactionary pro-corporate theories are "sound science." Of course this is the exact opposite of reality. Through a veneer of "impartial" scientific testimony that is really funded by the corporation, the public is barraged by false evidence. And the fact that corporations have thousands of times more money than concerned scientists and citizens sure doesn't help the situation. This book gives endless examples of these shenanigans, but essentially becomes a repetitive list of evil acts by the PR industry. Meanwhile the book is completely anti-corporate and mostly left-wing, and while I'm on that side of the fence myself, there is merit to arguments that the book could be more impartial and objective to both sides. You can see some of the other reviews here for good examples. I'd like to add a more subtle example. Whenever the authors include a quote by the bad guys, it's often followed by negative connotations like "...Jones complained" or "...Smith ranted." Meanwhile the good guys never complain or rant, but instead "proclaim" or "announce." As investigative journalists, Rampton and Stauber can't avoid criticizing their fellow reporters for simply rehashing corporate propaganda (this is actually a serious problem), but they fail to see the irony in condemning their fellows. Also, they often imply that certain publications are biased because they publish propaganda by pro-corporate apologists, but then use other more favorable articles in the same publications to support their position. This is especially true of the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. In the end though, here's the problem. The extreme repetition through the book is alleviated by a rather useful closing chapter called "Questioning Authority," which describes how you can decode all the propaganda that we are assaulted with every day. Unfortunately, all you can do with this information is get more depressed as you discover more and more disinformation in the media and the corporate world. Stauber and Rampton prove early in the book that the PR industry sees the public as brainless sheep that can be easily led into believing everything you throw at them. Unfortunately, that's not too far from reality. This book can make the people who read it more vigilant, but the authors have no answers for this problem's systemic causes. This book lists all the symptoms but has no cure for the disease.
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