[2] Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, TRUST US, WE'RE EXPERTS HOW
INDUSTRY MANIPULATES SCIENCE AND GAMBLES WITH YOUR FUTURE (New
York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001). ISBN 1-58542-059-X. And check out
their web site: http://www.prwatch.org/cgi/spin.cgi.
Now a new book, TRUST US, WE'RE EXPERTS! by Sheldon Rampton and
John Stauber, provides a chilling, documented history of ongoing
corporate efforts to use propaganda and "public relations" to
distort science, manipulate public opinion, discredit democracy,
and consolidate political power in the hands of a wealthy few.[2]
The Big Idea behind the anti-democratic corporate-power movement
is that people cannot be trusted to make political decisions
because they are irrational, emotional, and illogical. This
cynical view of humans is widely held by the public relations
industry's experts but also by the scientific experts they employ
to 'guide' the public. For example, physics professor H.W. Lewis
(University of California, Santa Barbara), a well-known risk
assessor, says people worry about non-problems like nuclear waste
and pesticides because they are irrational and poorly educated.
"The common good is ill served by the democratic process," he
says. (pg. 111)
If people are not rational they cannot be guided by reason, so
they must be manipulated through emotion, PR experts say (thus
justifying their own propaganda services). For example, a
spokesperson for Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm that manipulates
the public on behalf of Philip Morris, Monsanto, Exxon Mobil and
others, told the Society of Chemical Industry in London in 1989,
"All of this research is helpful in figuring out a strategy for
the chemical industry and for its products. It suggests, for
example, that a strategy based on logic and information is
probably not going to succeed. We are in the realm of the
illogical, the emotional, and we must respond with the tools that
we have for managing the emotional aspects of the human psyche...
The industry must be like the psychiatrist..." (pg. 3)
The PR psychiatric manipulation industry is now enormous.
Corporations spend at least $10 billion each year hiring PR
propaganda experts (pg. 26) and our federal government spends
another $2.3 billion or so (pg. 27) -- and these are no doubt
underestimates. But these huge sums are not wasted -- they
provide major benefits to the clients. For example, about 40% of
all stories that appear in newspapers are planted there by PR
firms on behalf of a specific paying client. Because most radio
and TV news is simply re-written from newspaper stories, a
substantial proportion of the public's "news" originates as PR
propaganda. Naturally the connection to the PR source is edited
out.
The COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW analyzed the WALL STREET JOURNAL
and found that more than half its stories are "based solely on
press releases" even though many carry the misleading statement,
"By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter." Thus what passes for
news these days is, as often as not, corporate propaganda. Tongue
in cheek, Rampton and Stauber refer to the major news media as
the disinfotainment industry.
Unfortunately, as Rampton and Stauber make crystal clear with
example after example, all of this manipulation has devastating
consequences for real people. The news media largely set the
limits on public discussion, and thus on public policy debate.
What is excluded from the news is often more significant than
what gets inserted. For example, approximately 800,000 new cases
of occupational illness arise each year, making occupational
illness much larger than AIDS and roughly equivalent to cancer
and all circulatory diseases, but most people have no idea that
this is so.
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