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by
Tate Metro Media
Think
about how many times you've heard an evening news anchor spit out some
variation on the phrase, "According to experts ...." It's such a common
device that most of us hardly hear it anymore. But we do hear the "expert"
- the professor or doctor or watchdog group - tell us whom to vote for,
what to eat, when to buy stock. And, most of the time, we trust them.
Now ask yourself, how many times has that news anchor revealed who those
experts are, where they get their funding, and what constitutes their
political agenda? If you answered never, you'd be close.
That's the driving complaint behind
Trust Us, We're Experts, a new book co-authored by John Stauber
and Sheldon Rampton of the
Center for Media and
Democracy.
Unlike many so-called "experts," the Center's agenda is quite overt - to
expose the shenanigans of the public relations industry, which
pays, influences and even invents a startling number of those experts.
The third book co-authored by Stauber and Rampton,
Trust Us hit bookstore shelves in January.
There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind
the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public,
scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely
to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial
actions.
Lively writing on controversial topics such as
- dioxin
- bovine growth hormone
- genetically modified
food
makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal
of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological
innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to hide the
risks.
By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate
sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to
suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist
who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant
organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the
risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in
the public's mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for
action.
Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry,
from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and
"outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss,
or defeat) to those who specialize in "public policy intelligence" (spying
on opponents).
Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good.
According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally
to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding
rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these
views rather antidemocratic and intend
to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz.
Metro Media: What was the most surprising or disturbing
manipulation of public opinion you reveal in your book?
John Stauber: The most disturbing
aspect is not a particular example, but rather the fact that the news
media regularly fails to investigate so-called
"independent experts" associated with
industry front groups. They all have friendly-sounding names like "Consumer
Alert" and "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition," but they
fail to reveal their corporate funding and their propaganda agenda, which
is to smear legitimate heath and community safety concerns as
"junk-science fear-mongering."
The news media frequently uses the term "junk science" to smear
environmental health advocates. The PR industry has spent more than a
decade and many millions of dollars funding and creating industry front
groups which wrap them in the flag of "sound science." In reality, their
"sound science" is progress as defined by the tobacco industry, the drug
industry, the chemical industry, the genetic engineering industry, the
petroleum industry and so on.
Metro Media: Is the public becoming more aware of PR tactics and
false experts? Or are those tactics and experts becoming more savvy and
effective?
Stauber: The truth is that the
situation is getting worse, not better. More and more of what we see, hear
and read as "news" is actually PR content.
| On any
given day much or most of what the media transmits or prints as news
is provided by the PR industry. |
It's off press releases, the result of media campaigns,
heavily spun and managed, or in the case of "video news releases" it's
fake TV news - stories completely produced and supplied for free by former
journalists who've gone over to PR. TV news directors air these VNRs as
news. So the media not only fails to identify PR manipulations, it is the
guilty party by passing them on as news.
Metro Media: What's the solution for the excesses of the PR
industry? Just more media literacy and watchdog organizations like yours?
Or should the PR industry be regulated in some way?
Stauber: In our last chapter,
"Question Authority," we identify some of the most common propaganda
tactics so that individuals and journalists and public interest scientists
can do a better job of not being snowed and fooled. But ultimately those
who have the most power and money in any society are going to use the most
sophisticated propaganda tactics available to keep democracy at bay and
the rabble in line.
There are some specific legislative steps that could be taken without
stepping on the First Amendment. One is that all nonprofit, tax-exempt
organizations - charities and educational groups, for instance - should be
required by law to reveal their institutional funders of, say, $500 or
more.
That way when a journalist or a citizen hears that a scientific report is
from a group like the
American Council on Science and Health, a quick trip to the
IRS Web site could
reveal that this group gets massive infusions of industry money, and that
the corporations that fund it benefit from its proclamations that
pesticides are safe, genetically engineered food will save the planet,
lead contamination isn't really such a big deal, climate change isn't
happening, and so on.
The public clearly doesn't understand that most nonprofit groups (not
ours, by the way) take industry and government grants, or are even the
nonprofit arm of industry.
Detroit Metro Times February 6, 2001
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