[Imc] John Stauber - PR Watch at Borders

[Sascha Meinrath]

***PLEASE FORWARD TO INTERESTED FOLKS***

Hi all,

A great talk is coming up on Tuesday for anyone who's interested in media
issues and progressive politics.

--Sascha

Tuesday
May 14
7:00 PM
John Stauber, Champaign, IL

Talk and book signing
Borders
802 West Town Center Blvd.
Champaign, IL 61821


Executive Director John Stauber, an investigative writer, public speaker
and democracy activist, founded the Center for Media & Democracy in 1993.
Since high school in the 1960s, he has worked with public interest,
consumer, family farm, environmental and community organizations at the
local, state and national level. He edits and writes for the Center's
quarterly newsmagazine, PR Watch, and in collaboration with PR Watch Editor
Sheldon Rampton he has co-authored three books, Toxic Sludge Is Good For
You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (1995); Mad Cow
U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (1997); and Trust Us, We're
Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future
(2001). Before founding the Center, he worked for five years for the
Foundation on Economic Trends, a Washington, DC nonprofit organization,
researching possible health and economic impacts of recombinant bovine
growth hormone (rBGH) and organizing concerned citizens and farmers.
Stauber is frequently featured, interviewed or quoted in media including
the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, ABC's Good Morning America,
CNN's Burden of Proof, Fox News Channel, and NPR's Marketplace. Born in
1953, he is married and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

In their new book, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates
Science and Gambles with Your Future, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
offer a chilling exposé on the manufacturing of "independent experts."
Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of
getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral
"third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a
watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything
but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously
packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an
"objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some
cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."
http://www.prwatch.org/books/experts.html

***PLEASE FORWARD***