[Imc] FW: John Stauber - PR Watch at Borders

[Paul Riismandel]

Great talk coming up on Tuesday for anyone who's interested in media
issues and progressive politics.  Hope to see all of you there-

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
<http://www.prwatch.org/books/experts.html>