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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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