Product Description

Toxic Sludge is Good for You explains exactly how the magic of modern PR transforms the favoured policies of the rich and the powerful into uncontroversial common sense. It is without doubt the most important book about the methods and objectives of corporate public relations ever published. Reading it will make life for the executives at Hill and Knowlton, Ketchum and Barston-Marstellar a little bit more difficult. And that can only be a good thing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #397560 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

From the Author
Check out PR Watch quarterly.
Our book TSIGFY grew out of our writing for PR Watch, the investigative quarterly covering government and corporate propaganda and the PR industry. Check our website for back issues, or email me your postal address for a sample of the current issue.

About the Author
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton are the authors of Trust Us, We're Experts and the bestselling Weapons of Mass Deception. Find out more about their work for the Center for Media and Democracy at www prwatch.org www prwatch.org. They both live in Madison Wisconsin

Customer Reviews

brilliant investigative work that will open you eyes...
This book is a great read. It is interesting, funny and shocking. If you want to know about the secrets of mutli nationals and the american electoral process this book will not disappoint. It is an interesting read for anyone that feels decieved by the marketing and public relations industry as well as politics. Get an inside view of modern day campaigning and public oppinion shaping.

Very, very interesting...
A wide-ranging exposure of how US industry and government use PR to cow the many into supporting the unscrupulous vested interests of the few - so good I'm surprised it is still available!

This book has changed my view of the world.
Must reading for everyone. I bought a bunch of copies and am giving them as gifts to my friends.

I used to wonder why I heard so much contradictary news in the major media pertaining to health and the environment. First, a news item quotes an authority saying a food is safe, the next year the same newspaper says it's dangerous, and the next year after that they claim it's good for you. After reading this book, I know why. There are thousands of environmental and health , and scientific organizations. According to this book, many (but not all) of these organizations are not much more than clever PR fronts, funded mainly by industry. For example, I have often seen and continue to see information provided by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) in the major newspapers and magazines. The media usually takes this organization at its word as a credible scientific source.

According to this book: The ACSH is an industry front group that produces PR ammunition for the food processing and chemical industries. They praise the nutritional values of fast food and receive money from the fast food industry. They claim pesticides are very safe and take money from a host of pesticide manufacturers. The list goes on and on.. Yet the journalists usually take the ACSH words almost verbatim as fact and print it in their newspaper. Most journalists don't check their sources, or they're puppets of industry. Then the public reads this stuff as if it were scientifically proven fact. Public policy and law often gets decided on the basis of this "knowledge." Of course, some readers of these "facts" are skeptical, but no one seriously challenges the ACSH's credibility. Thus the ACSH continues to operate as if it were an objective science institute. Thousands of front groups worldwide use many of the same techniques. It then becomes obvious why so many people have a mistrust for science and don't know what to believe.

I used to think this country was a democracy, but now I know who really pulls the strings on many key issues. It's not the PR firms, it's the companies who hire the PR firms. Don't miss this book. For related info on health and environmental issues, I recommend "Our Stolen Future" by Theo Colborn.