Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future - Softcover

Rampton, Sheldon; Stauber, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585421391 ISBN 13: 9781585421398

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2002

Synopsis

The authors of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! unmask the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus experts, doctored data, and manufactured facts.We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there’s too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out.
We should stop trusting them right this second.
In their new book Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors of Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, offer a chilling exposé on the manufacturing of "independent experts."
Public relations firms and corporations know well how to exploit your trust to get 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 in order 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."
This eye-opening book is a must-read for anyone seeking to navigate the truth in a world saturated with manipulation.

About this title

About the Author

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber are the bestselling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!, Banana Republicans, and Trust Us, We're Experts! Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media & Democracy. He and Rampton write and edit the quarterly PR Watch.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber are the bestselling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!, Banana Republicans, and Trust Us, We're Experts! Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media & Democracy. He and Rampton write and edit the quarterly PR Watch.

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Spin 101

"The industry must be like the psychiatrist: rationally figuring out how it can help the public put things in perspective, but knowing that dialogue can only begin with the trust on the public's side that says these people are taking my concerns seriously." (Quote from public relations executive James Lindheim in a speech to the British Society of Chemical Industry, pg. 8)

"Put your words in someone else's mouth." (Quote from public relations executive Merrill Rose, pg. 22)

"The best PR ends up looking like news. You never know when a PR agency is being effective; you'll just find your views slowly shifting." (Quote from a public relations executive, pg. 23)

"Just as the invention of language made lying possible, the invention of mass media created newer, more sophisticated, subtle and elaborate techniques of propaganda." (pg. 24)

"Leaders offer the propagandist a means of reaching vast numbers of individuals, for with so many confusing and conflicting ideas competing for the individual's attention, he is forced to look to others for authority." (Quote from "father of public relations" Edward Bernays, pg. 23)

"Spin cannot be a demonstrable lie." (pg. 72)

"Never lie to a reporter." (pg. 72)

"Marketing is a battle of perception, not products. Truth has no bearing on the issue." (Quote by advertising executive Jack Trout, pg. 72)

"The minute you begin to view the public as something that doesn't operate rationally, your job as a publicist or journalist changes. The pivotal moment was when those who provided the public with its intelligence no longer believed the public had any intelligence." (Quote by public relations historian Stuart Ewen, pg. 72)

"A public relations expert needs to speak sweetly and carry a big stick." (pg. 81)

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1585421391
• ISBN 13: 9781585421398
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368