PR Watch
Public Interest Reporting on the PR / Public Affairs Industry

PR Watch is a must for anyone who wants to understand how business and government utilize public relations firms to influence, create, or minimize public perception and/or opinion. Editors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton are perhaps better known for their two critically-acclaimed books, Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, and Mad Cow, USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, which won high marks from more people than I could keep track of, much less enumerate in this review.

The role of the PR industry on our daily lives is mammoth, yet it's also an area that's had precious little attention paid to it by most media. This issue of PR Watch (a 12-page newsletter) includes "Keeping America Safe from Democracy," about how soft money and bullshit "grassroots" organizations with sleazy tactics are helping to undermine what democracy we still possess, "PR on the Witness Stand: Vinyl, Not the Whole Truth," and "How to Deal with 'Environmental Activist Incidents," exploring the tactics of the Vinyl Institute, whose mission is to "promote and protect the vinyl industry and its markets." PR Watch is a serious, in-depth quarterly newsletter that, like Counterpunch, stays well ahead of the curve. I'm sure a lot of journalists and even PR-types subscribe to it, but it's essential reading for anyone who seriously wants to understand how their world works.

Reviewed by Brian Brasel
01.25.99


Edited by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

Vol. 5, No. 3
Third Quarter 1998

Topics:
Stalking the sellers, spinners, and sophists
Subscription info: Quarterly
Businesses, $200/yr
Non-Profit Groups: $60/yr
Journalists and Individuals, $35/yr

Center for Media & Democracy
3318 Gregory Street
Madison, WI 53711
Phone: 608.233.3346
Fax: 608.238.2236
Email: editor@prwatch.org
www.prwatch.org

Slipping the Ties
that Bind
Monogomaniacs
tell us a perfect partner awaits us, capable of fulfilling our every desire. What's wrong with this picture?

An Interview
with Billy Bragg
The self-described "honest songwriter" discusses the importance of
reaching out, and the
enduring legacy of Woody Guthrie.

Color Conscious,
White Blind:
Race, Crime, and Pathology in America

Museum-Quality Sidebar
Wander the rogue gallery of a parallell art world, brought to you by Farm Pulp creator Greg Hischak.


For Their Own Good
Androcentrism, the Technology of Orgasm, & How the More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Review essay by Rachel Koch

PR Watch:
Edited by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton



clicks_+_cuts
Various artists
"...graced with a contribution from almost every electronic musician about whom there is currently any excitement"


The Straight Story:
Anyone who thinks a David Lynch film could be anything resembling straight needs their head corrected by this review.


From
LiP Magazine
[www.lipmagazine.org]

Media Dissidence &
Uncivil Discourse
Since 1996