Reddit reviews Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry

1. Who benefits from this article/post/point of view?
   
2. Why now? Why did this not come up before?
   
3. Is this peer reviewed? Or is this astroturf? Or is this one lie that gets repeated by multiple sources because it fits their worldview?
   
   Two useful books that describe how there are whole industries created to bullshit you and spin their version of reality are:
   
   Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and gambles with Your Future
   Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry
   
   > After spending years chasing them, it's now second nature to me to recognize press hits for what they are. But before we hired a PR firm I had no idea where articles in the mainstream media came from. I could tell a lot of them were crap, but I didn't realize why.
   
   > Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, where you had to look at a piece of writing and step back and ask whether the author was telling the whole truth? If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all.
   
   > Online, the answer tends to be a lot simpler. Most people who publish online write what they write for the simple reason that they want to. You can't see the fingerprints of PR firms all over the articles, as you can in so many print publications-- which is one of the reasons, though they may not consciously realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week.
   
   http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
   
   Sybil attack is a way to poison trust-based relations.
   
   An example of a hoax that spread because people wanted to believe this sort of thing is the AirTran 297 hoax spread mostly by right wingers. It parallels the hoax that one "Annie Jacobsen" put forth several years ago about some Syrian musicians that she claimed was another 911 hijacking attempt.
   http://www.insideairtran.com/?p=2200

Here is a free copy of Edward Bernay's 'Propaganda' definitely start there. I have a special place in my heart for the book Toxic Sludge is Good For You which is an excellent expose on the public relations industry.

No shit. Memes weren’t as common 10 yrs ago.
This book was written over 20 yrs ago and it talks about how media can be manipulated. It’s evidence that ppl have been believing shit just as much as they do now.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1567510604/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522570431&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=Lies%2C+Damn+Lies+and+the+Public+Relations+Industry&dpPl=1&dpID=71XADYYG13L&ref=plSrch

You really need to stop believing bullshit without evidence.


Recency bias is a hell of a drug

The Heartland institute is the main propaganda organ for injecting right wing falsehoods into the climate debate. As it turns out, they were also the main propaganda organ for confusing the issue re tobacco for decades, causing millions of deaths. There was no ambiguity in the science about smoking and there is no ambiguity in the science about the causes of the current climate change, so if you think there is, you have wedded yourself to the manifestly evil Heartland Institute. (Not that WUWT is any better but that's another topic).

A good book on the subject of how the PR industry successfully distorts perception of reality (although a bit dated now) is http://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Sludge-Good-For-You/dp/1567510604 "Toxic Sludge is Good for You". It's history of how the PR industry kept people smoking since the conclusive studies of the 1950s is particularly damning.

Of course, lung cancer is an infinitesimally small thing compared with the danger from climate change, which will kill billions if not stopped, and it can only be stopped by the full efforts of entire civilizations at this point -- so those who continue to indulge in casting doubt are indeed the very worst criminals in all history.

Here are half-a-dozen good ones for you:

• The Axemaker's Gift: Technology's Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture, by James Burke and Robert Ornstein
  
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner
  
• Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, by Cathy Young
  
• The Essential William H. Whyte, ed. Albert LaFarge
  
• No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, by Naomi Klein
  
• Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, by John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton

All corporations have claimed great social benefit of their pollution from the beginning of the last century.

http://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Sludge-Good-For-You/dp/1567510604

You mean you don't wake up every day and enjoy a fresh glass of Roundup? It's delicious and nutritious and the non-profit that dumps it in our streams and rivers is in no way responsible for this ad-comment.

This is nothing new, by the way.

Toxic Sludge is Good for You

Toxic Sludge is Good For You is a good read.

Unfortunately, this type of risk assessment is done in nearly every major industry. Read Toxic Sludge is Good for You for some particularly scary examples.

I remember reading about this here

html version

Edit: Side note, I found this because my government professor is having us read Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. I always knew that media was influenced by outsiders, but not to this extent. Highly recommended.

A lot of people get confused by how the media seems to defend an irrational system (capitalism) by misinformation and lies by omission whilst employing rational people (journalists) and not directly bribing or coercing them, which would be the conspiracy theory you're quite rightly not proposing. This book really helped me to understand a key aspect of how this symbiosis operates.

http://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Sludge-Good-For-You/dp/1567510604