The Center for Media and Democracy is at the forefront of identifying manipulative PR and propaganda. Here are just a few examples of recent media appearances of the Center and its staff:
- Benjamin Duncan talked to the Center's Laura Miller for his September 23 article "Marketing America, take two," for Aljazeera.Net. "[Under Secretary Karen Hughes] has no credibility in the eyes of the world because she was so key to selling the war in Iraq," Miller said. "It signals that they're seeing [the war on terrorism] not just as a military conflict. . . . At this point everyone seems to agree that anti-American sentiment is something we need to address."
- Donald G. McNeil, Jr. wrote in his October 4 article "U.S. Offers New Animal Feed Rules, but Critics Assail Them" in the New York Times, "'The F.D.A. and the meat industry is totally committed to continuing the practice of feeding slaughterhouse waste to cows,' said John Stauber, the author of Mad Cow, U.S.A., who has repeatedly called for a ban on feeding all animal protein to livestock. Meat processors like Cargill and Tyson Foods, he argued, also own rendering plants, want to keep exporting cheap protein or feeding it to their own animals and have lobbied hard to keep the right to do so."
- The Capital Times' (Madison, WI) Rob Zaleski, talked to the Center's Diane Farsetta for his October 7 article "Bush takes heat over propaganda." "This was an incredibly strong ruling by the [Government Accountability Office]. And the concern is that the GAO does not in and of itself have any sort of enforcement capabilities. So what we need is to have people be active and contact members of Congress to voice their opinions about this," Farsetta told Zaleski, referring to the GAO ruling on the Education Department's PR contracts, including Armstrong Williams and the Ketchum PR firm.
- The Washington Times' Cheryl Wetzstein, talked to the Center's Sheldon Rampton for her October 16 article "'Help! Mom!' casts liberals as villains." Rampton "voiced concern about marketing the book to children. 'If this were a parody for adult entertainment, I would see it as that. But if this is a book that is actually intended for kids to read, then I think there's a problem with it,' Mr. Rampton said. Children aren't necessarily sophisticated enough to understand these kinds of policies, and 'liberals under the bed' sounds like 'monsters under the bed,' Mr. Rampton said. 'Kids have enough real things that their parents need to teach them to stay away from.'"
- Writing for Forbes, Michael Freedman interviewed Rampton for his October 31 article "From Red to Green: Paul Gilding once ran Greenpeace and fought Big Business. Now he works for some of the biggest companies in the world." Freedman wrote, "Greenpeaceniks who defect to the corporate world often 'trade on their reputation. That's definitely been the case with some of Paul Gilding's actions,' says Sheldon Rampton."
- On December 9, 2005, Miller appeared on "Afternoon Edition" with Danuta Pfeiffer on Eugene, Oregon's "Progressive Talk" radio. "We are living in a world run by spin doctors, and it's worse than you think," the show's website stated. "We talk with Laura Miller from the Center for Media and Democracy about the war, PR, propaganda, the men in charge and the effect on America."
CMD's John Stauber (right) and Sheldon Rampton (second from right) with Andrew Rohn and Catherine Capellaro, the creators of Walmartopia, a musical comedy running in Madison, Wisc. Stauber and Rampton did a post-show talk in Decemeber on corporate PR.