About the Authors

Sheldon Rampton is the research director for the Center for Media and Democracy. A graduate of Princeton University, he has a diverse background as newspaper reporter, activist and author. In college, he studied writing under Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow and John McPhee. He is the co-author with (Liz Chilsen) of the 1988 book Friends In Deed: the Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities and has worked closely since 1985 with the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua (WCCN). Prior to joining the Center for Media and Democracy, he worked for WCCN as outreach coordinator for the NICA Fund, a project that since 1992 has channeled more than $7 million in loans from socially responsible U.S. investors to support economic development efforts in low-income Central American communities.

Rampton also designed and oversees SourceWatch, CMD's online "encyclopedia of people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda." He has written numerous articles for publications including Harper's Magazine, The Nation and In These Times, and has been interviewed or quoted in media including the New York Times, MSNBC and the Washington Post.

Born in 1957, he is a native of Las Vegas, Nevada, and currently lives in Portage, Wisconsin. He is married and is the adoptive father of three misbehaving cats.

John Stauber founded the non-profit Center for Media and Democracy and its quarterly newsmagazine PR Watch in 1993 and since has served as CMD's executive director. He is an investigative writer, public speaker and democracy advocate whose leadership on controversial public issues began in the 1960s growing up in a Republican family in Marshfield, Wisconsin, home town of President Nixon's Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird. In high school, Stauber organized to stop the U.S. war in Vietnam and for the first Earth Day. He has since begun or worked with many citizen advocacy and public interest groups including:

  • Coalition for Economic Alternatives, founder (1973-79)
  • Peoples Bicentennial Commission, national co-director (1975-76)
  • Citizens National Forest Coalition, co-founder (1978-79)
  • Friends of the Earth, consultant (1978-79)
  • Citizen/Soldier, consultant (1978-79)
  • Stop Project ELF, founder and co-director (1979-84)
  • Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua, development director (1985-88)
  • Foundation on Economic Trends, consultant (1988-93)
  • Neighbors Against Hog Factories, co-founder (1996)
  • Center for Food Safety, advisory board (current)
  • Organic Consumers Association, advisory board (current)
  • Action Coalition for Media Education, advisory board (current)

Stauber's articles, op-eds and interviews have appeared in various periodicals and websites including In These Times, The Sun, Alternet, and Common Dreams.

He has contributed research and writing to books by others including G.I. Guinea Pigs (1980), Secrets and Lies (1999) and Stop (2003). As an investigator and writer on a variety of issues, he has been featured, interviewed or quoted in the Washington Post, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, USA Today, Business Week, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, BBC, CBC, Democracy Now! and many other news media.

Together, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have written six books:

All book sales benefit the Center for Media and Democracy, a 501(C)3 non-profit whose programs include PRWatch.org, Sourcewatch.org, Congresspedia.org, the No Fake News campaign, the Weekly Spin, and PR Watch quarterly.