Eveline Lubbers from http://www.spinwatch.org
and the Institute of Network Cultures
present the screening of the film:
Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
The Public Relations Industry Unspun
Date: Thursday November 25, 2004, at 16:00
Location: HvA Interactive Media, Weesperzijde 190 (next to Amstelstation), Amsterdam, room C 1.02. Free entrance.
Laura Miller will introduce the video and explain how the Centre for Media & Democracy is trying to reach an ever broader audience working with multiple media.
Core business of the Centre for Media & Democracy is PR Watch, a quarterly publication dedicated to investigative reporting on the public relations industry. It serves citizens, journalists and researchers seeking to recognize and combat manipulative and misleading PR practices. The past few years PR watch is developing a Wikipedia, called Disinfopedia.
http://www.prwatch.org
http://www.disinfopedia.org
Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: The Public Relations Industry Unspun Narrated by Amy Goodman (2002)
Summary:
While advertising is the visible component of the corporate system, perhaps even more important and pervasive is its invisible partner, the public relations industry. This video illuminates this hidden sphere of our culture and examines the way in which the management of ˜the public mind™ has become central to how our democracy is controlled by political and economic elites. ‘Toxic Sludge Is Good For You’ illustrates how much of what we think of as independent, unbiased news and information has its origins in the boardrooms of the public relations companies.
PR critics include PR Watch founder John Stauber, cultural scholars Mark Crispin Miller and Stuart Ewen. ‘Toxic Sludge Is Good For You’ tracks the development of the PR industry from early efforts to win popular American support for World War I to the role of crisis management in controlling the damage to corporate image. The video analyzes the tools public relations professionals use to shift our perceptions including a look at the coordinated PR campaign to slip genetically engineered produce past public scrutiny. ‘Toxic Sludge Is Good For You’ urges viewers to question the experts and follow the money back to the public relations industry to challenge its hold on democracy.
On Laura Miller:
PR Watch managing editor Laura Miller joined the Center for Media & Democracy in August 2000. She came to the center with seven years experience in radio journalism, having worked on WORT-FM’s local evening news as a host, reporter, and producer. She currently anchors broadcasts for the Workers’ Independent News Service, a nationally syndicated radio news service. Laura has also worked as a union organizer and a video store clerk. Born in 1970, she lives in a nice yellow house in Madison, WI.
More info: Sabine Niederer, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam.
https://www.networkcultures.org , sabine@networkcultures.org.