Book Burnin' and Hustlin'

I find Toxic Sludge's approach on propaganda to be a little angrier than unSpun's. However, both books are essentially set up in the "anti-textbook" format. The cover of Toxic Sludge makes it seem like a good coffee table book or something, but a lot of it's rhetoric is muddled in statistics. The first chapter is like an American salute to the First Amendment. It talks about the freedom of speech and the role of information in our society. Information should be free, but the book mentions how PR firms aim to suppress potentially harmful information from getting out to the public. I thought it was interesting how Ketchum public relations treats all of their memos and faxes and such as if they were top secret government files. The employees of Ketchum take information very seriously. 

Chapter 2 examines manipulation and fraud within the media. It makes an interesting note on the development and impact the press made on the early business giants like Standard Oil. When harsh working conditions in the workplace became exposed, an entirely new trend of muckraking journalism was born, and thus, the first PR firms were established to combat this threat on American business.  I found Bernay's statement that "we are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of" to the most interesting passage in the chapter. It was amazing to hear how open he was about the kinds of manipulation he himself was developing. We've certainly gone a long way from there . . .