John Stauber's News Articles

"The Best War Ever" -- Watch the Web Movie, Read the Book, Learn the Truth About Iraq

The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq is the new Sheldon Rampton / John Stauber book on sale everywhere. View a short but powerful web movie based on the book at www.TheBestWarEver.com.

NEWS RELEASE: CMD Commends FCC Investigation of Fake TV News

For Immediate Release

Contact: Diane Farsetta or John Stauber, 608-260-9713

Center for Media and Democracy Commends FCC Investigation of Fake TV News

(Madison, WI 8/14/06) Diane Farsetta, senior researcher with the non-profit watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, released the following statement regarding the announcement by the Federal Communications Commission of its investigation of the fake TV news scandal documented by CMD.

"Vets for Freedom" Fight for Rove and Lieberman

The Republican lobby group Vets for Freedom is the 2006 equivalent of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Republican 527 committee whose attack advertisements in battleground states helped sink John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race by smearing him as a pho

Half of Americans Still Believe In WMDs - They Saw Them on TV

A recent Harris Poll reports found that while “the U.S. and other countries have not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, surprisingly more U.S. adults (50%) think that Iraq had such weapons when the U.S. invaded Iraq. This is an increase from 36 percent in February 2005.”

This is terrible news.

The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq

Exactly three years ago our book Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq was published. Our publisher pitched it this way: "Rampton and Stauber take no prisoners as they reveal - headline by headline, news show by news show, press conference by press conference - the deliberate, aggressive, and highly successful public relations campaign that sold the Iraqi war to the American public.

Kill The Messenger? Pro-War Advocates Should Blame Themselves for the Mess in Iraq


Journalists! Let's get 'em!

As conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate, supporters of the war are casting around for someone to blame, and journalists are becoming an increasingly popular scapegoat — an ironic turn of events, since the mainstream media's uncritical support for the war helped get us into this mess in the first place.

John Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars

  • Topics: Iraq, Propaganda

  • John Rendon

    In his hippie youth as a Merry Prankster, Stewart Brand bounced around San Francisco in Ken Kesey's day-glo bus, dousing people with LSD-laced Kool-Aid at the legendary Acid Tests. Those were strange days, but his latest trip is also bizarre. Brand and his Long Now Foundation are bringing to San Francisco John Rendon, the elusive head of the Rendon Group, one of the CIA's favorite PR firms.

    John Rendon is the self-described "information warrior” who, under contract with the CIA, named and nurtured the infamous Iraqi National Congress. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi was a Rendon protégé embraced by the Project for a New American Century and other advocates of war with Iraq. Rendon and Chalabi probably did as much as anyone to deceive the US into war.

    Pro-War "Vets for Freedom" Tied to Bush's PR Team

    Citizen journalists on SourceWatch have been investigating and exposing the many Republican connections and the partisan pro-war political agenda behind Vets for Freedom, a new organization with mysterious funding and a flashy website designed by Campaign Solutions, part of the Donatelli Group.

    US "Atypical" Mad Cow Threat Was Predicted

    The small scientific world of prion researchers -- the scientists who investigate "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies" (TSE) such as mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans -- is abuzz. That's because the two confirmed cases of US mad cow disease in Texas and Alabama are an "atypical" strain different from the British strain but identical to an atypical strain found so far in a small number of cattle in France, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The discovery of "atypical" mad cow disease in the US should not be surprising. Sheldon Rampton and I reported way back in 1997 that very strong evidence of an "atypical" TSE disease infecting US cattle was established by the work of Dr. Richard Marsh, the researcher to whom we dedicated our book Mad Cow USA.

    Is "Vets for Freedom" A Republican Front Group?

    Who and what is behind the organization Vets for Freedom, a lobby group for staying the Administration's course in the war in Iraq? Contributors to our investigative website SourceWatch are wondering exactly that. The current article can be reached by clicking here on the name Vets for Freedom.

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