John Stauber's News Articles

PR Execs Undeterred by Fake News "Flap"

by John Stauber — March 16, 2005 - 9:50pm
  • Topics: Public Relations, U.S. Government

    • This afternoon I listened in on a conference call among some of the top PR execs in the business of producing video news releases (VNRs), more honestly called fake news. I can report they are proud and confident that the recent "flap" on the front page of Sunday's New York Times about the Bush administration's use of fake news will amount to nothing at all.

    WANTED: 250,000 Americans to Fight Fake News & Government Propaganda

    by John Stauber — March 14, 2005 - 3:21pm
  • Topics: Public Relations, U.S. Government

    • The Center for Media and Democracy is working with Free Press to gather a quarter million signatures on our petition mobilizing the American public to fight fake news and government propaganda. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that at least 20 federal agencies have made and distributed pre-packaged, ready-to-serve television news segments to promote President Bush's policies and initiatives. Congress' Government Accountability Office determined that these "video news releases" were illegal "covert propaganda" and told federal agencies to stop. But last Friday, the White House ordered all agencies to disregard Congress' directive. The Bush administration is using hundreds of millions of your tax dollars to manipulate public opinion. Here's how to stop them.

    John Stauber Interviewed by Now Age Press

    by John Stauber — January 6, 2005 - 1:55pm
  • Topics: Agriculture

    • Craig Gordon of the website Now Age Press recently interviewed me. He was interested in the current situation with mad cow disease in the US, a subject Sheldon Rampton and I addressed in our prescient 1997 book Mad Cow USA. Craig also was curious about the origins of the Center for Media and Democracy and how issues as seemingly disparate as Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), Mad Cow Disease and Bush's war on Iraq all fall under our investigative lens.

    Feeding Cows to Cows, One Year Later

    by John Stauber — December 16, 2004 - 3:50pm
  • Topics: Mad Cow Disease, Food Safety

    • An alarming, but not surprising, investigation in today's Vancouver Sun illustrates why the mad cow feed rules in both Canada and the US are completely inadequate.

    The paper reports that "secret tests on cattle feed conducted by a federal agency earlier this year found more than half contained animal parts not listed in the ingredients, according to internal documents obtained by the Vancouver Sun. The test results raise questions about whether rules banning the feeding of cattle remains to other cattle -- the primary way in which mad cow disease is spread -- are being routinely violated. ... Controlled experiments have shown an animal needs to consume as little as one milligram -- about the size of a grain of sand -- of material contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to develop the brain-wasting disease."

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