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Best Sellers | | Home Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy | |
|  | |  | | | Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy | | | | | SKU:
NU-ING-00323280 | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | Only 3 left in stock, order soon! | | | | | | Bringing together leading activists and writers from the US and beyond, this book unmasks the covert and undemocratic world of corporate spin. Wherever big business is threatened, spin doctors, lobbyists, think tanks and front groups are on hand to push the corporate interest, often at the public's expense. The public relations industry is not just about celebrity gossip. The authors show how PR techniques are in use across a wide range of political fields, driven by corporate interests. They reveal the secrets of the PR trade including deception, the use of fake "institutes", spying and dirty tricks. The impact can be devastating—when the public is denied access to the truth, the results are rising inequality and environmental catastrophe. The book exposes the misdeeds of famous companies including BP, Coca Cola, British Aerospace, Exxon and Monsanto. It also reveals startling new information about the covert funding of various apparently independent think tanks and institutes. What can we do about it? The authors offer a guide to concrete campaigns that will help to roll back corporate power and show us how to raise awareness about resisting deceptive PR.
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| | Product Details | | Author: | William Dinan | | Paperback: | 296 pages | | Publisher: | Pluto Press | | Publication Date: | June 20, 2007 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0745324444 | | Product Length: | 8.63 inches | | Product Width: | 5.45 inches | | Product Height: | 0.76 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.9 pounds | | Package Length: | 8.4 inches | | Package Width: | 5.3 inches | | Package Height: | 0.9 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.95 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 2 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 2 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
 very academic read Apr 14, 2010
By Ivan
The book is wordy, and very academic. It you can wade through that, it does have interesting ideas. Also, I appreciate the extensive list of footnotes, which I enjoy because I like to see source materials. The ideas presented in the book are positively scary!! This book wont promote your trust in government.
1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Some useful insights, especially about the EU's spinners Apr 16, 2008
By William Podmore
Dinan and Miller are sociologists at Strathclyde University. This collection of essays is by 16 academics and journalists, 11 British, one Australian, two Dutch, one German and one American. They look at the context and role of spin, corporate spin by oil firms, biotechnology firms and food firms, various networks of influences - the US empire, the EU, the Stock Exchange, the Labour Party, and finally at how to counter spin.
PR is largely by and for corporations, using deception, subverting debate, its `ethical' activities subordinated to corporate strategy, and with a key role in the Thatcherite counter-revolution. PR businesses' annual turnover is £6.5 billion. Four corporations own more than half the global market in advertising, marketing, PR and lobbying. They use front groups, third party advocates and celebrities.
Aeron Davis looks at the special case of financial PR, where the Stock Market sells stocks, and itself, yet investors would have been better off putting their money in a high interest bank account. Other essays explore the EU's attack on public service broadcasting and study the pro-US, pro-EU, pro-capitalist group Demos.
An excellent piece by Olivier Hoedeman tells us that the EU has more than 15,000 full-time lobbyists, over 70% representing corporations, the EU's substitute for democratic input. LibDem leader Nick Clegg is with the lobbying firm GPlus Europe. His rival Chris Huhne is a member of the European Parliamentary Financial Services Forum which lobbies for the big banks; it weakened EU laws against funding terrorism and money-laundering. Neoliberal hardliner Peter Mandelson supports the European Services Forum, a lobby of European services firms set up in 1999 by the European Commission to get the World Trade Organisation to privatise public services and open up economies across the world.
The employers' federation UNICE and the European Round Table, composed of the CEOs of Europe's 45 largest firms, have stopped all social initiatives until the EU has become the world's most competitive economic bloc. In 2004, the EU agreed to introduce `business impact assessments' for all EU policies.
Gerald Sussman has a useful piece on US and EU `democratic assistance' to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and the Czech Republic, openly backing Yeltsin, Yushchenko, Saakashvili and Havel, interfering in sovereign states' internal affairs.
But the collection also includes some quite wrong-headed essays like Andy Rowell's piece on what he calls `anti-climate activity'. And the presence of PR does not automatically devalue what is being promoted. PR for the MMR vaccine does not make it unsafe, or mean that it is unsafe; the same goes for nuclear power and GM foods. Too many of the contributors seem to oppose science, industry, pesticides, nuclear power and GM foods.
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