AMY GOODMAN: Again, Democracy Now! is Pacifica’s daily grassroots election show, bringing the voice of the grassroots into the national political discourse. And right now we’re going to turn to another issue: toxic sludge? Yes, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You. That’s the name of a new book, Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. The book is about how the PR industry is wielding vast powers in America today. It’s by John Stauber, founder of a group called PR Watch. It documents how countless examples of how the PR industry is destroying the democratic process in America through stealth campaigns pretend to look like citizen action. I got a chance to meet and interview John Stauber at the Media and Democracy Congress in San Francisco.

JOHN STAUBER: My belief, that democracy is in steep decline and, in fact, has been tremendously corrupted and degraded, and, in some terrible ways, even made meaningless by the power of corporations. I think when Pat Buchanan is comfortable attacking the power of multinational corporations to dominate our politics, our lives and our livelihood, we can be sure that this is the feeling of the public at large. And how can it not be? When we look at state capitals or we look at Washington, D.C., it’s clear that corporations have dominated the political landscape through their lobbyists, through their campaign contributions. And the entire political spectrum now ranges primarily from the far right to the near right. The idea of really challenging corporate power and providing, as government should, for the needs of the common people is just, as they say, not even open to debate and discussion in the halls of Congress. I mean, we are in very dire times.

The public relations industry is the arm of corporate propaganda that has really helped to deliver us into this dreadful situation. And one of the more interesting public relations developments over the last five or 10 years has been the complete takeover of grassroots politics by corporations and their PR consultants. You know, the idea that big business runs Washington, D.C., isn’t new, and it’s really pretty much a consensus observation now. But what I found in researching Toxic Sludge Is Good for You and in editing PR Watch is that the same big business interests whose lobbyists have taken over D.C. through direct marketing and what’s called astroturf organizing are now dominating grassroots politics.

I mean, we really saw that with the complete murder, if you will, of any debate around healthcare reform. The insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry pumped tens of millions of dollars into organizing the appearance of grassroots support for maintaining the status quo. We uncovered an incident in the book utilizing the Rush Limbaugh campaign. This is now how politics works in America. The insurance industry put ads on the Limbaugh show. Now, of course, Rush Limbaugh ranted and raved against any sort of healthcare reform. He has something like a 20 million-person radio audience, the most powerful political commentator in the United States. So imagine this: Rush Limbaugh would be ranting and raving about how healthcare reform is next to Stalinism, going on and on, the dittoheads all eating it up, all 20 million of them. And suddenly they cut to a commercial, and then, during the commercial, the health insurance industry would fund an ad saying, “Of course, if you’re concerned about threat to healthcare, meaning healthcare reform, call this 800 number.” People listening to Limbaugh — and this was in the midst of the big debate in Washington over healthcare — would call the 800 number. Their name, address, phone number, other essential information would be gathered. And then the telemarketer would say to them, “You know, I can patch you through for free to your congressperson’s office right now. Would you like that?” And they would. A person listening to Rush Limbaugh, anti-healthcare reform, calling an 800 number, is suddenly talking with the receptionist in a senator or congressperson’s office, ranting and railing, repeating what they just heard Rush say, what they just heard this commercial say. And using that technique, that stealth, hidden technique, the insurance industry was able to dump tens of thousands of angry calls, in a strategic, planned, programmed way, into the offices of candidates or representatives in Washington, D.C. And on their end, they don’t know that this is going on. The only reason I know it is because I paid to attend a PR event at which the consultants who organized this, Blair Childs, on behalf of the insurance industry were bragging about its effectiveness. And we include that in our book.

I mean, this is — this great grassroots outpouring to try to kill healthcare reform, or try to promote so-called smokers’ rights on behalf of the tobacco company, it’s phony. And what’s happened is, using direct marketing, telemarketing databases, rooms of hundreds of trained professional callers, and even paid grassroots organizers, grassroots politics has been taken over by the same big businesses who dominate political lobbying in the nation’s capital.

AMY GOODMAN: And it’s called astroturf PR, because it looks like grassroots?

JOHN STAUBER: “Astroturf” is the derisive word. But among the people who do it, they even use “astroturf” to deride the really poor forms of it, the stuff that’s very, very blatant. And, in fact, this type of of phony grassroots organizing, which has, I think, just destroyed the democratic process in the last five or 10 years, in ways we can’t even imagine, because it’s blotting out real citizen concern. I mean, just imagine. How many Americans actually call their congressperson because of a deeply held, personally formed feeling on healthcare reform? I would venture that a lot did. But I know that a heck of a lot more called because it was drummed up through the paid efforts of the industries that most feared healthcare reform and that successfully married those astroturf techniques to insidious lobbying and TV advocacy, like the Harry and Louise campaign, that also had an 800 number attached to it, was paid for by the insurance industry, scared people into thinking healthcare reform was bad for them, had them call an 800 number and bring them into this ginned-up campaign. This is drowning out legitimate democracy. I believe that now more people — far more people, actually, contact politicians or buttonhole them to talk with them or pick up the phone and call their offices because of paid corporate campaigns geared to generate the appearance of grassroots support than actually do it as true citizens in a democracy acting on their own beliefs and volitions.

Last summer, the summer of 1995, this industry, this astroturf industry, which is part of the PR industry and where politics and PR really come together, had a very embarrassing occurrence. One of the big astroturf firms is called Beckel Cowan. These two guys, Beckel and Cowan, got their start in politics working for liberal Democrats like Walter Mondale. They were major in Mondale’s presidential bid quite a few years back. Well, they’ve now formed an astroturf campaign, and they work for the pharmaceutical industry and the petroleum industry to generate support. This summer, they were working for the telecommunications industry on the telecommunications bill, and they made the mistake of going a little overboard. And they generated thousands and thousands of telegrams, sort of these pseudo-telegrams, into Washington from people who never agreed to have their names used, in some cases were dead. And they were discovered. It was so outrageous. They at first tried to deny responsibility, and then blamed it on a subcontractor. But it was a very big embarrassment. And for the first time ever, major corporate media focused a little bit of attention on this astroturf corporate organizing. I remember watching Nightline. Ted Koppel had a program. And Bob Beckel wasn’t on it, but he was interviewed, and then somebody from Common Cause and a fellow by the name of Jack Bonner, who’s one of these astroturf organizers, were commenting. But then the issue sort of faded.

And now, you might think that Bob Beckel would be ostracized or punished, or their career would be washed up, or they’d be personally discredited or ethically discredited for this sort of activity, but I just picked up the paper the other day and read that, in fact, he is now an election commentator on the '96 presidential campaign working for CBS. You know, here's this person caught falsifying a lobby campaign, faking grassroots, outrageous, ends up a huge scandal. There’s no criminal action. He gets a nice job being a commentator on the election for CBS. And it just shows how the revolving door spins between PR, lobbying and the big media. And so often, these pundits, these commentators, who are introduced to analyze political campaigns, are public relations people themselves, and yet they’re never identified.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! from Pacifica Radio. More from John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, after this.

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. John Stauber is the founder of the Center for Media and Democracy and editor of PR Watch, which documents how the corporate public relations industry is dominating the media and manipulating the political process, including in the 1996 presidential election year.

JOHN STAUBER: Most people are familiar with George Will. George Will has been attacking Pat Buchanan viciously. I find it really enjoyable to watch George Will attacking Pat Buchanan. But it might be good to mention to people who don’t know this, which is probably 99% of the audience, tha George Will’s wife, Mari Maseng Will, is Bob Dole’s public relations flack. She’s his press secretary, one of the people who survived the recent round of firings in the Bob Dole campaign. I mean, I have no proof of this, but, you know, maybe the reason Bob Dole didn’t fire George Will’s wife was because it might not be real good at a time when George Will is making such mincemeat out of Pat Buchanan. I don’t know. It’s total speculation. But I think the campaign would certainly be much more interesting, and people would get a better insight into how incestuous the ties are between big media, big PR and big politics, if we knew who some of these people are and how connected they are.

AMY GOODMAN: The name of your book, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, in fact, that’s a very current story.

JOHN STAUBER: It’s a very current story. And we chose the title of our book before we realized that, in fact, there is a publicly funded public relations campaign utilizing a powerful political PR firm, Powell Tate, to try to sell the American people on the idea that sewage sludge contaminated with thousands of toxins, from every imaginable pathogen to PCBs and dioxins and radioactivity, is in fact now good for us. It’s too toxic to dump in the ocean, to incinerate or to landfill, but we’re not calling it sludge anymore. It’s now biosolids and natural organic fertilizer. And with the EPA’s blessing, it’s going to be hauled out and put on cropland to grow our food. This is the decision that the EPA has come to, clearly a public relations decision, on how to deal with the mountains and mountains and mountains of contaminated toxic sludge building up at every sewage plant in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, were you saying that in their PR campaign, they use the term “Toxic sludge is good for you”?

JOHN STAUBER: No, they don’t. They don’t say toxic sludge is good for you. Would that they would. I mean, we picked the title based on a Tom Tomorrow cartoon. We didn’t realize it at the time, but that’s what put this idea into our mind, a Tom Tomorrow cartoon. And it was sort of like, Don’t we wish these PR campaigns were so blatant that they actually said, 'Toxic sludge is good for you.'” Instead, they say, “Beneficial biosolids, a natural organic fertilizer, are wonderful for your garden.” And they hope to goodness that you don’t ask them what biosolids are, because “biosolids” is the term, the euphemism, that they have developed carefully to replace the term “sludge.” We don’t call it sludge anymore. The public relations flack for the sewage industry said, “We now call it biosolids. It’s a beneficial fertilizer.” This person, Nancy Blatt, actually called us while our book was in the works to see if we wouldn’t change the title, because she felt it might adversely impact on their public relations campaign to promote biosolids fertilizer.

Now, we’re talking politics. And what’s interesting is that the public relations firm that’s promoting biosolids and promoting a campaign to make this issue, quote, “noncontroversial,” unquote, by the year 2000, so that nobody knows that our food is now being grown in sewage sludge, is the Powell Tate firm. Powell is Jody Powell, who is Jimmy Carter’s press secretary. Tate is Sheila Tate, who was Nancy Reagan and George Bush’s press secretary and also happens to be the reelected chairperson of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. What a powerful right-wing public relations flack is doing as the chair of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I don’t know and I really don’t want to speculate on too much. But I have noticed that, in my opinion, a lot of the programming of CPB has taken somewhat of a right-wing, dumbed-down direction over the last few years that I’m not too happy about.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about the lawsuit that is going to court this week.

JOHN STAUBER: Well, most people don’t know the toxic sludge story. I mean, we didn’t know it until we chose this title and sort of stumbled upon it or stepped in it or whatever. But in August of 1994, the excellent TV Nation program aired an eight-minute segment, airing nationally then on NBC, about how sewage sludge from New York City was being hauled all the way across country in train cars to this tiny little Mexican border town in West Texas called Sierra Blanca, where a company, Merco, that had a huge contract — has a huge contract with the city of New York, would dump this New York sewage sludge on the ground. It would dry out, blow around. I mean, this was the solution to pollution is dilution, is this terrible old term. But then, the residents of Sierra Blanca couldn’t stand the smell. There were complaints. The people were developing strange illnesses and asthma diseases.

And TV Nation did a nice, little eight-minute segment on this, which resulted in a $33 million lawsuit brought by the sludge hauler, Merco, against Sony, which I believe owned rights to the TV Nation piece, against local anti-sludge activists in Sierra Blanca and against Hugh Kaufman, an EPA official and whistleblower who lambasted hauling sewage sludge out to the desert to this poor, little, impoverished Mexican American community. This is a SLAPP suit, clearly. A SLAPP suit is a suit brought by a major corporation to try to shut people up. In this case, Merco filed a suit. ”SLAPP” stands for a strategic lawsuit against public participation. It’s an acronym that implies a slap. You know, “Shut up! Don’t talk about this stuff. We don’t want people to know about sludge.” And it’s designed to intimidate. And the lawsuit is, as we speak, in court in West Texas. Now, if Merco, the sludge hauler, wins his suit, it’s going to have a very chilling impact on environmental reporting, on community activism and on just the general reporting of all the issues surrounding toxic sludge.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. We’re talking to John Stauber. He is author of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. And again, he puts out a quarterly newsletter called PR Watch. I don’t want to end this interview without talking about olestra. Now, I’m trying to figure out how olestra is tied to the election, since this is a grassroots election show, but I think it shows the power of the PR industry and the connections between government and public relations and the subversion of the democratic process. Can you talk a little about what this is and how it all fits together?

JOHN STAUBER: Olestra is a chemical that mimics fat. A big difference between olestra and fat is that our stomachs don’t digest olestra, and so it passes through undigested. It’s probably not the sort of thing you want to eat. Studies indicate that it can cause stomach problems, diarrhea. Some suspect it may be a carcinogen. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, Michael Jacobson’s organization in Washington, is outraged that the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the Procter & Gamble Company’s being able to take this fake fat and put it in their potato chips — they sell Pringles — because people are going to get sick from this. People are going to develop — pardon me, but what’s called a leaky rectum. They’re going to develop diarrhea. There’s going to be all sorts of gross problems in a significant number of people who eat this drug, olestra, that was approved by FDA.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, “leaky rectum”?

JOHN STAUBER: I think I’ll just leave that to the imagination. We’re talking stomach problems and diarrhea.

AMY GOODMAN: But why? Why would this happen? The fat actually goes straight through because it can’t be digested?

JOHN STAUBER: Yeah, this stuff isn’t digested. It passes through your system undigested, and in some people it causes severe digestive problems that result in diarrhea.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, well, we were sent a PR packet from Procter & Gamble that gave us — that gave us a bandana to cover our eyes with so we could do a taste test between a regular potato chip and the fat-free olestra. I guess it goes under the brand name of Olean potato chips. How does this fit in, this product of Procter & Gamble, a well-known multinational corporation? How does this fit into the whole PR story?

JOHN STAUBER: It fits in this way. Procter and Gamble is now the world’s largest advertiser, $5 billion a year spent by one corporation advertising its products, such as Pringles potato chips, the delivery system for the olestra. Think how many more Pringles will be sold when they can advertise it as completely fat-free, because the olestra drug is in Pringles potato chips instead of fat. Procter & Gamble also sells all sorts of cleaning agents, which are going to probably be used to clean up the various messes resulting from olestra. They’re also the major manufacturer of adult diapers. Now, currently, I don’t wear adult diapers, and I haven’t found the need to wear adult diapers. But if I ate a lot of Pringles, who knows? I might. I mean, this begins to sound a little conspiratorial, but it’s really just, you know, brilliant synergistic marketing. But the most amazing bit of the marketing is, for 95 years, Procter & Gamble has sold a product that we all know and love, the pink stuff, Pepto Bismol. And I suspect that somewhere hidden in the bowels of Procter & Gamble, if you will, there is all sorts of analysis of how much more Pepto Bismol might actually be sold based on how many more olestra-filled potato chips are eaten. It sounds hilarious, but the outrageous part of it is this should, in my opinion, never have been approved by the FDA. And you say, “Well, OK, what’s the public relations connection here?” I think it’s a great example of how if you buy $5 billion worth of advertising on corporate media, you can actually buy a lot of silence. And I haven’t seen much coverage at all of this issue.

The other interesting connection is there’s a public relations consultant in Washington, D.C., by the name of Carol Tucker-Foreman. Many people might know Carol Tucker-Foreman. For years, she was the executive director of the Consumer Federation of America. After that, Jimmy Carter appointed her as an undersecretary of agriculture. Then she formed a consulting PR firm called Foreman & Heidepriem. Her clients include EMILY’s List, which is a PAC that provides money to women candidates of both parties, very influential organization. Her clients include the Safe Food Coalition, something she started, which promotes meat safety. Sounds very fine and public interest organization. Her clients also include Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone and, most recently, Procter & Gamble’s olestra. So, here you have somebody who’s identified with public interest causes, with consumer causes, with feminist political work, who has another hat that she wears when she’s lobbying in Congress. And this is the hat for Procter & Gamble to promote approval and use of olestra, the hat for Monsanto to promote bovine growth hormone. And it’s a great example of how when products are pushed, and they’re approved by FDA even though they’re unsafe, there’s always a combination of forces, including lobbying, public relations and advertising, that come together as integrated communications. And in this case, we have an apparent white hat, somebody who’s for us, a consumer advocate, hired by Procter & Gamble to promote olestra.

AMY GOODMAN: At least has a warning on the label — right? — that says that it causes — eating olestra will cause loose stools and stomach cramps. And Procter & Gamble didn’t want them to use the term “diarrhea,” so they won and got to use “loose stools.” Somehow that sounds more palatable?

JOHN STAUBER: Well, I don’t know. I think the bottom line is we’re looking at a big increase in Pepto Bismol sales for Procter & Gamble.

AMY GOODMAN: John Stauber is co-author of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. It’s published by Common Courage Press. And you can reach him at the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin. His email address is 74250.735@compuserve.com. That’s 74250.735@compuserve.com.

You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. For those of you who’ve just discovered this show, let me tell you a little about some of the regular features on Democracy Now! Every Monday we look at campaign finance reform efforts and how wealthy interests are influencing American politics, in a segment called “Money Talks.” But it’s not just Monday we look at money. In fact, tomorrow we’re going to be taking a look at Senator Alfonse D’Amato as we move to New York for the New York primary. We’ll be looking at this head of the Banking Committee, kingmaker extraordinaire. We’ll be looking at his power and money machine. On Tuesdays, right-wing watch. We’ll cover everything from how the Christian Coalition is organizing on the grassroots level to the rise of the militias, anti-abortion violence and hate group activity throughout the United States. Wednesdays, it’s members of Congress. They’ll be joining us to talk about what’s hot on Capitol Hill. We’ll especially get to hear from members of the Progressive Caucus, now 50 members strong, founded by the only independent in Congress, Bernie Sanders from Vermont. Thursdays, it’s our segment “Living Democracy,” focusing on what citizens are doing in communities around the United States to hold public officials accountable, revitalize neighborhoods and promote social justice. And finally, Fridays, some of the country’s leading progressive journalists joining us for a roundtable reviewing the events of the past week and looking ahead. This Friday, it’s International Women’s Day, and we’ll be joined by international women’s journalists, who will be talking about U.S. presidential politics. Democracy Now! is produced by Julie Drizin with Pat Greenfield, and engineered by Ken Mason. You can write to us via our email address, democracy@pacifica.org. That’s democracy@pacifica.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Join me in New York tomorrow for another edition of Democracy Now!, Pacifica Radio’s daily national grassroots election show.