John Stauber is an American writer and political activist who co-authored five books about propaganda by governments, private interests and the PR industry. They include one book about industry manipulating science (Trust Us, We're Experts), one about the history and current scope of the public relations industry including its birth in a Woodrow Wilson campaign to propagandize Americans to support World War One (Toxic Sludge is Good for You) and one about mad cow disease (Mad Cow USA), which can be credited with accurately predicting the surfacing of the disease within the United States because, as the book points out, the U.S. government and industry handled the issue with PR and deception rather than with science and precautionary measures to protect human and animal health. In 2003 he and Sheldon Rampton wrote Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, another prescient book released in July of that year that was the first to expose the massive deception behind the Bush push for war. In 2004 he wrote with Sheldon Rampton Banana Republicans which argued even before the November election that the Republican Party is turning the U.S. into a one party state by waging politics as war, under the advisorship of David Horowitz and Grover Norquist and other leading right wing tacticians. The book argues that the far-right and its functionaries in the media, lobbying establishment and electoral system are successfully undermining dissent and squelching pluralistic politics in the United States. North Korean propaganda showing a soldier destroying the United States Capitol building. ... Public relations is, simply-stated, the art and science of building relationships between an organization and its key audiences. ... Trust Us, Were Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future is a book written by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. ... Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States (1913–1921). ... Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or commonly mad cow disease) is a fatal, neurodegenerative disease of cattle, which infects by a mechanism that shocked biologists on its discovery in late 20th century and appears transmissible to humans. ... Sheldon Rampton (born August 4, 1957) is the editor of PR Watch, and the author of several books that criticize the public relations industry and what he sees as other forms of corporate and government propaganda. ... Book cover Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One_Party State (ISBN 1585423424) is a book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy. ... The Republican Party, often called the GOP (for Grand Old Party, although one early citation described it as the Gallant Old Party) [1], is one of the two major political parties in the United States. ... David Horowitz David Horowitz is a conservative author and political commentator. ... Grover Glenn Norquist (born October 19, 1956) is the Republican president of the noted anti-tax lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, and a well-connected conservative activist with close ties to business and the media. ...

Stauber is the founder and executive director of The Center for Media & Democracy, which sponsors PR Watch and SourceWatch. Since the 1960s, he has worked with public interest, consumer, family farm, environmental and community organizations at the local, state and national level. He edits and writes for the Center's quarterly newsmagazine, PR Watch. He was born in 1953 and raised in Marshfield, Wisconsin, home of Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird. Stauber grew up in a conservative Republican household but the War in Vietnam turned him into an anti-war and environmental activist while still in high school. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is a media research group founded in 1993 by environmentalist writer and political activist John Stauber. ... PR Watch is a quarterly newsletter whose stated mission is to expose deceptive and misleading public relations campaigns. ... SourceWatchs logo features a magnifying glass through which its name, somewhat distorted, can be seen. ... Marshfield is a city located in Wisconsin. ... Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. ... Secretary Laird on the cover of Time in 1969. ... The Vietnam War was a war fought between 1957 and 1975 on the ground in South Vietnam and bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos (See Secret War) and in bombing runs (Rolling Thunder) over North Vietnam. ...

External links

• Center for Media and Democracy
• John Stauber official bio
• Postel, Danny. Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? An Interview with 'Mad Cow USA' authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. [LiP Magazine, November 1998.]