You Sold Your Soul To the Devil!

“ You’re in Public Relations?”

“ Yes and why does that sound so bad?”

“You sold your soul to the Devil, that’s why its so bad!”

That was the response I got when I told a complete strange that I was going into the field of Public Relations! … I sold my soul to the Devil, I transferred onto the dark side are the number one phrases many people say about people in PR. I have actually learned a lot about the world of Public Relations, however I really realized the extent of how powerful corporations are, especially when it comes to the news and media distribution. When reading the COLD HARD FACTS in Toxic Sludge is Good For You by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, It opened my eyes to a sneaky world that is controlling and spinning the news.

                  This controlling and spinning news is what we know as Fake News; the news that gets right to the point. There may be many negative aspects of Fake new, the number reason it being all ‘fake’ and nothing else but fake, but when you look at Public Relations and the media corporations’ side of Fake news, you can actually notice the benefits of it all.  It’s  people like Stauber and Rampton that take matter into their own hands and write a book like Toxic Sludge Is Good For You and expose messages like “ little known mega-firms such as Hill and Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller and Ketchum PR- the ‘invisible  men’ who control our political debates and public opinion, twisting reality and protecting the powerful from scrutiny.”[2] This is when groups and companies that do not get enough coverage by the media expose themselves by the attention of irony and satire (Fake News).

                  One example that was mentioned in a lecture by Ian Reilly was the Bhopal Crisis. I never really heard about what it was nor what Fake News was until I watched the short YouTube clips that he presented, but the one that stocked me the most was a group called the Yes Man, that actively speaks on major issues that have not gotten coverage on- this being the Bhopal Crisis.

                  In 1984 there was a chemical gas leak containing more than 40 tons of deadly methyl isocyanine gas that was, “ released from Union Carbide’s pesticide in Bhopal… cost-cutting had ensured that none of the six safely systems designed to contain the leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread thought the city of Bhopal.” [1] In 2001 Michigan based chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. The Dow Chemical Company refuses to take responsibility and clean up the mess they bought into. More than 120,00 resident of Bhopal live with illness and suffer from injuries from the chemicals that they have implanted and yet each of these individuals have no yet been treated because Dow will not release the other accompanying chemicals that were released, which allows doctors to easily treat. When looking at The Stanford Amnesty website it details the procedures that have not yet been followed by the Union Carbide or by the Dow Chemical Company.

                  Now this where the Yes Man plays it’s role. They provide us with a fake website called dowethics.com with articles that fold cutting edge satire which expose more about Dow Chemical. Now this is where the BBC news has asked for a Dow Chemical Spokesperson that would reiterate the same stuff they did when they had first bought out Union Carbide.  The Yes Men sent one of their “reps”  that was accompanied with a fake news name  Finisterra that spoke about how Dow will take full responsibility of their actions. 

  After watching that video  it has left me and many other viewers with high hopes of basically nothing. Although in some ways the Yes Man can be true in what they say but at the same time, as written in the website: “ There are some risks to this approach, it could offer false hope- or rather, false certainly…” [1]

                  When the lecture of Fake News was over and after learning and researching more about the Dow Chemical Company is has left me to think that all these major corporations and PR companies do is protect their companies from the mistakes and faults that they once do. So when I read Toxic Sludge is Good for You and researched Fake News, I really thought about PR, and looked back what that stranger once told me, about selling your soul and now when thinking about, I am selling my soul, maybe not to devil but to the company that I represent!

     “ The Public Relations industry has stolen our dreams and returned them to us packages as illusions.” [2]

Work Cited:

[1] Amnesty, Stanford. "The Bhopal Disaster". Amnesty International USA. 05 25 05. 21 Nov 2008

[2] Stauber, John, and Rampton, Sheldon. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lie and the Public Relations Industry. 1st ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.

 

 

2008.