- Sheldon Rampton
Infobox Person
name = Sheldon Rampton
caption =
birth_date = birth date and age|1957|8|4
birth_place =Long Beach, California
other_names =
known_for =
occupation = editor,author Sheldon Rampton (born
August 4 ,1957 ) is the editor of "PR Watch ", and theauthor of several books that criticize thepublic relations industry and what he sees as other forms of corporate and governmentpropaganda .Rampton was born in
Long Beach, California . At the age of three, his family moved toLas Vegas, Nevada , where his father worked as a musician. Raised as a member ofThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), he spent two years inJapan as aLatter-day Saint (LDS) missionary from 1976 to 1978. Upon returning to the United States, however, he left the LDS Church, influenced in part byMormon feministSonia Johnson .As an undergraduate student at
Princeton University , Rampton studied writing underJoyce Carol Oates ,E. L. Doctorow andJohn McPhee . Upon graduation in 1982, Rampton worked as a newspaper reporter before becoming a peace activist. During the 1980s and 1990s, he worked closely with theWisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua (WCCN), which opposed the Reagan administration's military interventions inCentral America and works to promote economic development, human rights, and mutual friendship between the people of the United States andNicaragua . At WCCN, Rampton helped establish the Nicaraguan Credit Alternatives Fund (NICA Fund) in 1992, which channels loans from US investors to supportmicrocredit and other "alternative credit" programs in Nicaragua.In 1995, Rampton teamed with
John Stauber as co-editors ofPR Watch , a publication of theCenter for Media and Democracy (CMD). They have been described as liberal, [Chisun Lee, a writer for the "Village Voice ", noted of Rampton and co-author John Stauber's work:There isn't likely to be much corporate support there. These guys come from the far side of liberal. Saying so is not to detract from their exhaustively detailed reportage and calmly convincing tone; indeed, the book is generally light on rhetoric, and there's hardly a radical quoted.
Chisun Lee, [http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0115,lee2,23736,10.html "The Flack Catchers"] , "Village Voice ", April 10, 2001.] and their writings are regarded by some members of the public relations industry as one-sided and hostile.ActivistCash , a website hosted by Washington lobbyistRichard Berman , has castigated them as "self-anointed watchdogs," "scare-mongers," "reckless" and "left-leaning." [ [http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/12 Organization Overview] , ActivistCash.com website.] Rampton and Stauber have in turn argued that the ActivistCash critique contains a number of "demonstrably false" claims. [ [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=A_Visit_to_the_ActivistCash.Com_Web_Site A Visit to the ActivistCash.com Website] , "SourceWatch" (wiki [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=A_visit_to_the_ActivistCash.com_web_site&oldid=286006 permalink Feb. 25, 2008] ).]Rampton is also a contributor to the
Wikipedia open content project, and was the person who coined the name "Wikimedia " which later became the name of the foundation that manages Wikipedia and its sister projects. Inspired by Wikipedia's collaborative writing model, Rampton foundedDisinfopedia (now known asSourceWatch ), another CMD project, to complement his PR Watch work to expose deceptive and misleadingpublic relations campaigns.fact|date=February 2008Writings by Rampton
*With
Liz Chilsen :
**"" (1987)
*WithJohn Stauber :
** [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1567510604 Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry] (1995)
** [http://www.prwatch.org/books/mcusa.html Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?] (1997)
** [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158542059X Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future] (2001)
** [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0965492389 Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq] (2003)
** [http://www.bananarepublicans.org/ Banana Republicans] (2004)
** [http://www.prwatch.org/tbwe/?q=books/tbwe The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq] (2006)References
Footnotes
External links
* [http://www.prwatch.org PR Watch]
* [http://www.sheldonrampton.com Sheldon Rampton's home page]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.