The field of public relations is essentially dark, covert operations carried out by skilled propaganda professionals. That was the message delivered by Center for Media and Democracy founder and investigative journalist John Stauber in a lecture at the University of Northern Iowa November 8. Stauber said he first encountered the field of PR and its effects in 1990 when he started working with a group of small dairy farmers who where upset after finding out that some dairies were injecting bovine growth hormone into cows to increase their milk production. The hormone was unnecessary, and milk from the cows was the first genetically-engineered food product on the market, but the subject was little-covered by the news media. Stauber discovered that was because of the work of public relations professionals. He has since authored several books on the covert activities of the PR industry, including "Weapons of Mass Deception: Bush's War on Iraq," about the PR spin that duped the country into accepting an unnecessary war in Iraq. In a Q&A session at the end of his lecture, a fired-up public relations major asked whether Stauber was shedding a negative light on the PR world. "My background is not in public relations, my job isn't to police public relations and it's not to improve public relations. I'm an investigative reporter who is interested in exposing how propaganda campaigns work to help people use that information," Stauber replied.

In his new book, former insurance industry insider Wendell Potter says insurance companies spend a huge portion of Americans' health insurance premiums on relentless propaganda and lobbying efforts that are focused on one thing: profits.