Brought to You By : How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy by Amy Westervelt

Climate journalist and Drilled podcast host Westervelt (Forget “Having It All”) delivers an urgent if unfocused examination of the tools of propaganda that big corporations use to manipulate the public. Curious about how “climate science denial... worked so well” despite warnings about climate change as early as the 1970s, the author aims to untangle the web of corporate spin that inundated the modern media ecosystem with “information pollution.” The result is a dizzying survey of First Amendment court cases—precursors to Citizens United—that enabled “large-scale corporate propaganda efforts”; of think tanks that publish research based on skewed economic models; and of “green” university programs funded by oil companies to “tilt the scales” toward “preferred” climate change solutions. Most edifying are Westervelt’s profiles of the individuals that built the modern PR machine, including Ivy Ledbetter Lee, who issued the first ever press release in order to manage the public’s reaction to a railroad disaster (the New York Times published it in full), and Herb Schmertz, who convinced Mobil, as “the thinking man’s” oil company, to sponsor PBS’s Masterpiece Theater. At times, it can be a challenge to follow the author’s many avenues of inquiry, some of which feel less pressing than others, though she convincingly conveys how dire corporate influence on knowledge production is for democracy. It’s a rocky road map to the tremendous but often invisible sway held by corporations. (Sept.)