Discussion Questions from Reading Assignments 3/8/2000
 

Stauber 8, The Sludge Hits the Fan

1/ Why is toxic sludge now called biosolids?  Why not use the term night soils?  Are biosolids any less toxic than toxic sludge?

2/ How is it that waste too hazardous to dump in strictly controlled sanitary landfills ended up spread on farmland?

3/ How does junk science and the EPA fit into this process?

4/ How did "passive public relations" work to allow a farmer in Bowie, Arizona (pop. 400) to spread 83 million pounds of New York City sludge each year on his cotton fields without public hearings or public notice?

5/ What would ethicists from the six ethical perspectives say about the Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign?
 

NASA's PR Campaign on Behalf of Manned Space Flight, 1961-63

1/ Shorty Powers, later (dis)credited with inventing the term A-OK himself, quoted Alan Shepard with the widely accepted expression that quickly worked its way into American culture.  What was the value of this for NASA?  Was Powers' practice to "...help people transmit what they really want to say" an ethical PR tactic or a public deception?

2/ How important was timing in the NASA PR campaign to sell the public on the viability of manned space flight?

3/ Was it ethical for a federal agency to enter into a $500,000 contractual agreement with a news organization for exclusive coverage of the Mercury astronauts and their wives?  Explain your answer from the teleologists and deontologists points of view.  Would such an agreement be ethical today?  Would it be a wise PR move?  What news organization would NASA seek out?

4/ Was John Glenn's 1998 flight on the Space Shuttle, at age 77, a scientific mission or a PR mission?

5/ Why did descriptions of the manned missions change from rides to flights?

6/ Will we see similar circumstances when a manned mission to Mars is finally developed?
 

An Ill President and Public Relations:  Before and After Jim Haggerty (A PR History Footnote)

1/ Are public deceptions about the health of elected public officials, in this case presidents, ethical?

2/ Where such deceptions ethical in the past?  Are they ethical now?

3/ Take the role of a deontologist or a teleologist.  What would you say about the PR and political practices chronicled in this historical research article?

###