Sheldon Rampton

With co-author Liz Chilsen, he wrote Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities (1987). With co-author John Stauber he has written three books about the public relations industry:

• Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy) (1995)
• Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (http://www.prwatch.org/books/mcusa) (1997)
• Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future (http://www.prwatch.org/books/experts) (2001).

Rampton was born in Long Beach, California. At the age of three, his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where his father worked as a musician. Raised as a member of the Mormon Church, he spent two years in Japan as a Mormon missionary from 1976 to 1978. Upon returning to the United States, however, he left the church, influenced in part by his friendship with Mormon feminist Sonia Johnson, who was excommunicated from the church for her active support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

As an undergraduate student at Princeton University, Rampton studied writing under Joyce Carol Oates[?], E.L. Doctorow and John 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 the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua (WCCN), which opposed the Reagan administration's military interventions in Central America and works to promote economic development, human rights, and mutual friendship between the people of the United States and Nicaragua. At WCCN, Rampton helped establish the Nicaraguan Credit Alternatives Fund (NICA Fund) in 1992, which channels loans from socially concerned US investors to support microcredit and other "alternative credit" programs in Nicaragua.

In 1995, Rampton teamed with John Stauber as co-editors of PR Watch, a publication of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Other Resources

• PR Watch (http://www.prwatch.org)
• Sheldon Rampton's home page (http://www.personalpages.tds.net/~sheldon2000)