Pittsburgh Reduction Company / Alcoa environmental pollution

The "real picture" vs. the prettified image — used as an example of the difference between company-paid corporate histories and independent journalism. Reference to slide shown in earlier session.

I was looking for this slide the other day. This is the Alcoa book called From Monopoly to Competition. It wasn't written by Alcoa — it's written by someone in the media, and he interviewed lots of people from Alcoa. Most books written about companies are written by the companies, paid for by the companies, sort of biased. This guy actually goes through and says a lot of things. I showed you the picture of the nice beautiful Pittsburgh Reduction Company and then the real picture. Alcoa wouldn't put that in if they had paid for the book.

Tom contrasts Alcoa's idyllic publicity image of the smelting plant with the actual smoke-and-pollution photograph.

[Tom advances slides.] This is what Alcoa said the Pittsburgh Reduction Company looked like — this idyllic picture. And here's the actual picture. It's not quite as idyllic. There's a lot of pollution in the smelting and refining of aluminum.