" The journal openly ridiculed writers who failed to use "scientific" formats for their ideas when offering heretical points of view on mass communication issues. Two examples of this can be found in Avery Leiserson's scathing review of George Seldes' The People Don't Know
and Lloyd Barenblatt's commentary on Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders. Both Seldes and Packard argued that the mass media in the United States presented a monolithic, ideologically charged version of "reality" that had succeeded in shaping popular consciousness to a much greater degree than was generally recognized; POQ presented both authors to its readers as irresponsible crackpots. "

― , Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960