As President Ronald Reagan's spokesperson actually said once to a group of reporters, 'you don't tell us how to stage the news and we won't tell you how to cover it.' How does the PR industry help produce the 'news?' Let us count some of the ways:

• Press release
• Press conference
• Press tour (expenses paid, of course)
• Photo opportunity
• Pre-arranged interview
• Video News release
• Use of paid experts/well-known people
• Use of think tanks to sponsor 'events,' receptions
• Staged news events (including meetings with heads of state). From Harpers Magazine editor Ken Silverstein (in truthout):

  "Occasionally, firms will achieve spectacular successes for a client: one particularly remarkable piece of lobbyist image management, for example, occurred in the mid-1980s, when the firm of Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly helped refashion Jonas Savimbi, a murderous, demented Angolan rebel leader backed by the apartheid regime in South Africa, as a valiant anti-communist "freedom fighter." Savimbi visited Washington on numerous occasions, where the lobby shop had him ferried about by limousine to meetings with top political leaders, conservative groups, and TV networks. Black, Manafort checked repeated threats by members of Congress to cut off aid to Savimbi's rebel group, which was burning and raping its way through Angola with the help of American taxpayers. "

The cost to make a dictatorship or genocidal rebel look good? Up to $40,000 per month, plus expenses, says Silverstein. Writer Joyce Nelson recounts the Argentine Military Government's hiring of PR firm Burson-Marsteller after the Military coup d'etat to hide the fact that they were using death squads and the police to terrorize political opponents, ultimately killing 30,000, torturing thousands more. Over 400 journalists were exiled, at least 30 murdered. Yet Argentina during this period hosted the World Cup Soccer Tournament--possibly the most followed sporting event in the world--controlled the flow of information and clamped down on any stories that would reveal to a watching world the extent of the terror. Here's a report on a pre-arranged interview, probably combined with a press tour, with President Videla:

"During almost a year of military rule, substantial results had been achieved which enabled Videla to look with optimism towards the future. 'Some people call it a miracle,' he said, 'but that it is not. It is merely the collective effort of workers and companies to sanitize the country and bring it back to economic health.' When the word 'terrorism' was mentioned, Videla admitted that it still exists, but that the shoe is now on the other foot, with more subversive elements being killed than law enforcement authorities. People today support the new government efforts in denouncing the hiding places of the few terrorists that remain, he said. 'But as you have seen yourselves, Argentina is no longer a battlefield.'

Sanitize indeed. The terrorism was mostly state-sponsored, but the reporting was that 'law enforcement authorities' of Government origin were gaining control over the 'problem.' Reality turned upside down, largely thanks to Burson-Marsteller's efforts to keep international pressures and media scrutiny to minimum levels, and any stories conradicting the official narrative out of the news. More source filtering (from an article in the Canadian Financial Post):

"Credit can be given to the military for acting decisively. It wasted no time in cracking down on the terrorists and eradicating subversive elements from the ranks of the administration...Decisiveness and orthodox economics allowed Martinez de Hoz to placate foreign creditors and negotiate a $1 billion medium-term international loan. The country could start thinking about living again instead of just surviving. Both President Videla and the Minister of the Interior say that terrorism is militarily no longer a problem, and that the government has the support of the people in its efforts to stamp out the terrorists.'

Interesting, because a Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano (who was exiled first from Uruguay in 1973 then forced to flee Argentina in 1976), quoted one of the generals, Iberico Saint-Jean, saying:

"First we'll kill all the subersives. Then we'll kill the colaborators. Then the sympathizers. Then the undecided. And finally, we'll kill the indifferent."

And executive Harold Burson's justification for providing PR for a murderous regime?

"Our representation of Argentina was unique in that we had no political involvement with Argentina whatsoever. Our mission for Argentina was fairly clear cut. We first were employed by the Ministry of the Economy. We did not work for the Foreign Office, we did not work for the President's office ... 'we will not undertake a purely political program for any country. We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clear-cut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one read in the paper about Argentina as regards to human rights and other activities."

In other words, helping a country that kills its political opponents project an image to the world that emphasizes it's safe for foreign investment is strictly a business arrangement. But we're past that era, right? Silverstein's piece in truthout was written in 2007 (several PR firms were willing to offer a contract to represent his bogus company, and a government with serious human rights violations). Is this blurring of the lines between news and public relations exclusive to the US Press? Hardly. An Australian study shows over 1/2 of news stories in Australian dailies driven by some form of public relations. The worst offenders were from technology, crime, science, education, and entertainment, all well over 50%. Pratkanis and Aronson talk about the 'beats,' the ritual reporting that newspapers depend on to fill space, but may rarely provide much that turns out to be newsworthy. But how much of that ritual reporting isn't just ritual, but self-serving as well?

Other techniques:

• Third party technique (we've discussed this one--getting someone else to say what no one would believe if you said it)
• Astroturf (creating the corporate-bankrolled illusion of broad consensus, grassroots movement, where none exists)
• (paid) opinion-editorials in newspapers

So . . . How much news is news? You decide!