The hologram metaphor

What is a hologram? What does 'media' mean? Mediating communication--mass media is communication to mass public. We can't all be everywhere experiencing everything. So people depend on others to deliver news and information, and in modern industrial societies this has become an institution, like government, health care, social welfare, the military, law enforcement, education, etc. So what happens if the mediation between consumers and newsmakers is inherently biased, and producing a view of reality that represents certain political interests with money to access mass media and influence the public's notion of how society does or should function? In other words, what happens if what we see on TV or read in the papers is more of a hologram, an empty image projected, and what's really going on behind the scenes is a mystery that would take some time, effort and expertise to unravel? What if the reality behind the scenes looked quite different, and would upset a large segment of the population, and the imagery presented 'on stage' was based on the state-of-the-art research into persuasion? In other words, imagine paraphrasing the T-shirt:

"My society has been the victim of a highly-orchestrated and obscenely well-funded effort to persuade the masses and use consumption as a relatively benign means of social control, but at least I got this really cool reality TV show!"

Okay, it doesn't fit very well on a T-shirt. Here are some interesting quotes (from Rampton and Stauber's book, emphasis added):

• "Media plans are routine in PR although they don't sound too good when they hit print."
• "Don't put anything in writing you don't want to be on page one of your newspaper."
• Third party technique: 'put your words in someone else's mouth'
• 'You never know when a PR agency is being effective; you'll just find your views slowly shifting'
• 'Most of what you see on TV is, in effect, a canned PR product. Most of what you read in the paper and see on television is not news.'

Reliance on 'experts'

How is the public supposed to make sense of public policies? Who understands the intricacies of Social Security, Medicare, nuclear power generation, the intelligence community, foreign policy, health care reform, government regulation and taxation, etc.? The rise of the expert, the scientist, the independent observer, has accompanied the increasing complexity of policy. Ironically, though, it has often led to people telling us that it's not complex at all, but really very simple. Health care reform can be simply reduced to a 'government takeover.' So-called 'climate change' is impossible to prove--it's just 'alarmist' scientists seeking to unlock obscenely lucrative funding streams from the government. Any 'gun control' of any kind will eventually lead to a total ban on private gun ownership. 'Bureaucracies' are synonymous with government, and with bloated, wasteful, inefficient provision of goods or services (here's a chart only of GE's major corporate divisions). Except for the Pentagon (Defense Agency chart, list of various agencies).

We rely on experts to help us 'translate' complex issues. Few of us have time or interest in becoming experts ourselves. But how do we know who the experts are, where they come from, who's paying their salaries, and whose interests they're representing? Being called an 'expert' implies some impartiality, objectivity. Think back to the third party technique--'putting your words in other people's mouths.' What if those people were scientists, professionals, seemingly independent and disinterested, but also were called on by network TV news and major newspapers and media outlets to provide opinions on a variety of subjects? Remember the 'sourcing' filter in the propaganda model. And remember the pressure to keep it short and simple, predictable for the news network (if you want a call back anyway), full of sound bites, etc. That's what the message force multipliers did at the Pentagon for their network news employers.

The third party technique

Essentially, as Rampton and Stauber write, the third party technique involves 'putting your words in someone else's mouth'. For instance, if the Ford Motor Company wants to inject some doubt and uncertainty into the public debate on global climate change (for obvious reasons ... ), would anyone take them seriously if they used their own experts? Well, some. But Ford, as any profit-oriented corporation would, look for a third party, some expert, preferably with credibility--a scientist, celebrity, someone who seems to be independent, etc., to question the research for them. Maybe with a name like 'Research Institute for American Competitiveness.' Who could argue with that??

Another telling PR quote from the reading:

'you'll never know when a PR firm is being effective; you'll just find your views slowly shifting.'

The whole idea of PR, as opposed to advertising, is to work in the background. PR firms are paid vast sums of money not to become celebrities, but to put words and ideas into other people's mouths. The Pentagon, before the Iraq invasion, hired two spokespersons from the PR industry, Charlotte Beers, and Victoria Clarke. They were hired not for thier mastery of diplomatic skills, but for their knowledge and understanding of the art of persuasion (here's an interview with Beers from PBS).Clarke wrote a book titled 'Lipstick on a Pig,' the idea being that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig (i.e., spin doesn't work in the modern era of media, because the truth will eventually be discovered). Yes, but as those paying attention in Iraq know, it took hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of casualties, civilian and American soldiers, untold costs for 'reconstruction' and the needs of returning Veterans, and the loss of the post 9/11 international goodwill the US had won, before the 'truth' emerged. Beers and Clarke both resigned before 2003 was over, by the way, and if you weren't paying close attention (something the PR industry depends on in fact), the PR campaign by the Pentagon that was supposed to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, didn't exactly work as planned. Victoria Clarke's contributions were the two 'embedding' projects, one to embed journalists with the troops on the ground in Iraq (to control the sorts of perspectives and stories that would emerge about the war), and second to embed 'independent military analysts' into the newscasts (to control as much as possible the 'independent analysis' that news consumers received from commercial networks). .

Phony grassroots activism--'astroturfing'

Here's another way that the third party technique can be used. Some corporations fund groups with names that make them sound like grassroots organizations, or popular social movements. Here are some examples:

• Consider 'tort 'reform'this is reform of 'tort' or civil law. Using the word 'reform' and calling it a 'reform movement,' makes it sound like there's a problem and a movement to address it (like 'welfare reform'). In this case, tort reform is mainly a movement funded by tobacco and insurance industries, trying to put caps on product liability lawsuits (see Stauber and Rampton's online article). In fact, rather than call it tort reform (what's that?? People upset with French pastries??), which doesn't exactly incite the public to carry torches and pitchforks to the halls of government and demand reform, and knowing that lawyers generally have perception problems in the public, the PR campaign spun it away from reform of civil law and called it 'lawsuit abuse.' In fact--now this is really going to surprise you--there are a series of astroturf organizations under the heading 'citizens against lawsuit abuse.' Here's one media outlet that has spotted them and their modus operandi.
• Americans for Technology Leadership-These particular Americans, whoever they are, get their money mostly from Microsoft. Other organizations such as the Citizens against Government Waste (Sourcewatch rap sheet) are included in the 'about us' link, but their minimal funding support is provided by the Olin and Bradley foundations (see below).
• American Civil Rights Institute--the 'new' civil rights movement, which is against affirmative action, which it refers to as 'racial preferences'. Not the movement associated with the 1964 Civil Rights Law or anything else. There are also the American Civil Rights Coalition, Center for Equal Opportunity, Independent women's forum (an anti-feminist group), institute for justice. They're all related, too. Funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee. Ward Connerly is the brains behind these. The funders pay well.
• Alliance for Retirement Prosperity. At the height of Pres. Bush's attempt in 2005 to muster public support for privatizing Social Security, this organization suddenly appeared. Because the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), an enormous lobby of retired persons with political clout, was firmly against this campaign, one can only assume the ARP was created to sow confusion over whether the AARP, or ARP, or whatever, was for or against privatizing Social Ssecurity (later, 'personalizing' Ssocial Security, because the idea of billions in brokerage fees going to the private sector instead of the Social Security fund didn't poll well ...).
• National Right to Work (anti-union group funded by the Olin Foundation, whose family made its fortunes in chemicals and munitions). 'Defending the nation's workers against the abuses of compulsory unionism since 1968!' And against increases in the minimum wage, occupational safety and health improvements, benefits, etc.
• Food for all (check out the corporate ads on the home page). They do 'point-of-purchase' fundraising, meaning they provide the envelopes, and pass on the charity giving for hunger to you, the supermarket consumer!
• Citizens for a sound economy (tobacco, Koch industries-opposing cig taxes, Scaife Foundations, Claude Lambe Foundation, etc.)
• I've put up a page from another course I teach. It would be good practice to go through a few of the websites and try to figure out which ones, if any, are legitimate and which are phony grassroots movements (at the bottom of the page are yet more legitimate sites trying to help you identify the PR campaigns from the real movements)..
  

Why is this false activism? Two main reasons. First, no one would believe the tobacco industry if it came out forcefully in favor of liability caps on civil lawsuits. In other words, large corporations need third parties to deliver their carefully-crafted messages to the public. Second, people seem rather fickle in the sense that if they believe that public opinion is reaching consensus, or even the opinion of climate scientists on the risks of global warming, their views begin to shift. So creating some illusion of consensus, or an illusion of controversy or unsettled science, is useful for those trying to stifle momentum for change, regulation, higher taxes, etc. Corporate-backed movements may represent a perversion of the idea of social activism, but you wouldn't know that by just reading the paper, or hearing the news ('the American Civil Rights Coalition says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem, and affirmative action serves no useful purpose.' It also refuses to disclose its contributors. Hmmm, I wonder why? Well, read the article to find out). The idea is to deceive--put your words into someone else's mouth, in this case a group that pretends to be for civil rights, but is actually trying to protect the rights of whites and property owners (predominantly white). That's why it's called 'astroturfing'--it isn't real grassroots organizing, it's corporate-backed and funded, and designed to protect corporate interests. Sourcewatch and Media Transparency are both good sites for uncovering astroturf and corporate front groups.

Political parties have also used the astroturfing technique.

For more information on PR, PRwatch.org is an excellent site--it's basically the brainchild of Stauber and Rampton, the authors of some articles we're reading.

Or try it yourself! Mix and match!

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Manufactured news--back to the experts

Oftentimes journalists are overworked, outlets understaffed. This causes many to rely on outside experts, people they can call to get opinions--watch the news and see how many 'experts' get interviewed on various issues. How objective are they? We can only assume that the media outlet has chosen them because they are independent, but occasionally you'll hear they're affiliated with think tanks of various sorts. Some of the conservative think tanks include the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Hudson Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute (this was a big one during the Iraq War--Bush made several speeches at their meetings). Liberal think tanks are less common (why??), but the Center for American Progress is in there.

Remember the Persian Gulf War? Here's what PR executive John Rendon had to say about part of his firm's involvement even after the war ended:

"If any of you either participated in the liberation of Kuwait City ... or if you watched it on television, you would have seen hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags," John Rendon said in his speech to the NSC. "Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American flags? And for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs."

PR news releases-blurring the lines between commercials and news

Journalists often pick up stories from PR Newswire and print it as news. PR Newswire is sort of like the Associated Press, except it's entirely PR-driven. Your company has a news release, you pay to put it up on their site. People who are interested can check it out. But journalists can also use this stuff as news. Magazines that might be owned by a company that owns the company getting the press release out can also pretend that this is news, not advertising.

Some studies have shown that one-third to one-half of news stories are based on news releases. We've all seen the infomercial, right? Remember the FlowBee (only slightly less famous than the Alamo ...)?? Infomercials are extended commercials, sometimes made to look like a phony talk show, with a washed-up celebrity host (say, remember Joe the Plumber??) or the women with beautiful complexions in soft light sitting around talking about these fabulous skin care products that actually reverse the aging process. Cher is looking younger every day! There is the straight person set-up where the co-host asks questions of the 'inventor' (e.g., in the case of Ron Popeil and RonCo). There are the testimonials from consumers, the paid audience where thoughtful head-nodding gets rewarded with a brief cameo shot. It's hard to keep up, every Infomercial Hall of Fame is dated.

Good PR is similar--it's just much slicker (and frankly, some of those less-slick infomercials were probably calibrated to reach a certain audience). So watch your step, and wear hip waders if you have them. You can't tell it's a commercial like you can with the infomercial. Take the case of the video news release. The Government does it as well, and has for decades. And during the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama's campaign had enough money to air, in prime time, a 30-minute infomercial.

Is there anything wrong with this, in the private or public sector? A spokesman for the Bush/Cheney Department of Health and Human Services, Kevin W. Keane, told the New York Times "the use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector, ... Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public information tools." So in other words, if the public doesn't know about VNRs, if it thinks it is viewing news, then that's the fault of the uninformed (here's a link to information on the VNRs in question). Sort of like with tobacco, or trans fat, right?

Joyce Nelson's chapter discusses the origins and functions of the press release. It was a visionary way for company's to pretend to be open, but at the same time to control the information, usually coming out about some negative event (e.g., train accident, oil spill, meltdown, massive E Coli scare, product recall, you know, the usual stuff). In a sense it's source filtering. It's also sort of a bluff--the press spokesperson is counting on reporters not to follow-up, to either rush to get the story out and 'scoop' other outlets, or merely to meet a looming deadline and head off to Happy Hour somewhere. Nelson mentions a study done by Hill and Knowlton showing that financial news editors considered PR practitioners their 'most important source' of news. Sometimes reporters use the press release in their story, others they just lift (e.g., the video news release is produced by the PR firm for its client). Other tools of the PR firm, most developed in the first half of the 20th century, included the press tour, press conference, photo opportunity, and the pre-arranged interview, all standard components of the news most people consume (at least those who consume any news).

So, what can PR do for you (if you've got money)?

What can PR do for you?? (if you've got a multi-million dollar budget …)

• Merchandising
• Media strategies-where to 'market,' what sorts of 'experts' to use, etc.
• Damage control (Yerkes and the observatory from the book chapter--there are lots of badly behaving corporations who need some good PR; lots of celebrities, too--in fact, Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' drug campaign was the result of hiring a PR firm when her public image was going south after spending millions to redecorate the White House).
• Celebrity/expert spokespersons (recruiting companies do this for you)
• Coaching of 'experts' in media strategies-impression management--this could include what to wear, the right expressions, the fist pump, reading from a teleprompter, gestures, word choice, etc. Ever wonder why President Bush, a Yale and Harvard graduate whose family is from the Northeast, can't seem to pronounce nuclear?
• How to say nothing without saying 'no comment!'
• Direct mail
• Polling, focus groups
• Lobbying
• Advertising
• Astroturfing

PR firms can help your image, and corporations with lots of money know how to spend it. Pharmaceutical companies probably spend more than anyone on public relations.

PR's roots

Edward Bernays, often considered the 'father of PR,' actually was related to the Freud family. Sigmund Freud's theories of personality were in vogue in the early decades of the 20th century, and focused on the importance of understanding the subconscious mind--the part that we're not even aware of most of the time. Freud thought that many of the problems that people had later in life could be traced to events and relationships with their parents, especially the parent of the opposite sex, and he worked on techniques to try to 'draw out' the subconscious mind to better understand the traumas that had been repressed.

Bernays had another interest, though. Instead of drawing out the subconscious, Bernays was interested in reaching it, mainly to sell goods, ideas, etc. To 'mask the motives of his clients, keep the public unconscious of the forces at work to influence them.' He also wrote about 'regimenting the public mind.'

Bernays' clients included tobacco companies, Bacon producers (how do you put a stamp of approval on the health benefits of bacon?), bananas and the United Fruit company ('celiac' and children), The 'Temperature Research Foundation' (to sell refrigerators, stoves, air conditioners, um, I mean, according to Bernays, to 'disseminate impartial, scientific information concerning the latest developments in temperature control as they affect the health, leisure, happiness, and economy of the American people'), the US Government (helped sell WWI, Woodrow Wilson, and improved Calvin Coolidge's popularity by inviting Hollywood celebrities for a photo-op), General Electric, and Macy's. .

Is PR wrong??

It definitely pumps the economy. Does it depend on whose interests are represented, and how honestly? Is it deceptive? Who can afford it? Does the fact that it's expensive mean that tools of public influence are only available to the most powerful elements in society? How do competing messages get heard? What role do media play in deciding which messages will be heard, and how often (think especially about commercial vs non-commercial news media)? The third party technique works, usually to spin unpopular ideas or unflattering individual or corporate actors.

How can we sniff out and distinguish PR from news? It takes the acquisition of a certain sense of smell . . . Hopefully you're learning some of the techniques.