The birth of the public relations industry was one of the most quietly calamitous events in American history. While much derided and downplayed—try finding a movie or TV show where P.R. professionals aren’t repugnant slimeballs—the industry has been a massively influential presence in our lives since the turn of the 20th century, shaping our thoughts and feelings in ways that have caused immense damage to our environment, our fellow humans, and ourselves. The world would be better off if it simply didn’t exist. But like many unscrupulous activities, P.R. is both extremely profitable and useful to the interests of the wealthy, and for that reason it’s grown and prospered.
The metastasis of the P.R. industry came thanks to a number of simple-yet-effective tricks (more on those later) that most of us would prefer to believe are too obvious to work. Yet more often than not they do work, which is why few people remember that Coca-Cola hired death squads to kill unionized workers in Colombia or that Chiquita bananas are the product of a century’s worth of ecological devastation and human rights abuses. Some (especially the victims’ families) haven’t forgotten, yet their cries for justice have been drowned out by the cheerful, relentless hum of these companies’ powerful P.R. machines. To paraphrase Bob Marley, you can’t fool all the people all the time—but it turns out you don’t have to.
All you need to do is persuade—or bore—a critical mass of people into swallowing your message. Few have ever been adept at this as Edward Bernays, widely regarded as the father of public relations (and modern propaganda). The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays made his bones by helping to stir up public support for U.S. intervention in World War I, then parlayed that success into a long and lucrative career which included such accomplishments as convincing American women that cigarettes (which he dubbed “Torches of Freedom”) were empowering and good for their health, and convincing the CIA to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company (which has since changed its name to Chiquita).
In his influential book Propaganda (1928), Bernays made a case for the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.” According to Bernays, while some bad actors might seek to manipulate the public for the wrong reasons, “such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life.” He laid out a vision of the world that is chillingly familiar today: “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” In his view this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it was people like him doing most of the governing, molding, forming, and suggesting.
Modern P.R. specialists are both strongly influenced by Bernays’ work and, in some cases, alarmed by its implications. Take Andrew Mckenzie, who penned an article for the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) that urged P.R. pros to be “the conscience of an organization,” and to insist that harmful actions “cannot be reframed or spun,” since this “is bad business, destroys shareholder wealth and ruins brands.” It’s a noble sentiment, but one that is fundamentally at odds with reality. As our editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson has written before, doing harm is often profitable, and the number of brands (personal or corporate) that have been irrevocably tarnished by their misdeeds is far smaller than those who have gotten off largely scot-free. Johnson & Johnson might have had to pay $4.7 billion in damages to women who developed ovarian cancer from using its baby powder, but that’s a tiny fraction of the company’s revenue ($81.5 billion in 2018 alone), and people are still buying Listerine, Neutrogena, and Band-Aids.
It’s clear that the idea of P.R. as a force for good is little more than wishful thinking. In the words of British journalist and author Heather Brooke: “Public Relations is at best promotion or manipulation, and at worst, evasion and outright deception. However, what it is never about is a free flow of information.” Today’s P.R. industry is exceptionally skilled at pretending otherwise. Whether its practitioners are working within an organization or as part of an outside agency, whether they’re representing individuals, businesses, or governments, the methods used are largely similar. None of these tricks are particularly complex at first glance, but that’s why they’re so effective—the best grifts are often the simplest ones.
We’ll now examine the three most important tricks in the P.R. professional’s repertoire. It’s worth noting that none of these tricks are intrinsically evil. In theory (and sometimes in practice) the same methods can be used to advance the goals of saving coral reefs or ensuring healthcare for all, just as easily as they can be used to advocate nuking Iran or using killer drones to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border. However, the rules of the P.R. game are much the same as those of college admissions: Those who start off with a big pile of money and know the right kinds of people have an all-but-insurmountable advantage.
Trick #1: “Media Placements”
The most valuable P.R. people in the world are those who can reliably secure their clients a platform in “A1” media outlets like the New York Times, Time magazine, and CNN. For customers who prefer to keep a lower profile, top P.R. pros can also seed favorable coverage of their preferred policies and positions in those same outlets while being careful to omit any mention of their involvement.
The firms who do this work are the crème de la crème of the P.R. profession, pulling in multi-million dollar retainers from ultra-wealthy clients. Take, for example, APCO Worldwide. One of the largest P.R. firms in the United States (it also claims to have 35 offices worldwide in cities from Paris to Tel Aviv to Shanghai), its website proudly proclaims: “We work for bold clients.” Many of those clients, like the Saudi Arabian royal family, are bold indeed—at least when it comes to beheading journalists, causing famines that kill millions of people, or torturing and murdering political opponents.
The metastasis of the P.R. industry came thanks to a number of simple-yet-effective tricks (more on those later) that most of us would prefer to believe are too obvious to work. Yet more often than not they do work, which is why few people remember that Coca-Cola hired death squads to kill unionized workers in Colombia or that Chiquita bananas are the product of a century’s worth of ecological devastation and human rights abuses. Some (especially the victims’ families) haven’t forgotten, yet their cries for justice have been drowned out by the cheerful, relentless hum of these companies’ powerful P.R. machines. To paraphrase Bob Marley, you can’t fool all the people all the time—but it turns out you don’t have to.
All you need to do is persuade—or bore—a critical mass of people into swallowing your message. Few have ever been adept at this as Edward Bernays, widely regarded as the father of public relations (and modern propaganda). The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays made his bones by helping to stir up public support for U.S. intervention in World War I, then parlayed that success into a long and lucrative career which included such accomplishments as convincing American women that cigarettes (which he dubbed “Torches of Freedom”) were empowering and good for their health, and convincing the CIA to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company (which has since changed its name to Chiquita). In his influential book Propaganda (1928), Bernays made a case for the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.” According to Bernays, while some bad actors might seek to manipulate the public for the wrong reasons, “such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life.” He laid out a vision of the world that is chillingly familiar today: “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” In his view this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it was people like him doing most of the governing, molding, forming, and suggesting.
Modern P.R. specialists are both strongly influenced by Bernays’ work and, in some cases, alarmed by its implications. Take Andrew Mckenzie, who penned an article for the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) that urged P.R. pros to be “the conscience of an organization,” and to insist that harmful actions “cannot be reframed or spun,” since this “is bad business, destroys shareholder wealth and ruins brands.” It’s a noble sentiment, but one that is fundamentally at odds with reality. As our editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson has written before, doing harm is often profitable, and the number of brands (personal or corporate) that have been irrevocably tarnished by their misdeeds is far smaller than those who have gotten off largely scot-free. Johnson & Johnson might have had to pay $4.7 billion in damages to women who developed ovarian cancer from using its baby powder, but that’s a tiny fraction of the company’s revenue ($81.5 billion in 2018 alone), and people are still buying Listerine, Neutrogena, and Band-Aids.
It’s clear that the idea of P.R. as a force for good is little more than wishful thinking. In the words of British journalist and author Heather Brooke: “Public Relations is at best promotion or manipulation, and at worst, evasion and outright deception. However, what it is never about is a free flow of information.” Today’s P.R. industry is exceptionally skilled at pretending otherwise. Whether its practitioners are working within an organization or as part of an outside agency, whether they’re representing individuals, businesses, or governments, the methods used are largely similar. None of these tricks are particularly complex at first glance, but that’s why they’re so effective—the best grifts are often the simplest ones.
We’ll now examine the three most important tricks in the P.R. professional’s repertoire. It’s worth noting that none of these tricks are intrinsically evil. In theory (and sometimes in practice) the same methods can be used to advance the goals of saving coral reefs or ensuring healthcare for all, just as easily as they can be used to advocate nuking Iran or using killer drones to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border. However, the rules of the P.R. game are much the same as those of college admissions: Those who start off with a big pile of money and know the right kinds of people have an all-but-insurmountable advantage.
Trick #1: “Media Placements”
The most valuable P.R. people in the world are those who can reliably secure their clients a platform in “A1” media outlets like the New York Times, Time magazine, and CNN. For customers who prefer to keep a lower profile, top P.R. pros can also seed favorable coverage of their preferred policies and positions in those same outlets while being careful to omit any mention of their involvement.
The firms who do this work are the crème de la crème of the P.R. profession, pulling in multi-million dollar retainers from ultra-wealthy clients. Take, for example, APCO Worldwide. One of the largest P.R. firms in the United States (it also claims to have 35 offices worldwide in cities from Paris to Tel Aviv to Shanghai), its website proudly proclaims: “We work for bold clients.” Many of those clients, like the Saudi Arabian royal family, are bold indeed—at least when it comes to beheading journalists, causing famines that kill millions of people, or torturing and murdering political opponents.
by Nick Slater, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: uncredited
