PR, Propaganda and Persuasion

We love listening to stories
For our second class on PR issues, we watched a documentary on war spin: it was showing how the US government “sold” the war in Iraq to the public, how they used the media in order to persuade American citizens that this war was necessary. For example, they showed us the fuss made in the American media about the saving operation of an American soldier, “detained” in an Iraqi hospital: the story, supported by the government, was that brave American soldiers came to save their friend, prisoner from the building; the operation was even filmed, and we could see how they bravely got the soldier from the hospital, with guns and a helicopter… Then, we could hear the Iraqi version, from the hospital’s staff: the soldier was injured so they took care of her, like for any other patient, and some were even ready to help her to go to the US embassy. So they were very surprised to see all these soldiers storming in with guns, and taking her from the bed to the helicopter, followed by a camera… One guy from the staff said: “it was like in a Rambo movie…”
…And here we are: fiction became reality for the public, witness of how brave and strong their soldiers were, fighting for the freedom of their friend… And it’s so tempting to believe the story, isn’t it? We all would like to be the goodies, fighting against the baddies, and maybe that’s why Hollywood movies are so successful, no? It’s simple, it just shows us what we want to see, avoiding you to ask yourself too many questions. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against Hollywood movies; but I just think they are dangerous when we show them as if it was the reality, which is usually more complex…

I’ve actually always been amazed to see how the American values are so strongly conveyed in their media, movies and politicians’ speeches: democracy, freedom, liberalism… I think the country really succeeds in building this dream society, at least in the public’s mind; and that definitely gives a strong power to the government, who can uses these messages and symbols in order to mobilise the public. And this works so well that they use the same messages for every war. That’s what shows another documentary called “Spin, The Art of Selling War”, attached in this post: it’s made by Josh Rushing, an ex-American soldier, and was released on the TV channel Al Jazeera English. Josh Rushing explains how the messages from the army are prepared and tailored for the media, as he used to be an army spokesperson. He summarizes in this documentary the 4 main messages conveyed to justify the war, and common to all the US wars: 1)Demonizing the enemy, 2)Protect the US Citizens, 3)If we don’t fight them there, we’ll have to fight them here, 4)We fight humanely. Of course, the documentary also proves how these affirmations have been false many times… His ideas are supported by Norman Salomon, who wrote the book War made easy, and who has been interviewed for the documentary. I think he said something very resounding: when Josh asked him if, actually, what explains war propaganda from government is that war is so complex that the public won’t understand, so it justifies giving a simplified version, Norman replies: “I think government’s fear is not that the public won’t understand, but that they will”. So that means that war propaganda is manipulating the truth until its total misunderstanding. Maybe here is the difference between PR and propaganda?












The French exception
While I was watching the documentary in class, I got to think: it’s so funny to see this vision of the war in Iraq, as in France at the same time all the media were trying to prove that this war was a wrong idea. For example, during the debate in the UN before the war, the national French news clearly showed a strong scepticism about these photos from the US government, supposed to be a proof of the existence of mass destruction arms in Iraq. Then, France became a kind of leader for all the countries against this war, after the bright speech of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs of the time, Dominique de Villepin.
But then, in class I was also thinking: well we thought we were all smarter than the Americans for not going to war, but actually have we been too influenced by a counter propaganda against war in Iraq??...
I don’t think I can talk about propaganda though, but surely about some manipulations: for example there is a TV program in France called “Arret sur Image” (“Pause on Image”), that deciphers some of the images showed on TV, tracking for manipulation. And in this program, they showed us how another French TV channel had cut a speech from George Bush, in order to show him very embarrassed while answering a question about the war in Iraq, to a journalist asking for the reasons of the war. Then, the program showed the whole speech from Bush, and that gave us a totally different impression: his answer was clear, the president was controlling his speech…
But I’d say that in France the most efficient way to persuade the public that this war was bad was humour, by mocking Bush and his only aim in the war: getting oil. For example, in a TV show with moppets representing different politicians (called “Les Guignols de l’info”), they made a little movie showing the long tradition, for not saying obsession, of attacking Iraq in the Bush family and for the US presidents: it was showing, time after time, the president of the time doing exactly the same thing: in a meeting, pointing Iraq on the world map and saying: “I want to attack Iraq!”… And the sentence was repeated again and again, until George W. Bush said it, apparently not even remembering why he wanted to attack Iraq… That was really funny, and also surely helped to convince a lot of French that this war had bad purposes!

War gave birth to PR
After having read some books about the link between PR and war, I’ve realised that in a way war had created PR, or at least justified and accelerated its creation. That’s what shows the 1st World War history, when the “4 minutes men” have been created. These men were recruited by the government among local community leaders thorough all the country, to give prepared speeches about the war to the communities: the themes were “Why are we fighting”, “Unmasking German propaganda”, “The Danger to Democracy” etc. Indeed, the Wilson government needed to convince the public about going to war, as the antiwar movements were very strong. That’s why was created the Committee on Public Information (CPI), that was in fact a propaganda bureau, and the government mobilised the skills of a number of artists, intellectuals and journalists in order to promote the war. They used all kinds of means in order to touch people, like for example strong symbols on posters, showing the Germans as devils threatening American democracy. Most of techniques aimed at heart, and played with fear. There were 2 main consequences from this experience: the first was a raise in using unreason, not well known until then: the unconscious triggers that might be pulled to activate public passions have been discovered as more efficient in order to persuade than the “naïve faith in reason”. Secondly, with the “4 minutes men” the world of mouth’s power, or “third part endorsement”, has also been discovered as very useful, infiltrating in relaxed conversations with people we trust… that’s why we can say that PR is born with the 1st World War.

And these precious tools have been of course used later on, in the following wars, especially during the cold war. For example, in the fifties the launch of the war against Guatemala was the result of a very well prepared propaganda work, showing the country, so close to the US territory, dangerously becoming communist… Actually, nowadays most of historians agree that Arbenz (the Guatemala leader of the time) and its followers were liberal, radical and nationalistic but not, in those early stages, pro-Communist. What happened is that the US Company “United Fruit” had a very successful business in banana trade in this country, and this new government was threatening this business. So Edward Bernays, who was doing the PR for “United Fruit”, managed to make a lot of journalists write and warn about this communist danger. He has succeeded thanks to his influence towards journalists (and also because he had friends in the Eisenhower administration and in the Congress). Also, some journalists were actually happy to be able to fill in their columns, and didn’t seem to question too much the truth as long as they had facts that they could transform into stories…
This reminds me of a Belgian film called “C'est arrivé près de chez vous” (the English title is “Man Bites Dog”), directed by Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel in 1992. The movie is about a camera crew following a serial killer/thief around as he exercises his craft; it’s a black comedy. The film’s aim was to criticise modern societies’ media for using anything in order to show a story: the more unusual and shocking the story is, the better it is, as it will catch the public’s attention. So this logic can lead to very sordid consequences…
Maybe that’s why war is so linked to PR: isn’t war the archetype of a story, with a plot, with action and a denouement, with a beginning and an end, and with good people and bad people? And isn’t part of PR job to create stories?

Sources:
-Ewen, S. PR! A Social History of Spin, Basic Books, 1996
-Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward C Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, Crown, 1998
-Documentary from Josh Rushing Spin, The Art of Selling War, for Al Jazeerah English, 2004