Facing a dilemma For this issue we had a very interesting first exercise in class, as we’ve been put in front of a hard dilemma: we had to imagine having the power to divert a fast train, going to kill 5 people, to another direction where it would kill “only” our mum or our best friend… So would you divert the train?? Only 2 people answered in class, proudly saying that they would prefer to kill 1 person than 5, so would divert the train. According to the teacher most of people would say they are unable to make this choice… Well I said it was a hard one, but actually a very quick and instinctive decision came to me: I would protect my mum or my friend!! So does that mean I’m a bad and selfish person? I would say that my attachment to people is probably more important to me than the life of anonymous people, and I think that is a human reaction… If the first thing you see is that you need to protect the people you care about, is that selfish? Anyway, I think in the situations where you have to decide quickly you don’t have time to think about what is good or bad, but just follow your instinct. So my answer to this exercise doesn’t mean that I’ll always blindly protect my clients in my future professional life (if ever I work in a PR agency): first, I’ll have more time to take my decisions when I’ll have to face ethical problems; secondly, I guess I won’t have the same attachment to my clients as for my mum or my best friend… Then, we had another exercise: we had to decide if we would accept to work in a PR campaign promoting a tobacco company in Mexico, where it’s legal but where heart and lung diseases are very highly spread… First I was ready to go on, while trying to adapt the campaign to only existing smokers; and I thought “well, if I don’t take it someone else will, so it’s better if I have some control on it”… But control on what? With or without me the campaign was going to encourage people, old or not, to smoke anyway, and I have no power to change this. So if I’m not agreeing with the campaign, I’d better leave it; and anyway if you’re not enthusiastic about a communication job can you really work well on it? I also thought that I could feel remorse after having participated in a “killing campaign”… It’s sometimes very difficult to define your own moral standards and limits, and the conclusion I came to was that business decisions have to be thought through and adapted to each case, in order not to regret it too much later.
A “two-way communication” is utopian This leads us to the ethical problem of conflicts of interest: when the public interest doesn’t match the organisation interest. In the PR week’s Ethics Debate organised in February 2007, some argued for a PR which has sometimes to lie, and some for a PR which should never lie. But those last ones (George Pitcher, Founder of Luther Pendragon and curate of St Bride, and Simon Lewis, Group Corporate affairs Director of Vodafone) didn’t show moral motivations in their arguments: they basically said that if the news is not out, it will be in someone else’s blog…So their arguments were aimed at their own benefit, not the public benefit. That’s why I think that having a 100% ethical speech, using reasoned persuasion and telling all the truth, is utopian. Indeed, PR is a “hemispheric communication”, as Jensen said (1997): it’s aimed to the interest of the organisation that makes it, even if the public interest can be beneficial to the organisation. But I’m not saying that PR should be totally unethical! There are actually different “ethical degrees” in PR, if we believe what Gruning and Hunt wrote in 1984: the less ethical one would be false information transmitted to a passive and ignorant audience, and the "ideal-utopian" one a two-way communication between negotiating equals. But there are 2 other degrees in the middle, which are very likely to be the most used in the industry.
Reason vs emotion Another ethical problem in PR is manipulation: how far can we go in order to persuade our audience? Being totally ethical would be persuading people through reason, by explaining and defending arguments. That’s what Kevin Moloney suggests in his book Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance (2000). So why PR practitioners so often prefer playing with our emotions in order to get their messages across? I think it’s simply because it’s more efficient: it’s quicker, and for sure in some cases people would be less convinced if they were thinking with reasoned arguments… And as PR is a business, people have to choose the most efficient way to make it, as if they don’t someone else will…
Indirect PR regulation as the most efficient So this makes me think of how we can regulate this manipulation, forgetting about an utopian idealistic PR: I think that we still can use a few direct regulations, like organising company’s PR audits in order to test its social and community impact, and which would be published in media companies’ annual reports, or having journalistic versions of official reports… But I think the limit of a direct regulation is that PR is not only commercial, like advertising, so we can't have an authoritative control on it: what if the journalist writing an article from a press release really believes what he’s writing? Can we still flag up his copy as “advertorial”? As PR is a more subtle practice, I think it should be regulated in a more subtle way: indirectly. I think this can be possible thanks to pluralism, which exists in our modern democracies: pressure groups like consumerists, environmentalists and trade-unionists can counter-balance PR manipulation. But the limit is that if we allow everyone to speak we’ll always have irresponsible media, saying false or manipulative information. And if we want to forbid them with an authoritative control on the media, we loose pluralism… That’s why I think the best solution against PR manipulation is citizens’ education: “Society would be best served if people were trained in the skills necessary to recognize manipulative use of rhetoric”, said Stauber and Rampton (1995). Indeed, I believe that the best way not to be a victim of our society's manipulation is to learn how this society and its members work: PR awareness and understanding could be the key to bringing a more ethical PR.
Sources: -Michaela O’Brien and Pam Williams' 6th February 2008 presentation, University of Westminster -Crush P. “PRWeek Ethic Debate: the truth hurts”, PRWeek, February 2007 -Moloney K. Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance, Routledge, 2000 -Curran J. and Seaton J. Power Without Responsibility, Routledge, 2003
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
Last week we talked about crisis management in PR: after having defined the topic and its different aspects, we had some practice through an exercise that made the class realise how to communicate in a crisis situation… Here I’m going to sum up my personal thoughts into different points, according to what caught my attention in class and to some personal reading.
Crisis: definition I’ve found the definition of the Institute of Crisis Management in the USA: “A crisis is a significant business disruption that stimulates extensive media coverage. The resulting public scrutiny will affect the organisation’s normal operations and could have a political, legal, financial and governmental impact on the business.” But it’s not said if this impact is positive or negative: well, it can be both, depending on how you manage the crisis… As we’ve learnt, the Chinese sign meaning crisis is the combination of the “danger” and “opportunity” signs… Indeed, there is always a good and a bad side to a new event and that reminds me of a French expression: “what doesn’t kill makes you stronger”. So managing well a crisis can get you an even better reputation than the one you used to have! I’ve also read that the first cause of a crisis is management decisions (or indecisions); then come mechanical failures, and then human errors. That led me to think that if management is crisis’ main cause, this means that we can manage the risks of crisis…
Risk management We could say that first come the risk, then an issue, then a crisis, and then a disaster… And I’ve learnt that since 1999-2000 organisations use more and more risk and issue management than crisis management. So identifying a risk actually became a skill, and is now a key part of corporate governances. The risk analysis is mainly built on an environmental scanning (political, economical, legal etc), as well as on using analogies, and on feedbacks (from stakeholders or the public) and audits. Indeed, Issue Audits can provide an Issue Brief that identifies the corporate and the brand positions on each issue, and details the process and responses needed. It means that each organisation has a risk profile, and so a recommended position, that is a key to handle any risk of crisis. There is also a skill called issue management, that has been developed by Howard Chase in 1976; it’s an ongoing form of risk assessment. The idea is that issues have a lifecycle so can be monitored so as to prevent them from becoming a crisis. So all this tells us what experience shows: it’s better preventing than treating.
Crisis reveals an organisation’s responsibility When we couldn’t prevent risks from becoming a crisis, we have of course to manage the crisis, and if possible use it as an opportunity for the organisation to gain credibility. And what can lead to this goal is the organisation’s responsibility during the crisis, its professionalism and reliability. Indeed, if you can prove that you’ve done everything within your power, you won half the battle. So a crisis’ outcomes are all about how you control it: you need to very quickly communicate in order not to be isolated, through giving accurate information and dialoguing with stakeholders, the public and the media. If you use the right channels and clear messages, you can have an opportunity to improve your image.
Tools to handle a crisis This leads us to some tools that are useful to use in a crisis time: the basic one could be using a Holding Statement, that contains 3 steps: 1)Why is it a crisis?, 2)Holding a position, 3)Reassurance + what we do about it. In more details, I’ve read that there are usually 6 stages during a crisis, so following them here can make this clearer: 1. What is at stake: define a strategy 2. Internal communication 3. Release statements: this is where we have to handle media stories by giving YOUR version (because something is going to be written anyway, so it’s better if it’s your story). Here covering up doesn’t work, given journalists’ experience and on line activists (for example on www.corpwatch.org , www.moles.org , www.gm-info.org.uk etc); there will always be someone to catch you! So it’s better to fairly establish your facts, and define who are the “goodies” and “baddies” as journalists are going to look for them. 4. Communicate (staying on messages); if something hasn’t been double checked it’s better to say “I don’t know”, otherwise this can also be used against the organisation… In one word, what I’ve learnt for 3 and 4 is that you have to show responsibility towards the media. 5. Consolidate and monitor 6. Recovery: media evaluation and debriefing: the debriefing report will be very useful for the potential following crisis. I think it’s also important to notice here the existence of other tools, used in case of disasters: the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), Business Recovery Centres, and the website www.it-disaster-recovery.com
Case study: Cadbury and salmonella When I was thinking of examples to illustrate these theories, I remembered the crisis that affected Cadbury in July 2006: Cadbury was hit by a salmonella contamination outbreak, which cost them over £40 millions in product recall, lost sales and damaged reputation. Early signs indicated that there were low levels of contamination in certain products, BUT Cadbury did not inform the Foods Standards Agency. The contamination was caused by a leaking waste piper near a conveyor belt. This was a classic case of not responding soon enough and crisis followed, with 1 million chocolate being recalled and destroyed. That shows very well that in a crisis, timing is everything.
Link to my personal crisis… Now that I’ve made this analysis, of course I can say that it can help me when I’ll have to face a crisis in my professional life. But what about my private life? Can I avoid or at least reduce personal crisis by managing the risks? Is the best way to handle them being strong and responsible? Well I would say that in my private life I’d rather feeling remorse than having regrets… But then, I surely have to assume this by showing responsibility. And for my future professional life, I’d say that analysing risks is a key to preventing a crisis, and responsibility is a key to handle it.
Sources: -Pam Williams’ 23rd January 2008 presentation, University of Westminster -John Dalton’s 18th December 2006 presentation, London School of Public Relations -Article about Cadbury and salmonella’s story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article682877.ece
This blog is an assignment for my Master in Public Communication and Public Relations: it aims to give my personal feedbacks and thoughts about the issues tackled in a module called "Public Communication and PR issuses". So, from what I've learnt in class, from what I've read or seen and from my own experience, I will try to clearly tell what I've retained, and what I think is essential about each "PR issue".
I’m now studying for a MA in Public Communication and Public Relations in the University of Westminster, London. I also studied in France: International History in La Sorbonne, and English and Russian languages. I’ve finally decided to study and work in the PR industry as this is involving all that I like doing most: meeting new people, adapting to new point of views and find a way to understand the others, conveying a message.
I’ve travelled a lot (Brazil, Maghreb, Italy, Turkey, Armenia, Russia, Tanzania, Singapore, USA), and I’ve always been very interested in international relations and cultural exchanges.
Moloney, K. Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance, Routledge, 2000
This is a very interesting reading if you are interested in ethical issues for the PR industry. It is a very useful source for understanding the history of PR, and the dilemmas the industry has to face. It also suggest a number of solutions on how improving the health of PR industry, and therefore make it more recognized by the society.
Tulder, van R. and Zwart, van der A. International Business – Society Management: Linking Corporate Responsibility and Globalization, Routledge, 2006
This book gave me very interesting insights about Corporate Social Responsibility, and in a broad perspective, as it explains well nowadays’ internationalized context for businesses, and how CSR is therefore linked with globalization. The authors use a large number of references from various sources: economic, politic and cultural, and give a clear statement about what is CSR, as well as findings about its future.
Rampton, S. and Stauber, J. Trust us, we are experts. How industry manipulates science and gambles with your future, Tarcher/Putnam, 2001
This book really helped me to write my essay about my dissertation topic, which is about the communicating on scientific issues, through the example of climate change. The authors show a solid argumentation, through numerous examples, aiming to prove that science can never be totally objective when scientific findings are presented to the public, given the complex links between scientists, the media and various organizations having some interest in science.
Senges, A. Ethnik! Le marketing de la différence, Autrement, 2003
This book is in French, but I still wanted to talk about it in this blog, for whoever is interested in ethnic marketing and PR, and therefore would be tempted to read in English from this writer: Anne Senges is correspondent in the USA for the magazine CB News, the weekly magazine of communication and business. In this book she compares American and French approach to ethnic communities. Her main idea is that being American today is sharing a culture and consuming habits more than a skin colour or an ethnic origin. Therefore, France’s challenge is to display its multi cultural country with pride without becoming too politically correct.
Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward C Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, Crown, 1998
This is about the wonderful story of Edward Bernays, one of the most famous PR practitioners. This book is an impressive compilation of anecdotes and stories about people spinning and being spinned, and can interest you if you are looking for examples of successful PR campaigns. However, I felt that the book was sometimes a bit partial about his “hero”, as if a spin effort had been made in order to present Bernays always in his best light…
we had to imagine having the power to divert a fast train, going to kill 5 people, to another direction where it would kill “only” our mum or our best friend… So would you divert the train?? Only 2 people answered in class, proudly saying that they would prefer to kill 1 person than 5, so would divert the train. According to the teacher most of people would say they are unable to make this choice… Well I said it was a hard one, but actually a very quick and instinctive decision came to me: I would protect my mum or my friend!! So does that mean I’m a bad and selfish person? I would say that my attachment to people is probably more important to me than the life of anonymous people, and I think that is a human reaction… If the first thing you see is that you need to protect the people you care about, is that selfish? Anyway, I think in the situations where you have to decide quickly you don’t have time to think about what is good or bad, but just follow your instinct. So my answer to this exercise doesn’t mean that I’ll always blindly protect my clients in my future professional life (if ever I work in a PR agency): first, I’ll have more time to take my decisions when I’ll have to face ethical problems; secondly, I guess I won’t have the same attachment to my clients as for my mum or my best friend…
mpaign promoting a tobacco company in Mexico, where it’s legal but where heart and lung diseases are very highly spread… First I was ready to go on, while trying to adapt the campaign to only existing smokers; and I thought “well, if I don’t take it someone else will, so it’s better if I have some control on it”… But control on what? With or without me the campaign was going to encourage people, old or not, to smoke anyway, and I have no power to change this. So if I’m not agreeing with the campaign, I’d better leave it; and anyway if you’re not enthusiastic about a communication job can you really work well on it? I also thought that I could feel remorse after having participated in a “killing campaign”…
y communication” is utopian
manipulation. But the limit is that if we allow everyone to speak we’ll always have irresponsible media, saying false or manipulative information. And if we want to forbid them with an authoritative control on the media, we loose pluralism…
