Public Relations & the Conditioning of Mainstream Media, or Why the Swine Flu was a Story about Mexicans
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ublic Relations experts employ a variety of measures to avert crises. Ivy Lee, an early and prominent PR practitioner revolutionized and, to a very real extent, invented modern PR with his practice of business openness during times of crisis. Business openness shouldn’t be misunderstood as business truthfulness. What Lee did was to change the way that corporations responded to crises. Rather then shutting down and closing themselves off during crises, Lee espoused a policy of businesses getting out in front of the crises. Lee’s most famous PR crisis management campaign came during the Ludlow Massacre.
In the Ludlow Massacre, the Colorado National Guard killed a number of striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914. The miners were gathered in a tent city, fighting for better working conditions and wages and for the recognition of a miners’ union. One of the three coal mining companies that the miners were striking against was the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, owned by the Rockefeller family. When the Colorado National Guard attacked the miners, at the behest of the coal mining companies, killing 20 people (among them two women and 11 children), there was a national uproar against the mining companies and the Rockefellers. John D. Rockefeller acquired the services of Ivy Lee, and Ivy Lee set out to rehabilitate Rockefeller’s image. Through a series of public appearances, some at the site of the strikers’ camps, Rockefeller met, talked, maybe even cried with the strikers. Rockefeller
by Carlos Fierro
also commissioned an investigation into the massacre and studies to better the safety of miners. Of course the photo ops, investigations and studies were for nothing more than public consumption. And the public ate it up. In fact, Rockefeller was largely presented as a caring, heroic man in the mainstream press of the time. Lee will always be known for his policy of business openness, or spin. He should perhaps be better known for his work for the Nazi government, work for which he was called before the US Congress to answer. Fortunately for Lee’s legacy, he suffered a massive heart attack prior to his appearance and died. In any case, Lee’s work of getting out in front of crises is still employed today. When done well, it can have incredible effects, but this isn’t always the case. A glaring example of a corporation not getting out in front of a crisis is Exxon’s handling of the Valdez disaster. Rather than getting out in front of the crisis, Exxon tried to deflect and hide from the disaster. Exxon CEO Lawrence Rawl, unlike Rockefeller, seemed to feel put out by having to explain himself to the public. Rather than taking Rockefeller’s lead and perhaps engaging in photo ops of him cleaning a beach, initially Rawl acted as if he couldn’t understand what everyone was making such a fuss over. Along the same lines as Lee’s “business openness,” modern PR has employed other strategies of openness disguised as truthfulness. During the first Gulf War, the Pentagon was fond of supplying such massive amounts of information that reporters were unable to confirm any of it. In essence, they flooded reporters with information—again, not truthfulness, but a form of openness. In fact, much of the information was flatly false. One of the clearest examples of this was the orgy over smart bombs. The Pentagon sent out so much mis-
information regarding smart bombs (both statistics and video) that reporters, because they couldn’t possibly corroborate the information and because they are taught to accept official sources, ran with it. It wasn’t until much later that anyone bothered to look into the validity of Pentagon claims. In fact the failure rate of “smart bombs” used during the first Gulf war was upwards of 75%. This was a far cry from the grainy images of bombs, not only hitting their targets, but hitting them dead center. When PR and industry can’t get out in front of a crisis, they often remove their kids’ gloves and brutally beat the media and the public into submission. No better example of this can be seen than the example of Oprah Winfrey. On April 16, 1996, Oprah Winfrey aired a show on Mad Cow Disease. The guests for the show were Howard Lyman, a former cattle rancher turned vegan crusader, and Dr. Gary Weber, a beef industry hack. Following the show, in which Lyman wiped the floor with Weber, the industry engaged in a smear campaign again Lyman and a legal battle against Lyman and Winfrey. The industry, using the Texas Food Disparagement Act, took Lyman and Winfrey to court. The lawsuit claimed that Lyman and Winfrey knowingly made false statements about an agricultural business. The suit lasted six years, and even though in the end Lyman and Winfrey won, it sent a very stark message to others who might consider questioning the animal farming industry. Industry lost the case, but won where it mattered by largely silencing further debate in the mainstream media. Following the trial, Oprah declared that she was through with Mad Cow Disease, and the rest of the media followed suit. Mad Cow Disease, though it has been shown to be a very real concern, has become a taboo subject for the news media. Oprah is not an isolated
instance, either. A Fox news station in Tampa, Florida fired two of its reporters when they refused to kill an investigative story on the dangers of the growth hormone rBGH being injected into dairy cows; they later threatened to blow the whistle on
media responded in a fashion you might expect. Michael Savage, speaking of swine flu said, “No contact anywhere with an illegal alien! And that starts in the restaurants…you don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their
The above cartoon illustrates the sentiments quite well.
Fox to the FCC. The reporters, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre of WVTV, put together an investigative series on rBGH, then Monsanto, the maker of rBGH, “pressured” Fox to kill the story. Of course Fox caved; luckily, the reporters didn’t. It doesn’t only happen in the US either. A Meat, a South Korean beef importer, sued South Korean actress Kim Min-sun for posting a blog on her website in which she wrote, “I cannot believe how much beef swarming with mad cow disease, bones and all, is being imported and I would rather put potassium cyanide into my mouth” (http://alturl.com/ojjh). PR and industry has conditioned and put the fear of God into media when it comes to reporting on the animal farming industry, or about issues surrounding animal farming. No clearer example can be found than in the recent swine flu scare. It was a curious thing, the way swine flu was reported on in the media. At the extremes, the racist
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The worst of the racist drivel accused unpapered immigrants of being “the perfect mules” for carrying the disease. We even heard that this was perhaps bioterrorism. In the end, we were meant to fear Mexicans more than the flu. Locally, Ray Appleton took it upon himself to save pork, assuaging his listener’s fears in his usual asinine manner. Appleton wrote in his KMJ blog, “We have to remember one very critical difference in culture that will always make their death count much, much larger than that of the US. Mexicans, as a part of their culture, do NOT go to the doctor when they are ill! WE DO!!!!! The Mexican people, especially those more rural, will rely on home cures and prayer and skip the doctor’s office over 90% of the time.” (“Pass the Damn Pork!” at http://alturl.com/ascx) We may think it easy to
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