An old adage that the PR profession should be particularly concerned with says that “the first casualty in war is truth.” Terms like ‘propaganda’ and ‘spin‘ seem to fly freely when it comes to the practice of public relations in wartime, and yet these are the very stereotypes that the majority of the industry is fighting against. Our class discussion about wartime PR led me to Danny Schechter’s documentary called “Weapons of Mass Deception,” which explores the manipulation of mainstream media and its role in selling the war in Iraq to the American public.
A link to the full-length documentary can be found here: Weapons of Mass Deception
Watch a trailer for the documentary below:
Schechter’s main argument is that “without the media cheerleading, we wouldn’t have had this war,” and personal political beliefs aside, he makes a plausible case. Representatives of various media outlets admitted to flaws in their coverage. The New York Times stated in a 2004 piece that their coverage of the war was “not the Times at its best.” Criticisms of the media’s coverage leading up to the war usually involve the claim that they accepted government information as is without any form of analysis.
Another issue is that they failed to remain unbiased and neglected to include views from both sides of the war debate. Michael Getler, Washington Post Ombudsman, supported the latter statement by saying, “It’s clear now that the press, as a whole, did not do a very good job in challenging the administration’s claims.”
While the role of the media is much more evident and in the spotlight, let us not ignore the public relations strategies that contributed to the media’s behaviour. Schechter interviewed a retired Air Force colonel who revealed that a phone call took place every morning at 9:30 between the White House officer of global communications, the Pentagon press office and a media advisor, among others. Their notion each time was to coordinate the message for that day. This was all part of the plan, as Schechter explains:
“Pentagon strategy went beyond traditional PR, using marketing strategies and perception management. Administration officials liken their war planning to a product rollout. It was all to guarantee there would only be one story line in the media and in the minds of Americans: theirs.”
In general PR terms, a coordinated message from all angles and control of the primary story line in the media would be counted as huge successes. The issue is that these messages were not always consistent or accurate. For example, the accuracy of the Jessica Lynch, POW story has been questioned and the incident debunked by multiple sources. Another major inaccuracy was within the government’s premise for even going to war, and that is the mere presence of weapons of mass destructions within Iraq. This also turned out to be untrue. Cases like these are the reason why public relations in war is primarily seen as spin and propaganda.
Personally, I question the use of public relations for the purpose of gaining support for a war. I also question wartime PR for the purpose of downplaying the voices of dissent. The latter is strategically crucial to achieving the former, but is it ethical when the byproduct of a campaign is death?
