To understand conflicts is to reach into a tumult of voices and take out something sensical.
History has tended to focus on the loudest – those who could afford, or were interesting enough, to have their voices written and preserved. Until recently, the voice of the homogenous mass has received little attention. Technology, in its democratising ability, seems to have made such distinctions archaic. Yet those louder voices still exist, and they have only become more powerful.
A woman walks past billboards reading ‘Patrols and military convoys are for your protection’. In Baghdad, 2006. Photo by Karim Sahib.
They are often driven by public relations firms, whose principal duty is to ensure their clients are not only the loudest voice, but the correct one. Clark S. Judge, managing director of the White House Writers Group, explains that “the issue is not who spins the best”, but “who becomes the standard of truth.” Troublingly, firms have increasingly moved away from representing private companies to sovereign states, and from covering mere electoral campaigns to wars, human rights violations, and genocide. Such work generates contracts of up to 2 million pounds.
These are hardly minor – The Rendon Group oversaw PR for the Afghanistan War, and was so successful its CEO, John Rendon, was introduced as “the man who sold the war” by the Rolling Stone. Other work the Pentagon has paid for includes that of disgraced British firm Bell Pottinger, which received over half a billion dollars to fabricate fake terrorist videos. These firms, among many others, have come to play an unprecedented role in shaping narratives regarding conflicts, and technology has empowered them. The Rendon Group, for example, has developed a sophisticated system that monitors world media in order to counteract and redirect stories.
A soldier rides past a billboard urging Iraqis to take part in the upcoming elections in Basra, 2005. Photo by Odd Anderson.
The effects of this are exacerbated by the demise of journalism, which has often been encouraged by states during conflict. While the U.S. set PR professionals loose in Iraq, it tightened its reins on the press. As marketing professor Eugene Secunda explained, the press were effectively “travellers led from their buses by tour guides… given their opportunity to videotape the ‘panoramic vista’ before them, and then were whisked to the next officially authorised destination.” The effect of this was that PR became the news. There was now only one view of the battle – the one authorised by the military.
In his Rolling Stone profile, Rendon made the following observation: “We are being haunted and stalked by the difference between perception and reality.” Of this he is undoubtedly correct. Information moves faster than it ever has, and the flooding of PR, PR masquerading as news, and genuine news has only served to blur the lines between fact and fiction.
While technology may have paved the way for all to be heard, it has also made it easier for those who wish to persuade and deceive. And with endless standards of truths to follow, it is easier than ever for the masses to be buried under the noise.
Bibliography
Beckerman, Gal. “Rolling Stone Looks At a PR Kingpin.” Columbia Journalism Review. Updated November 21, 2005. https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/rolling_stone_looks_at_a_pr_ki.php.
Black, Crofton and Abigail Fielding-Smith. “Fake News and False Flags.” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Updated October 2, 2016. http://labs.thebureauinvestigates.com/fake-news-and-false-flags/.
Booth, Robert. “PR firms make London world capital of reputation laundering.” The Guardian. Updated August 3, 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/aug/03/london-public-relations-reputation-laundering.
Eldon Hiebert, Ray. “Public relations and propaganda in framing the Iraq War: a preliminary review.” Public Relations Review 29, no. 3 (2003): 243 – 255.
Solomon, Norman. “War Needs Good Public Relations.” FAIR. Updated October 25, 2001. https://fair.org/media-beat-column/war-needs-good-public-relations/.
The fact that organisations like the Rendon Group are being paid so much to misrepresent things raises some questions about incentives. It’s easy to pay someone to lie for you, but how can you incentivise people to be fair and unbiased? You can’t tell that an organisation is dishonest, so you can only ever pay them the honest and integrity bonus, whether or not they are honest.
In an ideal world, selfish companies and governments wouldn’t have money with which to bribe, or self-interested organisations wouldn’t have positions that they could be bribed to abuse. In our imperfect world, is getting our information from sources that distort it better than not getting information at all?
This was a really interesting read!
It made me think of an idea from one of my other courses known as ‘survivorship bias’ which involves assuming that ideas which ‘survive’ and are visible to us are good/the right ideas, as opposed to the ones which are not visible to us. Survivorship bias in this context is worrying, as it informs us (with strong philosophical grounds) that we are predisposed to give credit to the ideas that we end up consuming from media. In a system where the ‘true’ stories are rarely given priority over ones with financial/political backing, survivorship bias enables media to gain our trust in their stories simply because these are the stories they choose to tell.
The ideas posed by the combination of this and the factors you’ve mentioned highlight the importance of constantly interrogating why we hold beliefs and how this relates to where they’ve come from.
This is super interesting! While reading this, I couldn’t help but think of those videos in which Trump removes journalists from his press conferences simply because he doesn’t like a question that’s been asked. The power that leaders from political to militarily to economical have over journalism and our consumption of informative media seems to be an issue that the masses are forced to be compliant with. I always wonder how different our newsfeeds and intake of information would be if those holding all the cards allowed for honest journalism to occur. However, as social media platforms continue to tighten their regulations and give in to offers of giant sums of money (I’m looking at you, Facebook), I doubt we’ll ever get to see that in our lifetime.
Countries such as America always claim to not stand for ‘media censorship’, as they promise their First Amendment is important above all else. However, the use of PR and how it’s steadily consumed our regular newsfeeds makes me wonder how much of what we are seeing is truly unbiased, or if objectivity is even possible anymore.
This was a great post, and I learned a lot! It’s troubling to think about how PR firms, are being given contracts for states and to cover occurrences such as war and genocide. I think that ‘the standard of truth’ , is becoming more relevant as we increasingly gain our news from sources such as social media, and we can so easily be misinformed or deceived through it. I think that there is such a large focus on this, that we don’t consider how based or deceptive other sources of media such as radio, TV, and newspapers can be.
Really great post!!
This is a really well-written and fascinating piece!
In some ways, this phenomenon reminds me of a point Morgan brought up in this week’s discussion, regarding the use of propaganda by companies in relation to the current US protests. Many companies are currently claiming to support the protests, with the intent of gaining popularity/income, even though many have strong histories of racist practices (I believe L’Oréal has previously fired a model for speaking out against racism, but now claim they support Black Lives Matter). This sort of thing is also seen every year during pride month, where pink/rainbow capitalism (aiming products at the LGBTQ+ community) is abundant, even among companies selling products that actively cause detriment to the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people (Absolut Vodka have previously issued “rainbow edition” bottles, despite the community’s known problem with poor mental health, especially depression).
This is clearly on a rather different scale than the PR manipulation used by governments relating to events such as the Afghanistan war, especially as these companies have far less direct control over journalism. However, when you view the two together, I think it gives a very clear idea of just how strong an influence over our lives companies and governments have been granted by technology. We now live in a world where organisations of almost any type are able to write their own narratives with far more ease than they have previously, and the propaganda found at both a company and a government level is a symptom of this.
Thank you so much for this informative post! In writing this you are doing something really important – alerting others to misinformation. It is so important to pay attention to these things and the way the narrativisation of world events are politicised and driven by agendas.
Reading your post, I was reminded of a similar historical example of deliberate tampering with the mainstream narrative of contemporary events that I learnt about in a documentary. During the 1950s, a fake independent news agency in America peddled complete misinformation suggesting that Guatemala’s democratically elected Democratic Socialist president was a communist pawn deferent to Moscow. The information was designed to support the US narrative regarding the evils of communism and enabled the justification of an organised coup on Guatemala.
I think this is another example of the dangerous shaping of the dominant narrative by those in power, which you discuss. If corrupt systems are to be dismantled, it is crucial that we are first critical of the narratives we are being fed that tend to bolster this corrupt status quo.