News Intelligence Analysis
http://www.schnews.co.uk/archive/news500.htm
Don't Believe the Type
- Randolph Hearst, publisher
Frank Luntz is a happy man. He’s staring at two lines on a computer generated graph: red for Republicans and green for Democrats and they’re starting to merge. He dashes excitedly into a room full of people hooked up to his computer system. They are told to turn a dial to indicate when they feel good or bad about what a water company executive has to say about privatisation. With the merging of the lines on his graph Luntz can see that both the Republicans and Democrats in the room just love words like ‘new’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘changing from old to new energy sources’. This PR generated speak is the strategy to convince people across the political spectrum of the ‘benefits’ of privatisation.
Luntz is a corporate propagandist, pollster and political consultant to the Republicans, his specialty is testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or opinion. “Don’t talk like economists. Words like ‘capitalist’ turn the average voter off. I am sorry to say that emotion beats intellect” he tells his fans. Instead they should emphasize “the value and benefits of a free market economy. Capitalism reminds people of harsh economic competition that yields losers as well as winners. Conversely, the free market economy provides opportunity to all and allows everyone to succeed.”
Luntz’s work – helping clients choose the right language for their discussions with the press and adding a resultant shine to corporate power - is a growth business that is destroying our news content. In Britain, members of the Public Relations Consultants Association saw incomes rise from £18m in 1983 to over £400m by 2001. Ideally news becomes press releases - providing a publishable article that an over-worked (or lazy) journalist can use with minimal effort. And more and more newspapers and other media outlets are acquiring content from press agencies such as Reuters or the Press Association, companies which themselves are closely linked to the PR industry. One of the Press Association’s 27 shareholders is United Business Media; they own PR Newswire, a major propaganda tool for corporate interests. On the day French voters said ‘Non’ to the European constitution and another British soldier was killed in Iraq, PR Newswire broke one of the day’s key news developments even we, at SchNEWS towers, missed out on: the release of guide book issued by one of its clients, none other than “A Total View of the US Adhesives and Sealants Industry Today”. Good to hear that someone’s covering the big stories!
At the DSEi arms fair in 2003 at least two exhibitors were flogging Depleted Uranium shells - radioactive weapons shown to cause cancer and nervous system defects, used in the War on Iraq (sorry, I mean War on Terror), deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction. So with our glorious leaders fighting an illegal war with illegal weapons, what did the BBC have to say about the UK government supporting the sale of weapons right in the middle of London? Not much. Their online business editor Tim Weber must have been too happy to notice as he cheerfully reported that organisers were allowing ‘open’ media access to the event for the first time. Facing such a golden journalistic opportunity, Tim climbed into a BAE Piranha II fighting tank, not asking the arms dealer whether they were selling to despotic regimes, but whether the vehicle “had a new tank smell”. And don’t bother switching channels for another perspective. ITN share an office with the Corporate Television Network (CTN). Half owned by ITN and PR giant, Burson-Marsteller, CTN used the same ITN staff to make misleading corporate videos for clients like Shell (NOT drilling for Oil but exploring for energy) as those reporting on events like the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni rights activists, arrested for their part in demonstrations against Shell’s environmentally destructive investments in Nigeria. Mmm, fair and balanced? Oh well, there’s always Sky…!
Faced with news based on corporate press releases and the buy-off of journalists by PR companies, Luntz advises his clients to make the most of such a favourable situation. But they have to be cautious: “Speak in threes” he urges them, “any more than three facts confuses the issue.”
At SchNEWS we can sum it in up in one sentence: “It’s a load of old bollocks and its far better to write your own news than rely on this bunch of wankers for info.”
Send a letter
to the editor
about
this article
See our: Directory of Strategies, Communication and Propaganda