Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
I used to work in public relations, even getting myself designated an APR — Accredited Public Relations — that required spending a day taking written tests and a 20-minute oral exam.
A public relations what? We preferred the term “practitioner,” but if you said “professional” we would not object.
We recognized the thin line between being factual and making our clients look good to specified audiences.
I was accredited through the Public Relations Society of America, an honorable trade organization that even has a code of ethics. To PRSA, public relations ethics is not an oxymoron, despite PR’s image problem.
The PR code said we would not lie for our clients but did not dictate how we chose which facts to emphasize and how we presented them.
I always compared public relations with a make-up mirror. A make-up mirror shows nothing that isn’t real, but you can adjust the light to make yourself look the best you can under the circumstances.
Sometimes, however, the facts can’t be improved upon and full honesty is required.
A good PR counselor would have advised Iran to do exactly what it did after one of its missiles crashed a Ukrainian airliner last week: Fess up, explain the accident fully and outline corrective action.
BuzzFeed News, an online news outlet, ran an article with the headline: “Disinformation For Hire: How A New Breed Of PR Firms Is Selling Lies Online.”
The article profiles Peng Kuan Chin, who proudly trotted out his “Content Farm Automatic Collection System,” a lie-making machine, for BuzzFeed’s journalists, and explained how he uses fake social media accounts and news feeds to spread the filth.
“I developed this for manipulating public opinion,” Peng preened. “Manipulating?” Try “manufacturing,” out of whole cloth.
That’s fraud, not PR.
Frauds usually go to jail when they get caught, unless they’re state-sponsored Russian operatives helping to elect a U.S. president.
If White House spokespersons didn’t collude with these Russians, they certainly learned from them how easy it is to manipulate opinion expeditiously, facts optional.
Last week, Trumpsters Kellyanne Conway and Nikki Haley solemnly stated that Democrats were engaged in “hero worship” of and “in mourning” for Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani, the mastermind of much of Iran’s vicious proxy wars with Israel, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia.
Enraged Democrats called the Trumpsters out. Democrats questioned the wisdom and timing of Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani, acknowledging the general engineered terror for a terrorist state, especially as the world engages in a delicate dance with Iran as its influence is growing.
Hayley responded to Democrats’ outrage by proclaiming that doubt about Trump’s action is the same as admiration for Soleimani.
Yes, she really made that fraudulent statement.
The sad part is that if it gets repeated loudly, confidently and often enough on right-wing media, Trump’s base will eat that pretzel logic up, no salt.
I hope a wide majority of Americans are smarter than that when they vote next November.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at: