POV: White House Gives PR a Bad Name

WASHINGTON The Federal Emergency Management Agency's fake press conference is just the latest example of an administration more comfortable with fiction, spin and tactics seeking to turn the media into a propaganda arm than really delivering truthful messages to the public.Giving reporters 15 minutes notice to show up at a press conference about the California wildfires and denying them the ability to ask questions through a conference call set up for the event is bad enough. This reminds me of the arrogant tactics employed by former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli at a shareholders meeting when he was the only board member to attend, limited questions to 30 minutes and gave no responses. Look what happened to him.But when you add in the Machiavellian melodrama of FEMA staff members posing as legitimate journalists who lob softball questions to the government agency's No. 2 official, Harvey E. Johnson Jr., it's clear that this administration doesn't trust or respect the public who deserves to know how the next national disaster following the Hurricane Katrina debacle is being handled by the federal government.This goes beyond the administration's vituperative attitude toward the media. Too bad Bush and his minions haven't learned that the only message the public takes away from incidents like this—and there have been many since Bush was first elected—is an administration that can't be respected or trusted. Its actions speak for themselves.Despite more than doubling the amount spent on outside contracts with public relations firms in the first Bush term to $250 million compared to what the Clinton administration spent, according to a report by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee, the George W. Bush administration has also been bad for PR. The twisted, bizarre and manipulative shenanigans it has performed in the name of PR has hurt the industry's image, and it's time for our nation's strategic communicators to say so. The PR firm Ketchum should be the first to step up and declare enough is enough. It took in $97 million in the first Bush administration, according to that same report, and was instructed by the Education Department to pay conservative commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to write and speak favorably about the No Child Left Behind Act.The Bush White House's PR record is abysmal. Not only were journalists paid, there was the whole video news release scandal in which a 2004 video produced by the Department of Health and Human Services to bolster the administration's new Medicare prescription drug law was made to look like it was produced by a real journalist. The General Accounting Office ruled that using government-made news segments could constitute improper "covert propaganda" if viewers do not know the origin of the video. In all, 20 federal agencies made and distributed television news segments in the first Bush term, according to an investigation by The New York Times. Remember Jeff Gannon, the White House reporter for Talon News who would often ask questions during White House press briefings? It turned out that Talon and its parent company GOPUSA were both owned by Bobby Eberle, a Texas Republican. In the end, it was determined that Gannon and Talon were fronts for partisans to put out negative information and get the attention of bloggers.Then there's the ultimate image of the May 1, 2003 "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier Bush landed on, which symbolized victory in the war on terror and an end to major combat in Iraq. Four years and more than 3,800 dead American soldiers later, the fighting continues. Add up all of these episodes, and it's no surprise that parts of the administration are willing to make up entire press conferences. When you have pushed your message manipulation this far, fiction is the next logical step.But when such dirty tricks become synonymous with PR tactics, shouldn't the more ethical communication strategists cringe? The damage to the PR profession these days is serious. It further erodes the public and the media's trust in how PR is practiced. Case in point is the recent ugly episode when Wired magazine executive editor Chris Anderson lost his mind over the endless misdirected press releases sent his way and posted the e-mail addresses of the 329 unsolicited messages after telling the senders that he had permanently blocked them from his inbox.The likes of Edelman, Fleishman-Hillard, Ogilvy & Mather, Weber Shandwick and 5W Public Relations were on the list. (Not that Wired is above sending political messages.) If we don't trust what we are hearing, we can't be influenced. And when we become so aggravated over all the machinations and block the senders of such messages, the influence game is over.Wendy Melillo is an Adweek contributing writer and an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University. She can be reached at wmelillo@adweek.com.

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POV: White House Gives PR a Bad Name

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Wendy Melillo