Once the powerful possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to mass media were understood, Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell all over themselves courting the new Mass Image Makers. There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible and pliant public. Over the years, these PR players have invested huge amounts of money to make their images integrate with mass consumer consciousness.
Philip Morris and other tobacco giants, Pfizer, Union Carbide, Allstate Monsanto, Eli Lily, Ciba Geigy, Coors, DuPont, Chlorox Shell Oil, Standard Oil, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, General Motors, Dow Chemical, General Mills, and Goodyear were among the first corporate giants that enthusiastically embraced Bernays' use of the power of professional public opinion building.
For decades PR masters have created the opinions that most of us were raised with, on virtually any issue which has any potential commercial value including pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, medicine as a scientific profession, fluoridation of city water, chlorine, household cleaning products, tobacco, dioxin, leaded gasoline, cancer research and treatment, images and endorsements of celebrities. This includes political damage control, disaster management, genetically modified foods, food additives; processed foods, dental amalgams. Such PR has been the architect of the Petroleum Paradigm.
Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by "independent third-party" expert endorsement. If an expert says it, the public will buy it. For example, if General Motors were to come out and say that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers, people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune is made by selling CO2-spouting automobiles.
If, however, some independent research institute with a very credible sounding name like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a scientific report that says global warming is really a fiction, people begin to get confused and begin to have doubts about the issue.
So that's exactly what Bernays did. With a strategy inspired by genius, he set up "more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined." (Stauber p 45) Quietly financed by the industries whose products were being evaluated, these "independent" research agencies would churn out "scientific" studies and press materials that could create any image their handlers wanted. Such front groups are given official-sounding names like:
Temperature Research Foundation
Manhattan Institute
International Food Information Council
Center for Produce Quality
Consumer Alert
Tobacco Institute Research Council
The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
Air Hygiene Foundation
American Council on Science and Health
Industrial Health Federation
Global Climate Coalition
International Food Information Council
Alliance for Better Foods
These organizations all sound very legitimate. Follow the money behind these groups and you start to see the reality. As Stauber explains, these organizations and hundreds of others like them are simply front groups whose sole mission is to advance the image of the global corporations which fund them.
This is accomplished in part by an endless stream of 'press releases' announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country. (Robbins) Many of these canned reports read like straight news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format. This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own, especially on topics about which they know very little. Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station, and voilá! Instant news to copy and paste, but these are actually written by corporate PR firms.
This pervasive mind-shaping of the US public has taken place every single day since the 1920s when the idea of the press release was invented by Ivy Lee. Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal are based solely on such PR press releases. (Stauber, p 22) These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched hard news stories. Unless you have done the research yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference. The Bush administration has paid out huge sums to hire PR firms to shape public perception of the Iraq War and the "War on Terror."
The Modern Science of PR
As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate effective rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation and perception. Here are some axioms of the modern science of Public Relations (PR):
- Technology has the status of a belief system approaching religion;
- Most people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous, so people must be manipulated and controlled;
- Important decisions should be left to "experts" and "our leaders;"
- When presenting issues, stay away from substance; create
images;
Never state a clearly demonstrable lie; words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact, not for any factual basis.
As the science of mass mind control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Some of the gems are: dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling, then speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract, get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, people on the street, anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable, just point out the benefits of what just happened, and avoid moral issues.
You can start watching for these methods in the media. Look at today's paper or tonight's TV news. See what they're doing; these guys are really good! PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases. They've learned how to attach the names of famous scientists to research that those scientists have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201) This is a common occurrence. In this way the editors of newspapers and TV news shows are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication. Or, at least, they have "plausible deniability."
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