Veracity, Visibility, and Validity
Every morning, John W. Hill, a lean and wiry man with soft, blue eyes, can be observed walking from his home at 74th and Park Avenue to his office at 42nd Street and Third Avenue. He walks at least five miles a day and spends eight hours daily at his job, and often is required to put in more time. At 72 years of age, when many men are content to spend their time idling in the sun or beside a fireplace, he is actively overseeing one of the busiest and most successful enterprises in the nation.1
So started a biography produced by the enterprise in question—Hill & Knowlton, the public relations agency founded by the “lean man with the soft blue eyes” whose clients at the time produced 10 percent of everything sold in the United States.
John Hill (1890–1977) was a contemporary of Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays and, like them, he started as a journalist, bouncing around from job to job as a reporter or columnist for 18 years before discovering he could make a better living distributing “information” on behalf of deep-pocketed clients rather than scraping “news” together for tightfisted publishers. But unlike Lee, who claimed he trusted the public to draw the right conclusions from the information he laid before them, Hill did not think his job was done until the conclusions he wanted people to draw were firmly planted in their minds. “The end product of effective public relations,” he wrote in 1958, “is … public attitudes resulting from communication of information, facts, and management’s point of view” (p. 7).
Hill was editing a trade paper and just dreaming about opening a publicity bureau when a Cleveland steel executive, distraught that his company was about to be taken over, shot and killed himself. The bank executive underwriting the takeover knew Hill and pressed him into service to convince local newspaper editors that the suicide had nothing to do with the company’s financial health. Hill succeeded. The suicide story “did not reflect upon the company’s financial position in the slightest degree,”and the takeover went off without a hitch (Hill, 1993, p. 18).
The bank’s chairman was so impressed he quickly offered Hill $500 a month to handle his firm’s media relations. Hill explained he could not afford to give up his day job, but if the banker could find other clients for him, he would accept. Amazingly, the banker got on the phone to the president of one of the area’s largest steel companies and told him to hire Hill. The very next day, Hill founded his small Cleveland, Ohio, “publicity bureau.” With contacts like that, Hill’s firm eventually worked for most of the country’s major industrial companies, from Standard Oil to U.S. Steel. When the bank that originally hired him went under during the depression of 1933, Hill invited its head of advertising and public relations, Don Knowlton, to join his firm, which then became Hill & Knowlton (H&K).
Public Advocacy
In all this time, Hill’s approach to public relations was more than generating publicity, disseminating information, or even persuading consumers to buy a company’s products. Because his clients tended to be large industrial companies embroiled in contentious matters such as negotiating labor contracts or fending off government regulation, Hill developed an expertise in what would later be known as public advocacy. He described his role in fairly anodyne terms to a Congressional Committee investigating his steel company clients:
Basically, the job is to let the public know as much about industry’s achievements as it now knows about its faults and defects. The job is to tell the story of its services to mankind, of its ideas, of its aims, purposes, and activities. Under an enlightened public relations policy, nothing that is of interest to the public is hidden from the public (Tedlow, 1979, p. 99).
Public advocacy really hit its stride when the two principal thorns in industry’s side—unions and government—took common cause in the 1930s. To put it in Hill’s (1993) own words, “The [Roosevelt] New Deal had drawn a bead on steel as the number-one target for labor organization” (p. 46). Hill was referring to the National Labor Relations Act, which made the right to collective bargaining the law of the land and was bitterly opposed by his steel company clients. Hill (1958) himself considered it a serious “erosion of management’s function” (p. 22). He opposed anything that interfered with management’s right to distribute “increases of productivity” (i.e., profits) as it saw fit (p. 24). And he set out to gain public support for restoring management’s legitimate authority. Business historian Richard Tedlow (1979) considers Hill the leading representative of a school of public relations counselors committed to economic conservatism. “Unlike Bernays, who could work for a union with the same aplomb with which he could work for a corporation,” Tedlow notes, “Hill was a genuine ideologue of the right” (p. 98).
Indeed, Hill was so intimately involved in the steel industry’s attempts to fight unionization that, in 1933, he moved to New York, where the industry’s trade association was based, leaving the firm’s Cleveland office under his partner’s care. New York then became H&K’s official headquarters. The steel industry’s battle against unionization was ultimately futile, but the specter of further government interference in management prerogatives was so potent, H&K became the center for advocacy programs on behalf of a range of industries, from steel and aircraft to butter and tobacco. Each of these efforts deserves book-length treatment of its own, but for purposes of exploring the ethical implications of public relations advocacy, H&K’s work on behalf of the tobacco industry stands in a class by itself.
Smoking has never been entirely free of criticism, whether by moralists who considered it a private vice or by fussy homemakers who objected to the odors it left on their upholstery. But, as we’ve seen, public relations helped make smoking more culturally acceptable and socially popular in the first half of the 20th century. Around 1950, however, a few medical journal articles began linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer. Then in December 1952, an article in Reader’s Digest, “Cancer by the Carton,” detailed the dangers for a much broader audience.2 Appearing in what was the largest circulation magazine of the time, the article created a sensation, prompting more stories in newspapers and magazines. Cigarette sales declined for the first time in decades and so did tobacco company stock prices. By the end of 1953, the presidents of the six largest tobacco companies had had enough. They hurriedly gathered in New York City on December 10 and 11 to consider how they might defuse the situation. In the end, they decided to call in John W. Hill, who had developed a strong reputation as a “corporate confidant” and whose agency had deep experience working with industry trade associations.
Although Hill had quit smoking in the 1940s for health reasons, he felt strongly that every company and industry was entitled to effective representation. And in the last weeks of 1953, he and his team constructed a strategy that held for more than two decades. It was pretty straightforward and can be summarized as follows:3
1. The industry should establish a separate research committee, led by an individual of impeccable credentials, to inform the public of the facts.
2. The research committee should seize control of the science surrounding health and smoking by:
• Identifying scientists who are skeptical of a link between cigarettes and cancer or critical of the statistical methods used by those who claim to have found a link and
• Commissioning its own medical research into smoking and health.
3. Rather than flatly denying the health implications of smoking, the research committee will win public confidence by appearing to take the issue seriously, while emphasizing that there are still many unknowns and undoubtedly two sides to the issue.
• Instead of fanning the flames by countering every attack, the research committee should first encourage reporters to consult it if they plan to write on the issue and, should they publish unfavorable information, the committee should quietly correct it at the source.
The “research committee’s” staff would consist of public relations practitioners on H&K’s payroll, but Hill was adamant that its research had to be real “to give weight and credence to the committee’s statements” (Hill II, 1992, p. 3). The tobacco company presidents initially claimed they had already sponsored or conducted more research than anyone without finding any connection between smoking and lung cancer, but they eventually bought into the strategy. They agreed to create the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), fund its research, and let it speak for all of them.
H&K’s Campaign
With that, Hill published a full-page ad on the first business day of 1954 to announce the formation of the TIRC. The ad, which ran in 448 newspapers across the country, was headlined “A Frank Statement to the Public by the Makers of Cigarettes.” It essentially said there was no proof that smoking causes cancer but the industry would not dismiss such claims either. On the contrary, while tobacco companies believed their products to be safe, they also considered their customers’ health “a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business” (Hill II, 1992, p. 5). Therefore, the industry promised to assist in research into all phases of tobacco use and health through a committee supervised by prominent scientists.
Within six months, the TIRC had hired as its director a doctor who had once been head of the American Society for the Control of Cancer, later known as the American Cancer Society and one of the tobacco industry’s most ardent opponents. In announcing his appointment, the Wall Street Journal described the new director as a “husky, sun-tanned man of 66” who “toyed with a pipe … and said he avoided cigarettes because, as they burned, they threatened to singe his mustache” (Hill II, 1992, p. 7). For its part, the media accepted the sincerity of the industry’s approach on face value. According to a study prepared by H&K at the time, only nine percent of the newspapers expressing opinions about the TIRC’s formation were unfavorable, predicting biased research, while 65 percent were unreservedly favorable. Most importantly, from that point on, stories based on highly unfavorable studies—such as a massive American Cancer Society study—quoted doctors on both sides of the issue and usually sought the TIRC’s view as well, which almost invariably boiled down to “statistical data do not provide the answers and much more research is needed before the causes of the diseases involved in the charge are known” (Hill II, 1992, p. 7).
Hill himself described his strategy’s success five years later.
The accusation against the industry’s chief product was based on scientific suspicion growing out of statistical studies and experiments with animals. No conclusive or clinical proof was at hand. But the industry had no thought of waiting passively upon events.
Expressing its genuine concern over the whole problem of cigarette smoking and health, it took a step unprecedented in American industry. It invited a group of outstanding scientists, each of unchallengeable reputation, to constitute themselves as a ‘Scientific Advisory Board,’ for the purpose of making grants to individuals and institutions into the problem…. The results of the various research projects will be reported to the public in the form of scientific papers.
Once this sound basis of public interest was established the industry was in sound position to draw some public attention to the other sides of the question. The normal American sense of fair play came to bear at this point, and the public evidently credited the fact that, despite sensational charges, the truth is not yet known and the industry itself is doing what it can to speed the availability of true and reliable answers (Hill, 1958, pp. 136–137).
Interestingly, Hill’s 1993 autobiography, The Making of a Public Relations Man, does not mention tobacco or tobacco companies at all. Could be have forgotten his role in what BusinessWeek called “one of PR’s best finger-in-the-dike jobs?”4 More likely, he anticipated that anything he said about his efforts on behalf of the tobacco industry would simply buy him a seat at the defense table when the inevitable class action suits were filed. As it happens, H&K won that seat anyway as codefendant in many of the tobacco lawsuits.
Campaign Evaluation
By most measures, Hill’s strategy was successful in protecting the tobacco companies from initial reports that cigarettes might cause cancer. It worked for 10 years, which was how long it took for the U.S. Surgeon General to amass sufficient data to conclude that “cigarette smoking contributes substantially to mortality from certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate.”5 Of course, it took at least an additional decade before the Surgeon General’s warning began to have a major effect on people’s behavior. That is essentially an entire generation of continued employment for the industry’s employees, dividends for its many shareowners, and tax revenue for all the communities in which it operated. Of course, it may also have meant a greater incidence of cancer for an entire generation of smokers. So the real question is not, “Did it work?” but rather, “Was it right?”
The minimal ethical standard we have discussed so far is one of truthfulness as conformance to facts, or veracity. Hill could argue that he did nothing to mislead the public. Indeed, under his direction, the industry carefully avoided blanket denials of a link between smoking and cancer; on the contrary, it maintained the question was still unresolved and pledged support in finding an answer. If anything, it urged the public to keep an open mind.
To that end, the TIRC did its best to ensure that stories about smoking and cancer presented both sides of the question, prompting one senator to observe that, “no story about the risk of smoking goes anywhere without a tobacco industry rebuttal trailing along behind, like the tail on a kite” (Hill II, 1992, p. 22). And although a former officer of the Cancer Society told Consumer Reports the TIRC “conducted a smart, clever campaign of constant denials and attempted diversions, such as pointing the finger at air pollution as the real villain in lung cancer,” he begrudgingly added, “No one could question their ethics of operation” (Hill II, 1992, p. 22).
Ironically, in his later years, Hill himself had doubts about the ethics of at least one aspect of his public relations strategy. The TIRC did not hide who was paying its bills, but by portraying itself as an independent “research organization,” it engaged in a clever bit of misdirection designed to increase its credibility and disguise its true purpose. Public relations, not research, was the TIRC’s real agenda. It did very little actual research, and what it did do was clearly designed solely to cast doubt on a link between smoking and cancer by highlighting other causes. Testifying under oath in a 1997 trial, a former president of the TIRC could not site a single study it had done on smoking and disease. The vast majority of its studies did not even have anything to do with tobacco. Indeed, one of the federal judges, Judge Lee H. Soroking, who presided over two of the many cases filed against the tobacco industry, declared the TIRC “nothing but a hoax created for public relations purposes with no intention of seeking the truth or publishing it”.6
Misuse of Third-Party Endorsement Front Groups
The TIRC was not as blatantly misleading as the “National Smokers Alliance,” a supposedly grassroots organization created by Burson-Marsteller and funded by the tobacco industry in 1993 to oppose smoking bans in public buildings. But it was on the leading edge of what has become a $1 billion public relations sub-specialty, according to UCLA professor Edward T. Walker who has made tracking these groups a specialty of his own. “In a time when companies are particularly sensitive to protest groups, threats of boycott and accusations of corporate irresponsibility,” he wrote, “corporations need grass-roots support, or at the least the appearance of it, to defend their reputations and ability to make profits.”7 Failing to gather authentic support, many companies settle for its appearance, not particularly concerned if it is no more organic than Astroturf, as long as it looks like the real thing.
But ethically, third-party endorsers should identify themselves with the party—agency and client—on whose behalf they are acting, especially if they are being paid. When they do not reveal this, such as above, they constitute what has been labeled “front groups.” For example, in 2014, the city of San Francisco proposed a two-cents-per-ounce tax on soft drinks to reduce their consumption and to pay for new public health programs. That prompted the American Beverage Association to fund a group called “Californians for Beverage Choice,” which fought the proposal as another “nanny state” intrusion into people’s personal lives. And the beverage association leaned on another group, the “Coalition for an Affordable City,” to argue the soda tax would raise the cost of living for the city’s poorer citizens. By hiding its involvement, the association denied voters important information about its self-interested role in the debate. In the end, it drowned out the other side’s arguments—the new tax failed to pass.8 In today’s hyper-connected society, organizations on both sides of an issue beat the bushes to muster ‘expert” support for their position. For example, both the manufacturers of bioengineered food and their competitors in the organic food industry have recruited academics to shore up their public credibility. As one researcher who received financial support from the organic food industry told the New York Times, “They could conduct those studies on their own and put this information on their website. But nobody would believe them. There is a friggin’ war going on around this stuff. And everyone is looking to gain as much leverage as they can.”9
Over time, John Hill (1993) condemned the use of “paper groups” established to promote a cause under the guise of being independent. “In a free country, any interest with a cause has the right to present its case to the public, to inform and, if possible, to persuade to its heart’s content,” he wrote. “But that right of free speech also carries the obligation that the source of it will be in the open for all to see. Attempts to fool the public by making it believe an ‘organization’ existing only on paper is really a vociferous group favoring this or that cause have cast a shadow upon the business of public relations” (p. 140). Even “Poison” Ivy Lee (1925, p.23) argued, “The essential evil of propaganda is a failure to disclose the source of information.”
Contemporary Examples
It is an evil that bedevils many public relations practitioners, desperate to give their clients the veneer of third-party endorsement or defense. In 2011, Burson-Marsteller encouraged a number of reporters and bloggers to investigate Google’s use of customer data.10 But the agency went to such lengths to hide its client’s involvement the writers it approached became less interested in the privacy issue it was flogging than in the secret client it represented. The whole scheme came apart when one of the bloggers Burson approached posted copies of their email exchanges online, and USA Today ran a story about the agency’s “whisper campaign.” Within 24 hours, The Daily Beast website had identified Facebook as the Burson client behind the “clumsy smear,” a “Keystone Kops” “caper” that had “blown up in their faces.”11
The Edelman public relations agency courted similar embarrassment when it hired a journalist and a photographer to pose as a couple, touring the country in a recreational vehicle, staying overnight in client Walmart’s parking lots and blogging about what a blast they were having. Not surprisingly, every Walmart employee they ran into raved about how much they liked working there and how caring the company is. Critics rolled their eyes and BusinessWeek quickly revealed the couple was being paid by “Working Families for Walmart,” an Edelman front group, showing, the magazine said, “how hungry Walmart is to find people who have anything positive to say about the company.”12
Ironically, Edelman was one of the driving forces behind the Word of Mouth Association’s Code of Ethics, which at the time stated in part, “Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity.”13 The agency’s CEO, Richard Edelman, quickly canceled the program and apologized for “failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset.”14 But, as Edelman told us, “I immediately realized it was no one’s fault but my own. I had been blogging since 2004. I had written about the power of social media and the importance of transparency. But I had never instituted an effective training program. So it all happened in an ad hoc fashion, with no discussion or rigor around it.”15
Edelman vowed to change that, setting up a central clearing house for social media programs, spelling out the agency’s standards for ethical behavior online, requiring all employees to take interactive desktop training on the typical situations they might encounter online, and appointing an agency-wide Chief Compliance Officer. All of this ultimately led to the adoption of a broad Code of Conduct, which is reviewed and revised as necessary every year. All employees sign it when they join the firm and as part of their annual performance appraisal.
Ghost-bloggers are not the only shadowy characters prowling the Internet. Organizations ranging from the Vatican and the Central Intelligence Agency to Microsoft and the Church of Scientology have been accused of covertly editing Wikipedia entries they did not like.16 In most cases, such organizations used a “sockpuppet” or bogus online persona pretending to be an unaffiliated and neutral party. The most famous sockpuppet of all time is probably John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, who used a phony screen name to promote the company’s stock on Yahoo Finance message boards for nearly 8 years.17 The practice is a blatant “conflict of interest,” but so widespread on Wikipedia, it poisoned the well for reputable agencies that had legitimate issues with the accuracy of some entries about clients. As a result, a number of major agencies signed a joint pledge to comply with the online encyclopedia’s policies, starting with crystal-clear transparency.18
Sockpuppets are not confined to the online world. Some companies use trade associations to hide their political and social initiatives. In fact, according to the Center for Public Integrity, trade associations now spend more on public relations than lobbying.19 And many of the agencies they hire seem to specialize in cloudy transparency. For example, “Count on Coal” is a front group created by Washington, DC, public relations firm Weber Merritt, under a $4 million per year contract with the National Mining Association. But the only mention of industry sponsorship on the “Count on Coal” website is: “Founded by organizations and companies that recognize the value of coal in our power generation supply chain, the organization is growing to include community, business and political leaders from throughout the US.”20 And that disclaimer does not appear at all in the online petitions it posts, criticizing government proposals to cut carbon emissions.
Native Advertising/Brand Journalism
With spending projected to quadruple to $21 billion by 2018,21 sponsored content, also called “brand journalism” or “native advertising,” is an even faster-growing ethical challenge. Rather than “renting” audiences by advertising alongside someone else’s content, brands can “own” a consumer relationship by producing content that is useful in its own right. It is the latest shiny new thing in marketing. And it is ripe for abuse. Some early experiments simply integrated brand-produced content into the run of a publication, labeling it “sponsored” in type the size of the last line on an ophthalmologist’s eye chart. All of which prompted New Yorker writer Ken Auletta to observe, “Native advertising is basically saying to corporations that want to advertise, ‘We will camouflage your ads to make them look like news stories’.”22 Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker called the practice “a Faustian bargain”23 before his own paper jumped headfirst into the trend by launching its own in-house native ad studio.24
Baker’s turnaround may either reflect a belated and begrudging accommodation to the financial realities of publishing a daily newspaper in a declining advertising environment. Or it may reflect an improvement in labeling practices. It may even recognize that advertiser-created content does not have to be self-serving; it can be interesting, entertaining, even enlightening, and valuable. For example, to promote the second season of “Orange Is the New Black,” Netflix ran a multi-media native ad in the New York Times that explored the issue of women in prison in the same depth as the best investigative journalism. The ad didn’t say a word about the TV series, but it was clearly marked “a paid post” with a prominent Netflix logo.25
Still, a study commissioned by Edelman and the Internet Advertising Bureau showed that people do not always know whether or not the content they encounter online has been paid for by a brand. On news sites, as many as 59 percent of respondents said it was either “not very clear,” or “not at all clear” that the content they were shown was sponsored.26 And according to Reuters’ 2015 Digital News Report, one-third of the public feels “disappointed or deceived” by native ads.27
To its credit, Edelman was early in setting guidelines for the use of sponsored content, requiring that “editorial-style content” be clearly delineated from the rest of the publication or website. And it separated pitching stories from the purchase of paid content, helping ensure that one was not used to leverage the other. “We will not have any quid pro quo discussions,” CEO Richard Edelman declared, “and will not tolerate pay-for-play in any market.”28
Meanwhile, others are stretching the limits of brand placements. Sweet’N Low artificial sweetener makes several appearances in an e-book and web series aimed at young adults.29 In one scene, a coworker teases the story’s heroine about putting Sweet’N Low in her coffee. “Hellooo, isn’t it bad for you?” the friend asks. “They fed lab rats twenty-five hundred packets of Sweet’N Low a day,” our heroine replies, “And still the FDA or EPA, or whatever agency, couldn’t connect the dots from any kind of cancer in humans to my party in a packet.” Cumberland Packing Corporation, the Brooklyn-based company that makes Sweet’N Low paid about $1.3 million for that bit of persuasion. Readers or viewers should know who is behind a safety claim so they can decide whether or not to accept it at face value.
Ghostwriting
Add visibility to the list of virtues Aristotle would require of a public relations practitioner. Visibility does not mean public relations people need call attention to themselves. For example, hardly anyone expects busy CEOs or politicians to write their own speeches or printed opinion pieces, even if they have the necessary time and rhetorical skills. They need not credit their ghostwriter every time they get up to speak. It is ethically sufficient for them to provide the content, edit the finished product, and accept responsibility for it. Most ethicists agree the ethics of ghostwriting hinges on the audience’s expectations. And, in fact, surveys show most people expect speeches to be written by someone other than the person delivering them, and few have a problem with it (Riley and Brown, 1996).
Other research (Gallicano et al., 2013), however, suggests this principle may not apply to social media. For example, a recent study indicates people expect corporate executives and politicians to have someone else write blog posts under their name, including responses to comments on their own blog and comments to postings on others’ blogs. However, the researchers did not consider “the permissibility … high enough to endorse ‘ghost-blogging’ as long-term relationship strategies” (p. 22). Consequently, they recommended that ghostwritten blogs should include a disclosure statement. We are not so sure that’s necessary.
Asking members of the public to assess the “permissibility” of ghostwriting is essentially asking them to act as ethicists. The more apt question is whether knowing who actually wrote the blog or comments would materially change their attitudes or behavior. That is much more relevant to the issue at hand. Judging the ethics of ghostwriting and ghost-blogging hinges on assessing that likelihood. And it is the question ethical practitioners need to answer for themselves.
For most corporate or political speeches, the existence or nonexistence of a ghostwriter—much less his or her actual identity—would make no material difference in the audience’s reaction. Who thinks President Obama writes his own Tweets and fund-raising e-mails?30 However, whether Kim Kardashian was paid to Tweet about Carl Jr.’s salads is probably even more relevant than if she thumbed all 140 characters of the message herself. (For the record, she denies being paid.31) And publications like medical or academic journals may be a special case. Their readers have a much higher expectation of authors’ direct involvement in researching and writing its articles. And any funding or writing assistance authors receive should be acknowledged, along with any other potential conflicts of interest.
In addition to veracity and visibility, ethical advocacy is characterized by validity—it is based on clear, relevant, rational evidence. The first element of validity is clarity—whether information is easily understandable or so cleverly worded to be misleading. As this was written, for example, Sprint offered a new wireless calling plan that promised to cut user’s monthly rates in half. But according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, “the fine print means many switching subscribers won’t see that big a discount” because they will have to buy new phones, a fact that did not make it into the company’s ads.32
Sprint is not the worse—and certainly not the only—marketer with selective pricing disclosures. Electronic and physical mailboxes fill with offers and appeals that seem attractive on the surface but dissolve into scams on close reading. The fine print that was originally intended to protect consumers has become safe harbor for unscrupulous marketers who are afraid to fully describe their offer in type consumers can read and in language they can understand.
Whether a message is valid also depends on the intended recipient’s ability to understand and rationally evaluate it. Promotions directed at children or the elderly, for example, are especially problematic. Google came under fire from consumer groups who believe its YouTube Kids app blurs the line between programming and advertising. While the app might shield tykes from sexy videos, according to the consumer groups, it exposes them to branded channels from the likes of McDonalds, Barbie, and Fischer Price “which are little more than program-length commercials.”33
Similarly, a Senate Special Committee on Aging raised troubling questions about Publishers Clearing House solicitors who pressured elderly people into buying magazine subscriptions to improve their chances of winning its famous sweepstakes. The committee concluded the company solicitations “appear to ‘push the limits’ of federal law and settlement agreements.… reached with dozens of Attorney Generals [sic] over two decades.”34
The second element of validity is relevance—do the facts being presented have material bearing on the matter at hand? Two exercises in opposition research within the same week of November 2014 demonstrate the importance of recognizing the difference. In one, the Edelman public relations agency proposed to research a client’s opponents; in the other, a senior executive of the Uber car service proposed to research a reporter who had been critical of the company.
Edelman’s client had proposed to construct an oil pipeline across Canada. The environmental group Greenpeace, which opposed the pipeline’s construction, somehow got its hands on a copy of Edelman’s public relations strategy, which called for developing “detailed background research on key opposition groups.”35 That prompted the New York Times to characterize the whole affair as an attempt “to spread any unflattering findings about the opposition,” noting that the plan documents proposed enlisting third party allies to “put pressure” on the pipeline’s opponents “when TransCanada can’t.”36
As described by a BuzzFeed editor, a senior Uber executive attending an industry dinner “outlined the notion of spending ‘a million dollars’ … to dig up dirt on its critics in the media—and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.”37 The executive who made the suggestion later explained he thought he was speaking “off the record.” He said he “regretted [the remarks] and that they didn’t reflect his or the company’s views.”
There is nothing unethical about analyzing what reporters have previously written to better understand what they think of your company and its industry. There is also nothing wrong with tracking public details about a reporter’s private life or information he or she is willing to share, such as a spouse’s name, children, alma mater, and hobbies. Such information can help build a stronger personal relationship with the reporter. But digging for embarrassing information is clearly unethical. It is a violation of the reporter’s privacy. It muddies the waters of public discussion and deprives people of information about the company by casting irrelevant aspersions on the person reporting it. It is not responsible advocacy by any measure.
The key word here is “relevance” and that could be the safe harbor for Edelman. If its background research was intended to reveal relevant information about the pipeline’s opponents, such as conflicts of interest or extreme positions they have taken in the past on similar projects, it could be ethical. As Edelman’s own plan suggested, “To make an informed decision on this project, Canadians need to have a true picture of the motivations not only of the project proponents, but of its opponents as well.” Ethical or not, the publicity embarrassed TransCanada and it parted ways with the agency within a matter of weeks.
Smear campaigns are more common than you might think. Public Relations counselor Bob Dilenschneider told us he is frequently asked to place negative information about competitors in the media.38 Some executives have even asked him to spread embarrassing information about colleagues to eliminate personal competition. Dilenschneider says he turns down such work. Others are not so picky.
Indeed, raising troubling questions about an acquiring company has foiled many corporate acquisitions. One agency, Kekst & Company, turned this into a specialty of sorts in the merger-crazed 1970s and 1980s. It foiled the 1975 hostile takeover of the Sterndent dental equipment company by characterizing the prospective acquirers as “the Arab group,” even though it included Americans, and suggesting Jewish dentists would boycott the company if they succeeded in buying it. Three years later, Kekst foiled American Express’ takeover of publisher McGraw-Hill by suggesting the financial services company would meddle with the editorial integrity of its publications, including BusinessWeek. In both cases, the agency’s CEO, Gershon Kekst explained, “That’s what I thought was happening, and I wanted to be damned sure everyone else thought so too.”39 One could argue the ethics of this approach, but Kekst himself probably put it best in a 1998 interview. “You couldn’t get away with that these days,” he said.40
That assessment may, in fact, be too optimistic. These days, institutions of all kinds hire armies of so-called Internet “trolls” to promote themselves through phony “reviews” or to spread malicious information about their opponents and competitors. Trolls originally amused themselves by hijacking chat room conversations with a steady stream of vitriolic, often nonsensical comments. Today, according to one study, they are increasingly organized into “crowdturfing” campaigns, operating out of China, India, and the United States, “to spread defamatory rumors, false advertising, or suspect political messages.” The study found “surprising evidence” not only that such campaigns exist, but “are growing rapidly” (Wang et al., 2011).
The third element of validity is rationality. Is information presented in a way that leaves room for the application of reason or does it cloud logic by manipulating emotions? Hill would argue that is precisely the principle he was serving in trying to counter the machinations of crackpot alarmists who had stoked people’s fears without any real proof that cigarette smoking harms people’s health.
It is certainly true that media reports about the dangers of smoking alarmed many people. And it is also true that a scientific consensus had not yet developed on the issue in the early 1950s. It is harder to make that claim after the Surgeon General of the United States issued his first in 1964.41 But by then Hill had retired, and his agency was no longer involved in the TIRC, which adopted a new name—the Council for Tobacco Research—to appear even less connected to the industry that funded its work. The Council focused on finding alternative explanations for the high incidence of lung cancer among smokers, other than the obvious. It was dissolved in 1998 in the historic settlement between U.S. state attorneys general and the tobacco industry.42
Hill’s situation raises an important question about the role of emotional appeals in advocacy. In the case of tobacco, the opponents of smoking had all the emotional ammunition. They could exploit people’s fears—and, in fact, their ideological descendants do so in even more graphic terms today. Ads and posters in the United States feature smoking victims with horrible disfigurements. In Europe, cigarette packages bear photos of diseased lungs and autopsies; the tobacco companies have only succeeded in delaying such pictorial warnings in the United States through suits and regulatory appeals. In this case, the manipulation of people’s emotions arguably makes it more difficult for them to make a voluntary decision to smoke. Does this make it unethical? Or does the cause justify any tactic that works?
There is nothing inherently wrong with appealing to people’s emotions. Aristotle recognized that emotion is necessary to motivate people even though reason is what distinguishes us from animals. And Ivy Lee (1925, pp. 47–48) thought it of great practical use:
The people are not moved by mind, they are moved by sentiment. The fundamental purpose, therefore, which must underlie any policy of publicity, must be to induce the people to believe in the sincerity and honesty of purpose of the management of the company which is asking for their confidence. If the men in charge of a particular company enjoy the complete confidence of that community, fifty percent of that company’s troubles are over.
But Ivy Lee may not be the best guide on matters such as this. Knowing what we do of him, we can be forgiven for thinking his real point is the importance of faking sincerity.
Summary
We have further defined the elements of truthfulness. To veracity—the idea that the information we share should conform to reality and be suitable for the use to which it is put—we added visibility and validity.
Visibility—or transparency—means being clear about the source of communications, whether we issue it ourselves or through third parties. People have the right to know the source of the information they use in making a decision, so they can gauge its credibility and decide how much weight to give it.
Validity refers to the clarity, relevance, and rationality of our communication. Clarity is necessarily a relative judgment—what might be perfectly clear to one audience, might make no sense to another. Indeed, directing persuasive communications to some audiences, such as young children, could be inappropriate in any case. Relevance means information is material to the decision people anticipate making. And rationality means communication is logical and reasonable, that is something supported by evidence or arguments that can be analyzed and evaluated.
That does not mean emotion has no place in the practice of public relations. On the contrary, it plays an important role in capturing people’s attention and in motivating them to action. In fact, as philosopher Roderick Long (2013, February 19) notes, “For Aristotle, emotions are part of reason.” Appealing to intellect and emotions is really addressing the whole person.
Of course, ethical thinking has developed quite a bit since the time of Aristotle, especially in the period of intellectual growth known as the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. And that is where we will find the principles that build on our developing notions of ethics—a fuller understanding of what it means to be human.
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1 Quoted by Karen S. Miller in her masterful book The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Her 1995 University of Wisconsin dissertation, on which the book is based, is available online at http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHprint/v024n1/p0018-p0021.pdf
2 The full Reader’s Digest article, “Cancer by the Carton,” ran in the magazine’s December 1952 issue (on newsstands in November). A copy is available in the Legacy Tobacco Library: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/bcm92f00/pdf.
3 This summary is based on a memo prepared for Philip Morris lawyer Murray Bring by John W. Hill II (no relation to the founder of H&K). See “Health and Morality: Tobacco’s Counter-Claim,” Hill, 1992, p. 3. That memo is part of an archive of 14 million documents created by tobacco companies about their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, scientific research and political activities. The archive was established in accordance with the industry’s Master Settlement with the state attorneys general suing for damages related to smoking. The archive is hosted by the University of California San Francisco Library and the Center for Knowledge Management. See https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/
4 The BusinessWeek quote was cited in John Hill II’s memo to Philip Morris lawyer Murray Bring. Hill II, 1992, p. 6.
5 National Institute for Health. (1964). Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, p. 31. Public Health Service Publication 1103. http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/NNBBMQ.pdf. Accessed July 22, 2015.
6 Janson, D. (1988, April 22). End to suit declared in smoking death. New York Times.
7 Walker, E.T. (2012, August 10). Grass-roots mobilization, by corporate America. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/opinion/grass-roots-mobilization-by-corporate-america.html?_r=0. Accessed July 22, 2015.
8 Sabatini, J. (2015, November 5). Sugary drink tax measure fails. San Francisco Examiner. http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/sugary-drink-tax-measure-fails/Content?oid=2911239. Accessed July 22, 2015.
9 Lipton, E. (2015, September 6), Emails Reveal Academic Ties In A Food War, New York Times, http://nyti.ms/1KRWOiu
10 Acohido, B., & Swartz, J. (2011, May 10). Google deflects PR firm’s attack of Gmail privacy. USA Today. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/media/2011-05-06-google_n.htm. Accessed July 22, 2015.
11 Lyons, D. (2011, May 10). Facebook busted in clumsy smear on Google. The Daily Beast. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/12/facebook-busted-in-clumsy-smear-attempt-on-google.html. Accessed July 22, 2015.
12 Gogoi, P. (2006, October 9). Walmart’s Jim and Laura: The real story. BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-10-09/Walmarts-jim-and-laura-the-real-storybusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice. Accessed July 22, 2015.
13 The Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethical standards were updated in September 2009, in part to better reflect regulations established by the Federal Trade Commission. “Transparency” is still an important standard, but now comes under the heading of “Integrity.” You can find the complete up-to-date standards at the organization’s website—http://www.womma.org/ethics/womma-code-of-ethics.
14 Some of the specific steps Edelman took to ensure compliance with its ethical standards for social media were described in an October 20, 2006, entry on Richard’s blog. See http://www.edelman.com/p/6-a-m/what-is-edelman-doing/.
15 Source: Conversation with Richard Edelman, April 30, 2015.
16 Naturally, Wikipedia has an entry on what it terms “conflict of interest editing.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia. Accessed July 22, 2015.
17 Richards, K. (2014, April 11). Confirmed: Companies have been editing Wikipedia pages to make themselves look better. Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/pr-agencies-agree-to-stop-wikipedia-edits-2014-6. Accessed July 22, 2015.
18 Wikipedia. (2014, February 7). Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statement_on_Wikipedia_from_participating_communications_firms. Accessed July 22, 2015.
19 Quinn, E. (2015, January 10). Who needs lobbyists? The Center for Public Integrity. http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/01/15/16596/who-needs-lobbyists-see-what-big-business-spends-win-american-minds. Accessed July 22, 2015.
20 The Count on Coal. http://www.countoncoal.org/about-us/. Accessed September 6, 2015.
21 Hoelzel, M. (2014, December 8). Native advertising is soaring. Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/spending-on-native-ads-will-soar-as-publishers-and-advertisers-take-notice-2014-11. Accessed July 22, 2015.
22 Auletta made this somment on the May 16, 2014, installment of Charlie Rose on PBS. See: http://r2plive.org/conversation-on-the-new-york-times-conversation-with-thierry-de-montbrial/. Accessed July 22, 2015.
23 Coffee, P. (2013, September 25). Wall Street Journal Editor says native advertising is a deal with the devil. PR Newser. http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/the-wall-street-journal-editor-says-native-advertising-is-a-deal-with-the-devil_b73529. Accessed July 22, 2015.
24 Moses, L. (2014, March 10). Wall Street Journal launches native advertising studio. AdWeek. http://www.adweek.com/news/press/wall-street-journal-launches-native-ad-studio-156212. Accessed July 22, 2015.
25 The Netflix “native ad” was prepared by the New York Times’ “Brand Studio” and not only carried the notice it was “a paid post” but it also declared at the end that “The news and editorial staffs of The New York Times had no role in this post’s preparation.” See: Deziel, M. (June 2015). Women in prison: Why the male model doesn’t work. The New York Times. http://paidpost.nytimes.com/netflix/women-inmates-separate-but-not-equal.html?_r=0#.VS50zxPF9Zk. Accessed July 22, 2015.
26 Marshall, J. (2014, July 22). Sponsored content isn’t always clearly labeled research suggests. Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/07/22/sponsored-content-isnt-always-clearly-labelled-research-suggests/?mod=djemCMOTodaysponsored. Accessed July 22, 2015.
27 Newman, N. (2015). Executive summary and key findings of 2015. Digital News Report. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2015/executive-summary-and-key-findings-2015/
28 Richard Edelman announced the principles on his blog. Edelman, R. (2013, July 15). Sponsored content: An ethical framework. 6 AM Blog. http://www.edelman.com/p/6-a-m/sponsored-content-an-ethical-framework/. Accessed July 22, 2015.
29 The Sweet ‘n Low product placement was described by Alexandra Alter (2014, November 2). “E-Book Mingles Love and Product Placement,” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/business/media/e-book-mingles-love-and-product-placement.html. Accessed September 6, 2015.
30 President Obama announced a new Twitter handle in early May 2015, one he supposedly is managing on his own. Time will tell.
31 Ms. Kardashian denied the accusation. See: Kim Kardashian Takes on False Twitter Tales. (2009, December 31). OK! http://okmagazine.com/get-scoop/kim-kardashian-takes-false-twitter-tales/. Accessed July 22, 2015.
32 Knutson, R. (2014, December 2). Sprint escalates wireless price war with half-off bills. Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-escalates-wireless-price-war-with-half-off-bills-1417533378. Accessed July 22, 2015.
33 Consumer group complaints were spelled out in a filing with the Federal Trade Commission. See Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation. (2015, April 7). Request for Investigation into Google’s Unfair and Deceptive Practices in Connection with its YouTube kids App. http://www.centerfordigitaldemocracy.org/sites/default/files/4-7-15%20YouTube%20Kids%20Request%20for%20Investigation%20FINAL.pdf. Accessed July 22, 2015.
34 Senate Special Committee on Aging. (2014, April 15). Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes Under Scrutiny. http://www.aging.senate.gov/publishers-clearing-house-sweepstakes-solicitations-under-scrutiny. Accessed July 22, 2015.
35 Once Greenpeace got its hands on Edelman’s plan, they posted it online. See Greenpeace. (2014). The Edelman strategy, “Energy East Campaign Organization: Promote, Respond, Pressure.” http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/Global/canada/file/2014/11/eNERGY%20eAST%20CAMPAIGN%20ORG%20PROMOTE%20RESPONSE%20PRESSURE.PDF. Accessed July 22, 2015.
36 Austen, I. (2014, November 17). PR firm urges TransCanada to target opponents of its energy east pipeline. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/business/pr-firm-urges-transcanada-to-target-opponents-of-its-energy-east-pipeline.html. Accessed July 22, 2015.
37 Smith, B. (2014, November 17). Uber executive suggests digging up dirt on journalists. BuzzFeed. http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-digging-up-dirt-on-journalists#.ruW8NwP5m. Accessed July 22, 2015.
38 Source: conversation with Robert Dilenschneider on March 10, 2015/
39 Salmans, S. (1983, July 11). Molder of merger perceptions. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/11/business/molder-of-merger-perceptions.html. Accessed July 22, 2015.
40 Hoffer, K. (1999, March 12). Gershon Kekst: Master of the ‘Saykhl’ business. Directors and Boards. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Gershon+Kekst%3a+master+of+the+%27saykhl%27+business.-a054350184. Accessed July 22, 2015.
41 According to the Centers for Disease Control (2009, July 6), Surgeon General Luther Terry issued his first warning in 1964 based on information from more than 7,000 articles in the biomedical literature. See http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/Data_statistics/sgr/history/index.htm.
42 For a full copy of the Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry, see http://publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/resources/master-settlement-agreement.pdf