Master of deception

Master of deception
PR is a growing billion industry, primarily manipulating our perception of the world. The professionals from the industry are even assisting in staging wars.

In January “Brand Eins”, a Business magazine, published a report about the banana company Chiquita. The title of the story was “From an exploiter to a role model” and swarmed with compliments about the company.Chiquita was earlier called “The Octopus”, because the company established itself as the squire of Latin America. But now that is history. In 2001 the company successfully made a transition from “evil to good” – which for others came as a surprise.

In April 2002 the human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, published a report, which stated that companies such as Chiquita, Del Monte and Doleused child labour on their plantations. Some of them were between 8 and 13 years old and were actually working while poisonous fungus remedy was being sprayed onto the plantations.

A short while ago, banana workers from one of the Chiquita daughter companies in Panama ditched their workplaces. Reason: the company refused to pay them wages.

This sort of information did not quite suite the“Brand Eins” report. Thorough research was conducted, “but even the evil can change”, - justified these mistakes the Editor in Chief, Gabriele Fischer.

Cornelia Kunze also liked the story. Kunze is the General Manager of Edelman Germany, the world’s biggest independent PR firm. Chiquita is her client. She has done a lot for these sorts of stories.

Edelman organised a big press conference lastOctober. Chiquita’s commitment in the Rainforest Alliance was celebrated, which stood up “effectively for Man and Animal” in Latin America. The journalists were provided with all the necessary materials before the “PR campaign”, said Kunze. That is how such positive articles, as the one in “Brand-Eins”, were created.

“Contact to NGO’s plays a key role for the companies that have problems,” –says Kunze’s boss Richard Edelman from his office in New York’s Times Square. Edelman contrives such contacts. The agency is known for being an expert in sudden greening of companies.

“Greenwashing” – is how this technique is called - to appear as environment-friendly as possible. And that is just one of many instruments used by modern Public Relations.

The nurturing of these – literallyspeaking - public relationships – mean much more. It stands for the unleashing of a daily flood of messages about their own costumers – firms, churches, labour unions, countries, armies, animal rights and environmental agencies. Media experts say that at least 40 percent of information published in daily newspapers is distributed by PR agencies, marketing departments of offices, organisations andagencies. Often the “news” appears as alleged studies and therefore is not taken as PR. “Instead of discovering propaganda the media has become a new channel for propaganda”, - says John Stauber, founder of an independent news service PR Watch and author of a number of books about PR influence. 30,000 Business and Political magazines opposed to 15,000 to 18,000 PR professionals are now availablein Germany, estimates Michael Haller, a media expert from Leipzig. In the US this relation has long been turned around to the benefit of PR experts.

In the following years the PR industry has a big chance of becoming “the leading communication discipline”, - believes Edelman, - “even before advertising”, whose simple selling slogans wear out faster than the strategic conspiracies of the PRexperts: leaking stories to the media, staging incidents, placing interviews, creating positive reports – “that is something that advertising can not do”, - states Edelman with pride.

His agency even managed to get mentioned on a number of internet pages of famous web authors. This well networked scene, the so-called bloggers, is considered to be relatively autonomous and difficult to break...