The Truth Hurts

by Joel Bleifuss

Downtown St. Louis is a deserted hub of suburban sprawl: vacant, turn-of-the-century office blocks, a few hotels, a couple of office complexes, more than a couple riverboat casinos, a sports stadium and the Gateway Arch. On the weekend of November 10-12, 1996, this hub was home to public relations professionals from throughout the country, gathered to attend the annual conference of the Public Relations Society of America.

The theme of this year's PRSA conference was "Telling the Truth: Building Credibility in an Incredible World." The content of the workshops might lead you to imagine that telling the truth, for some, is an even more difficult balancing act than the feats of circus acrobats.

My first day of conference-going began in the foyer/dining room at the Adam's Mark, St. Louis' swankiest hostelry. Waiting for a bowl of oatmeal, I checked out other diners to figure out what the conference planners meant by "casual business attire is recommended." My second-hand, pea-green cashmere sports coat was on the edge, but not the cutting one. And I lacked the requisite USA Today, which I was to discover is not only the nation's paper, but the PR industry's as well.

I scanned the workshop schedule. Should I check out "Telling the Truth Under Deadline Pressure?" A professor of public relations at Kent State promised to explain how "it's not as tough as you think" for the PR professional to fill the role of "corporate conscience." Or maybe I should stop in at "Labor/Employee Relations and Public Relations" for "the scoop on upcoming labor issues expected to set off corporate, legal and media hot buttons in the next few years."

Plausible Believability

In the end, I settled for: "Being Believable: Credibility of the Press, Corporations, Politicians and the Judicial System." This "interactive workshop" led by Peter Hirsh, Executive Vice President of Porter/Novelli, promised to "examine how, in an increasingly cynical world, companies can make themselves more credible."

Hirsh unveiled a Porter/Novelli survey demonstrating that 45 percent of respondents believed news from political reporters was less credible today than it was five years ago. Only 9 percent, however, said the same of radio news. To Hirsh this indicates that radio is "an under-exploited medium with respect to molding opinion."

"We have to do a better job
of molding our responses
so that they seem more responsive,"
Hirsh said with no apparent sense of irony.

Someone in the audience wondered if, given that people rate the credibility of political reporters so low, "should we [in PR] stop bothering with political reporters because we [the people] don't believe them?"

"It may not be worth the effort," Hirsh suggested tentatively.

"No, it should be done," said a woman who described herself as a six-year veteran of the Washington political press corps. "These are the people desperately in need of that education."

"Amen," said Hirsh.

Credibility in Crisis

The survey also showed that during a time of "corporate crisis," 89 percent of survey respondents said that "independent experts" are a "very or somewhat believable" source of information. So far this is good news for the PR industry, which specializes in finding and hiring a wide variety of "independent experts."

The bad news for the industry is that 69 percent of respondents said that consumer advocates are "very and somewhat believable."

Said Hirsh: "This is a difficult thing to deal with for many companies, because consumer advocates are more visible and more widespread in any field of business than they have been before."

Even without consumer advocates, corporations have problems. Only 19 percent of survey respondents believed that corporations "are totally truthful and open" when they deal with a crisis.

"We have to do a better job of molding our responses so that they seem more responsive," Hirsh said, with no apparent sense of irony. "Twenty-eight percent of the people feel that they are not."

The good news, he added, is that corporations rule. "There has never been a time in the U.S. when there has been more conformity of view as to the fact that private corporations and semi-private institutions are the things that are going to enable us to gain control and to change our lives."

Ready to lose control, I left that session and went to get a copy of USA Today, but the hotel news stand was sold out, and it was time for the next session. "Unchaining American Industry with the Truth" sounded interesting. Someone from Purina Mills was going to examine how corporate America can "use new technologies to feed, clothe, shelter, entertain and support" the additional billions of people who will inhabit the world in 2050, once the PR industry cures the public of its fear of technology.

Practitioner, Change Thyself

Like grass growing through concrete, occasionally a glimmer of reality broke through the smooth sheen of PR jargon. One workshop, titled "Changing Behaviors by Managing Realities," described itself in the conference schedule using academic lingo out of a Skinner box: "This workshop gives you the tools you need to enhance constituents' learning experiences by managing the primary variables that contribute to those experiences."

Intrigued, I trucked over to the Marriott to hear the presentation by E.W. Brody, president of The Resource Group in Memphis, Tennessee. His presentation turned out actually to be a thoughtful argument urging people in public relations to stop thinking about PR in the traditional sense, and begin trying to affect public perceptions by changing how their clients treat the public.

"The handwriting is on the wall. Over the next several years we will change from a supply-driven information society to a demand-driven informational society," said Brody. In other words, instead of the media supplying people with information, people will pick and choose what information they gather from various media. And that means that the PR industry's time-worn strategy of influencing the press becomes obsolete.

"The traditional model of public relations is no longer going to work," Brody argued. "We have our own survival to think about. I would argue that if you are under 40 you are either going to change, or this machine will chew you up and spit you out."

A member of the audience asked: "If you were head of PR at Texaco, what would you do?"

"The first thing that Texaco has got to do is change the reality," Brody replied. "There is no substitute for doing what is individually or institutionally correct. There are times you've got to leave a little blood on the floor."

Thanks for Nothing

Then it was back to the Marriott, where I perused the exhibition rooms. At one booth, I played a quiz, matching the names of 20 newspapers with 20 states. I got 17 right, which according to the salesman was one of three highest scores for the conference. My reward: a month's free news clipping service. Actually, the "service" was free, but I would have to pay to receive any copies of the articles they clipped. I declined.

I grabbed a beer, courtesy of Anheuser Busch, and struck up a conversation with David Sweet, spokesman for Southern Air Transport, the air cargo company that at one time was created and owned by the CIA before being bought by one of the CIA's lawyers.

Southern Air was a favored conduit of guns to the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan administration. These days Sweet says he is busy keeping tabs on various internet-based "conspiracy-oriented chat groups" that discuss topics such as the recent series of stories in San Jose Mercury News documenting CIA complicity in cocaine smuggling using air cargo companies.

My final workshop--titled "Why Don't They Want to Hear the Truth?"--felt more like a pitchman's plaintive plea than a strategy session. The conference program said the panel would "discuss the ways in which the truth can be subverted" by "policymakers, advocacy groups and the media" who believe that the health care industry is "putting profits ahead of American health and that they can't be trusted."

I stayed long enough to hear Helen Ostrowski of Porter /Novelli, explain: "When you are being vilified in the media it is important to realize [that] as an institution the media is not the credible source it once was. And that is important to remember as you look at your communications program."

Nothing new here, I thought as I headed for the exit.