by Eric Sparling
I was cynical about public relations right from the start. During one of my college PR classes, I was in charge of printing T-shirts for a pub crawl. I came up with the slogan, "We're friendly because we're paid to be." My classmates loved it. The head instructor thought it was a gross misrepresentation of the industry. She was wrong.
The public relations industry is growing rapidly in Canada. A few years ago, community colleges recognized that there was a huge crop of university students graduating with liberal-arts educations who had virtually no work experience or job training. Canadian colleges began offering one-year, professional training courses for university grads. The PR course I took was one such program.
I got into the industry for a number of reasons. I thought I would be good at it. I thought I would be well paid. I thought I would find the work interesting. I hoped to meet powerful, fascinating people who were doing important things.
Some of those hopes came to pass. My career quickly kicked into high gear. I was promoted from an entry-level position to assistant executive in three months, the fastest promotion in the history of my agency. I received my first raise three months ahead of schedule.
Then I hit a plateau. The reason was simple--I was bored. After the excitement of my first business card wore off, after wearing a tie and commuting to an office became tediously mundane, and after scowling at suppliers who were running late stopped making me feel superior, it finally dawned on me: I was a salesman, nothing more. I was out of shape, losing my temper with loved ones and working long hours, just so that "the client" could get its press release about breath mints sent out on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday. It was a bad deal. The priorities were wrong.
When I finally quit the job, one of my supervisors asked why I was leaving. I replied that there are two good reasons to do a job: you like what you do, or you believe in what you do. A great job will have both. An okay job will have one of the two. A bad job has neither. Public relations was a bad job for me.
"Not only do I not care if the clients get coverage in the newspaper, I hope they don't," I told my supervisor, "and I think it's sad that the media allow us to use them to spread our message."
On June 21, I wrote an essay for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper. Titled "Confessions of a Former Spin Doctor" (see previous page), it was a brief article in which I apologized to readers for my participation in the "manufacturing of consent."
The response to my article was immediate. The same day it ran, I received a phone call from the assistant producer of a local television talk show, asking if I would make an appearance in the following week's program. After consulting my family and some journalist friends, I decided to accept. It didn't end up happening--the story got bumped, I guess--but it was encouraging.
"Not only do I
not care if the clients
get coverage in the
newspaper, I hope
they don't,"
I told my supervisor,
"and I think it's sad
that the media
allow us to use them
to spread our message."
The reactions of my former colleagues have been mixed. Most were angry. They felt that I painted the industry with too broad a brush, but none of them effectively challenged the truth of the statements I made regarding the day-to-day activities and goals of a PR agency.
A week after my article appeared, the Toronto Star ran a few letters from business communicators. Obviously, I had struck a nerve. The people who wrote in to attack my article included Sarah Jones, president of the Canadian Public Relations Society, and Colin Buchanan, a partner with National (one of the largest PR agencies in the country). Buchanan described me as a "disaffected intern," even though I was a salaried professional for more than a year. It's a standard PR tactic--when you can't attack the message, try to discredit the messenger. I'm sure my firm's clients would like to know why they paid more than $3,000 a week for the counsel of an "intern."
A greater distortion of truth could be found in Buchanan's statement that PR is "a profession characterized by positive relationships between public relations consultants and journalists," and that he was "proud of the frequently symbiotic nature of our dealings with journalists."
In my experience, the majority of journalists are mistrustful and contemptuous of public relations people. I should know. I had to phone lifestyle editors to try and pitch them stories about personal hygiene products, a hell on earth that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
A couple of the criticisms that have been leveled at me deserve a response. I will grant that not every public relations professional is a lying swindler who contributes to the general decline of democracy in our society. You may be exempt from my statements if you're doing a bit of promotional work for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I also stated that only giant corporations can afford the services of a public relations agency. Strictly speaking, this isn't entirely true. Large charity organizations occasionally employ agencies. Public relations agencies are happy to charge their exorbitant fees to the tiny number of not-for-profit organizations that can afford them. Agencies will also sometimes do pro bono work for charities, a PR exercise if ever there was one.
The lies that PR people
tell are usually lies
of omission rather than
outright falsehoods.
There are public relations professionals who do good work, but not many. Make no mistake, the vast majority of public relations professionals don't work for a cancer foundation or the homeless. Most are engaged in work that is, at best, amoral. Some are actively engaged in promoting causes they know are detrimental to consumers, the environment and democracy. They are mercenaries. Their clients have a lot of money and they want more. You are their target.
The lies that PR people tell are usually lies of omission rather than outright falsehoods. They'll pay a nutritionist to talk about vitamins on a talk show and plug their product at the same time. The viewer who watches the TV program never knows that the professionally-accredited nutritionist was paid to endorse that product. Imagine if you went to your doctor for a prescription, and the physician prescribed Drug X. How would you react if you discovered that the physician had received cash from a pharmaceutical company to promote Drug X. Would that affect your opinion of the doctor's credibility? Of course. Would you still want to take the drug? Maybe, but you'd be more cautious.
This is exactly what happens every single day in media outlets around the world. A press release is received by a journalist, complete with a quote from a person with a PhD. The journalist has an "expert" to quote, and the story hits the newsstands, with the public none the wiser that the information it is reading is nothing more than a dressed-up advertisement.
One of my friends in the business told me that I don't give consumers enough credit, the implication being that the public is well aware of what goes on and that consumers are skeptical of the media. I don't think she's right. How can consumers know the truth when there is a billion-dollar industry keeping it from them?
