PR talk #1: PR ethics

Posted by Vuong Nguyen at 19:23 | 0 comments

As far as I concern, my specialism for Uni degree is PR. I want to be more involved in the industry and always be aware of its issues. This blog post is my very first attempt to be a PR practitioner. Please get involved if you are interested by leaving your comments.

The theme for this blog post is the ethics aspect of PR. I have chosen this theme as my topic for dissertation proposal. Actually it is quite a broad issue to cover just in a blog post, so I want to break down to a specific question among PR pros and audiences. PR is demonstrated as an incredible industry with bad reputation. The reasons for this low credibility vary depend on both PR pros and organisation, clients. It is said that organisations had been using PR to manipulate publics under the name of persuasion. I want to examine the question of how PR pros blur the boundary between manipulation and persuasion to control over publics' behaviour.

As we might know, behavior is the ultimate measure of our success and PR's mission is to change the human outcomes. From my perspective, PR pros use a lot of spinning technique to turn the message as the way they want to control over publics' behaviour. People may even not be aware of the message but they are required to response in an expected way. And in contemporary society, people have the right to be served, not sold. Therefore, manipulating publics but using the right to "persuade" is against ethics. However, in order to achieve the PR objectives, this issue is debatable in PR industry.

Firstly, the difference between Persuasion and Manipulation is that:

• Persuasion: The act of reasoning or pleading with someone to accept a belief or course of action
• Manipulation: To control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage 

Basically, 'persuasion' without integrity is a fancy name for 'manipulation' (Lynn Marie Sager, 2005). Manipulation is used not only in PR but also business industry and any other 'profits-making process'. This sort of reminding me the 4 PR model of Grunig & Hunt, which are: Agency-publicity, Public information, 2-way asymmetric and 2-way symmetric. In this blog, I'm more focusing on the boundary between 2-way asymmetric and 2-way symmetric. We're talking about business that makes money, not charity organisations and that's the focal point of the issue. 2-way symmetric model is mostly used by those non-profits organisations such as charities, which are equal parties to the public.

The campaign, called "The Torch of Freedom" of Edward Bernays, is a valuable example for my theme.

By the mid-1920s smoking had become commonplace in the United States and cigarette tobacco was the most popular form of tobacco consumption. At the same time women had just won the right to vote, widows were succeeding their husbands as governors of such states as Texas and Wyoming, and more were attending college and entering the workforce. While women seemed to be making great strides in certain areas, socially they still were not able to achieve the same equality as their male counterparts. Women were only permitted to smoke in the privacy of their own homes. Public opinion and certain legislation at the time did not permit women to smoke in public, and in 1922 a woman from New York City was arrested for lighting a cigarette on the street.
George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company and an eccentric businessman, recognized that an important part of his market was not being tapped into. Hill believed that cigarette sales would soar if he could entice more women to smoke in public.

In 1928 Hill hired Bernays to expand the sales of his Lucky Strike cigarettes. Recognizing that women were still riding high on the suffrage movement, Bernays used this as the basis for his new campaign. He consulted Dr. A.A. Brill, a psychoanalyst, to find the psychological basis for womens smoking. Dr. Brill determined that cigarettes which were usually equated with men, represented torches of freedom for women. The event caused a national stir and stories appeared in newspapers throughout the country. Though not doing away with the taboo completely, Bernays's efforts had a lasting effect on women smoking.

(Torches of Freedom, 1929 - PR Museum)

Smoking cigarette is a metaphor from male power and he came up with an idea of how women can challenge male's power. In New York, Bernays asked a group of sexy young woman to hide cigarettes in their panties. On Bernays' command, the woman lit up their cigarettes. When news hit the publics, Bernays was ready with a slogan 'Torches of Freedom'. Women began smoking in public and the tobacco sales went through the roof.

Not to mention how successful just a simple act could be, Bernays had persuaded the publics and women to support the image of women smoking in public, a symbolic of women's freedom. But from my perspective, the act of renaming Big Tobacco brand to 'The Torches of Freedom' is the manipulation to dramatically raise the sale, which is their main purposes.

I would like to talk more about media spinning and its 'contribution' to manipulating publics. If you have any ideas, case studies, arguments about today's topic or for further talks, please leave your thoughts here, it would be more than appreciated.