How They Lie To You

During the reign of Catherine the Great in Russia, one of her closest advisers was field marshal Grigori Potemkin, who used numerous wiles on her behalf. When Catherine toured the countryside with foreign dignitaries, Potemkin arranged to have fake villages built in advance of her visits so as to create an illusion of prosperity. Since that time, the term "Potemkin village" has become a metaphor for things that look elaborate and impressive but in actual fact lack substance.

The modern-day public relations industry frequently uses a strategy that amounts to Potemkin punditry -- the manipulation of public opinion by financing and publicizing views congenial to the public policy goals of their sponsors. If he were alive today, Potemkin would probably be amazed at the number and sophistication of the political facades that have been erected in today's media landscape. Here are a few examples of the process at work:

• After Nigeria's military dictatorship executed playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, the dictatorship and Shell Oil Company faced international condemnation. Nigeria's security forces had massacred villages and terrorized the Native Ogoni tribespeople in order to quell protests against the company's natural gas drilling operations. Saro-Wiwa, an Ogoni leader, had denounced Shell for waging an "ecological war" against his people. Nigeria responded by ordering multipage, glossy color advertisements in black-owned U.S. newspapers and inviting newspaper editors on expense-paid "fact-finding tours" of Ogoniland. Minority newspapers in the United States are chronically strapped for cash, and the combination of windfall revenue and guided tours succeeded in blunting criticisms. In fact, several newspapers editorialized that it was "racist" to criticize Nigeria's dismal track record on human rights.

• In the fall of 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Lobbyists for banks and credit card companies seized on the study as they lobbied Congress for changes in federal law that would make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times opinion column, offering Georgetown's academic imprimatur as evidence of the need for "bankruptcy reform." What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry. The study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International, Inc. Bentsen also failed to mention that he himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist.

• In Oxford, England, the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) calls itself an "independent, non-profit organization founded to conduct research on social issues." It has issued a call to establish a British "code of practice" governing what reporters should be allowed to write about issues of science and public safety. Designed to put a stop to "irresponsible health scares," the code stipulates that "scientific stories should be factually accurate." When the British Medical Journal took a close look at the organization, however, it found that SIRC shares the same offices, directors, and leading personnel as a PR firm called MCM Research that claims to apply "social science" to solving the problems of its clients, who include prominent names in the liquor and restaurant industries.

• Corporate sponsors have formed "partnerships" with a number of leading nonprofit organizations in which they pay for the right to use the organizations' names and logos in advertisements. Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example, paid $600,000 to the American Heart Association for the right to display the AHA's name and logo in ads for its cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. The American Cancer Society reeled in $1 million from SmithKline Beecham for the right to use its logo in ads for Beecham's NicoDerm CQ and Nicorette antismoking aids. A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary countered by shelling out $2.5 million for similar rights from the American Lung Association in its ads for Nicotrol, a rival nicotine patch.

• An organization called "Consumer Alert" frequently pops up in news stories about product safety issues. What the reporters almost never mention is that Consumer Alert is funded by corporations and that its positions are usually diametrically opposed to the positions taken by independent consumer groups such as Consumers Union. For example, Consumer Alert opposes flame-resistance standards for clothing fabrics issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and defends products such as the diet drug dexfenfluramine (Redux), which was taken off the market because of its association with heart valve damage. In contrast with Consumers Union, which is funded primarily by member subscriptions, Consumer Alert is funded by the industries whose products it defends -- companies including Anheuser-Busch, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Philip Morris, Allstate Insurance Fund, American Cyanamid, Elanco, Eli Lilly, Exxon, Monsanto, Upjohn, Chemical Manufacturers Association, Ciba-Geigy, the Beer Institute, Coors, and Chevron USA.

• In late 1993, a group called Mothers Opposing Pollution (MOP) appeared, calling itself "the largest women's environmental group in Australia with thousands of supporters across the country. . . . The group comprises mainly mothers and other women concerned with the welfare and rights of Australian women." MOP's cause: a campaign against plastic milk bottles, centering on the issues of waste disposal, the carcinogenic risks of milk in contact with plastic, and reduction in the quality of milk as a result of exposure to light. "The message to the consumer is never buy milk in plastic containers," said spokesperson Alana Maloney. Membership in MOP was free, which prompted some people to wonder how the group could afford to carry out expensive publicity in support of its cause. Although MOP claimed branches across Australia, Alana Maloney seemed to be its only spokesperson. Searches of basic public records, such as voting rolls, could find no such person. MOP's letterhead listed three addresses in different cities, each of which turned out to be a post office box. Finally, in February 1995, an Australian newspaper discovered that "Mrs. Alana Maloney" was in fact Janet Rundle, who heads a public relations company called J. R. and Associates. Rundle is also a business partner of Trevor Munnery, who owns his own PR firm called Unlimited Public Relations, which works for the Association of Liquidpaperboard Carton Manufacturers (ALC) -- the makers of paper milk cartons. In the wake of these public revelations, MOP sank from public view and has since disappeared.

How effective is this strategy? According to a survey commissioned by Porter/Novelli, 89 percent of respondents consider "independent experts" a "very or somewhat believable source of information during a corporate crisis."

Sometimes the technique is used to hype or exaggerate the benefits of a product. Other times it is used to create doubt about a product's hazards, or about criticisms that have been made of a company's business practices. The "someone elses" become Potemkin authorities, faithfully spouting the opinions of their benefactors while making it appear that their views are "independent."

You used to see this technique in its most obvious and crude form in the television commercials that featured actors in physicians' lab coats announcing that "nine out of ten doctors prefer" their brand of aspirin. But advertisements are obvious propaganda, and the third party technique in its more subtle forms is designed to prevent audiences from even realizing what they are experiencing.

"The best PR ends up looking like news," brags one public relations executive. "You never know when a PR agency is being effective; you'll just find your views slowly shifting."