But apart from the traditional things that PR does like build a company’s image, create awareness of a product neophyte, PR can be used as an instrument of war.
The role of PR in war is traditionally to mobilize hatred against the enemy, preserve the friendship of allies, gain support of the international community and demoralize the enemy. The common denominator is the delivery of messages to the target publics to inform, persuade or engineer public support for an activity or a cause.
To illustrate: In August 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait. At this juncture President George Bush Sr. conducted a PR program paid for entirely by oil-rich Kuwait to persuade the American public to defend Kuwait from Iraq. The US media described Saddam Hussein as a monster and convinced the people that the Gulf war was necessary to make the world safe for democracy. Several PR firms were hired by the US government to gain public opinion and mobilize US forces against Hussein.
(A group of Kuwaiti officials also came to Manila in December 1990 and met with then Executive Secretary Oscar Orbos, lawyer Nap Rama and this author to identify a Filipino PR firm that would oversee satellite PR organizations in the ASEAN countries to create regional animosity towards Iraq.)
Hill & Knowlton, then the world’s largest PR firm, reportedly got $11 million in fees to mastermind the Kuwait campaign. It formed and represented the "Citizens for a Free Kuwait". A PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwait government and its secret agreement with the administration of President Bush.
There were 119 Hill & Knowlton executives in 12 offices across the USA who supervised the Kuwait account. They arranged media interviews for visiting Kuwaitis, set up activities like a National Free Kuwait Day, organized public rallies, released hostage letters to the media, and produced a nightly radio show in Arabic from Saudi Arabia.
H&K also published a book about Iraqi atrocities titled "The Rape of Kuwait", copies of which were stuffed into media kits and featured on TV talk shows, and The Wall Street Journal. Some 200,000 copies of the book were distributed to American troops.
H&K produced dozens of video news releases, which were shown by eager TV news directors around the world. TV stations and networks simply fed the VNRs to unwitting viewers who assumed they were watching "real" journalism.
On Oct. 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing to listen to alleged Iraqi human rights violations. The most moving testimony came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl known only as Nayirah. Sobbing, she described what she had seen in a hospital in Kuwait. She said, "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, go into the room where babies were in incubators, took the babies out of the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die."
The story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over in the US media. Even President Bush told the story on TV. H&K did not reveal that Nayirah was the daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States and that she could not have witnessed any of the events because she had not been in Kuwait in years. The US Senate voted to declare war in Jan. 12, 1991, largely due to the babies-thrown-from incubator story concoted by Hill & Knowlton.
Before the outbreak of the Iraq war, a PR infrastructure to win the hearts and minds of the American public had been set up. A Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was created "to replace the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people." The Committee was a PR front for the Bush administration to justify the occupation of Iraq.
To further the war propaganda, coordinate the US foreign policy message of the administration and supervise America’s image abroad, an Office of Global Communication had been established by the White House. The OGC had a $200 million budget for a PR campaign against Saddam Hussein to reach American and foreign audiences. The campaign aimed to persuade crucial target groups that the Iraqi leader must be ousted.
The use of PR in war (propaganda was the term at that time) in the Cuban crisis of 1898 was anchored on the writing of inflammatory articles in the Hearst’s New York Morning Journal to clamor for US military intervention and caused an unnecessary war with Spain.
Hearst sent Frederick Remington to Havana to report on the civil war. But Remington reported there was virtually no fighting in Cuba. He sent a telegram to Hearst saying: "Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return–Remington." Hearst sent the famous telegram in reply: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war. – W.R. Hearst."
Hearst knew that "people act on the basis of pictures in their heads. Even though they may not have first-hand experience of events, people hear, or see pictures, imagine what took place, give them meaning, and incorporate these into their pictures of the world."
While PR is essentially "doing good and telling your story well". It has emerged as a powerful and pervasive discipline with massive strength and wide versatility. Starting over 100 years ago as an in-house function for issuing news releases, PR has become a hidden persuader to advance the political interests of nations and foreign governments. PR is regarded as the most cost-effective strategic communications tool for marketers, corporations, organizations and even the military.
(Editor’s Note: The author is president of Agatep Associates, Inc., a PR & advertising agency in Ortigas Center. He obtained a M.S. degree in Communication Arts from Boston University under a Fulbright/Smith Mundt scholarship and taught journalism, public relations and advertising at the University of Sto.Tomas, Assumption College and St. Paul College.)