By Danny Schechter
An envelope from the "Office of Message Development" tumbled out of my mailbox today. I wasn't sure what to make of this. Did such an institution exist? According to the letter inside, the U.S. Democratic Party has put "message development" on par with its polling organization as a top priority. So now, I, as a "democratic leader" — what list was I on? — was being asked to fill out a questionnaire that would help the Democrats help America define its "message." I am, for the record, not a party member. And as a journalist who covers politics, I am not a donor nor much of a partisan.
Eureka Gilkey, the Deputy Director of Message Development and Polling had personalized a "Dear Danny Schechter" letter. How heady to get such attention: a Deputy Director wants my input, or so she says. I gather that the Republicans have a message development team as well. A friend has made their list and told me about a similar scheme.
Politics these days are all about messages — messages that play well with the public, messages that are easily communicated through media.
My personalized survey looked benign enough, offering voters an opportunity to put in a word about their party's agenda. How small "d" democratic of these big "D" Democrats. Yet the issues the survey covered were narrow, centrist and bland, as were my options for reply.
Example: "What should the strategy be to stimulate our economy?"
Eureka's options: "More tax cuts, new investments in education and health care and hold the line on spending and tax cuts to avoid bigger deficits." Fairly limited alternatives as far as I was concerned.
There was no room provided to write what I really felt about our Defense-dominated, mismanaged economic priorities, or to offer up 'The Dissector Plan To End Corporate Control of American Life.'
Actually, as I read further, I realized that these questions were a ploy to get you to letter X in the "survey" — their real agenda: CONTRIBUTION. Eureka and company explain: "In addition to providing your viewpoint, would you like to make a contribution to the Democratic Party?"
They certainly have a right to solicit, but, clearly, they felt they had to dress up the pitch with the appearance of participatory democracy. The idea that a message-development mailing such as this is going to shape messages or policies is absurd.
So why do they do it?
They know that people are bored with politics, in part because there are so few ways to get involved, since campaigning went electronic, parties became professional institutions, and consultants started steering campaigns in order to manipulate votes, but not empower voters. In this process, the voters' role is to ratify, rather than initiate. They/we choose among the bland choices they concoct and offer.
And yet, the myths and symbols of democratic process must be respected because appearances and images tend to matter more than issues and ideology. Politicians, and the media machines they create have become focused on managing perceptions, not changing realities.
At the recent Taos Film Festival, I watched a fascinating discussion on this issue. John Stauber, who publishes PR Watch and wrote "Toxic Waste is Good For You," and Hunter College Professor Stuart Ewen, author of "PR: A Social History of Spin," discussed how (and by whom) ideas are shaped to structure how we learn about politics, understand news, and develop the "internal" messages that matter to us, or at least influence our own views. Most of us insist "we think for ourselves" even as we are constantly being targeted with slogans, logos, and contrived imagery. We tend to be affected even when we insist we are not.
If you think this process is all obvious, you would be wrong because the forces shaping what we think and what we know are not always visible, and they don't necessarily say what they mean or mean what they say.
The focus there too is on "perception management." And a lot of that is done with well-constructed techniques, what Ewen calls "protocols of persuasion" that have more to do with massaging our subconscious needs. It is about conveying impressions rooted in understandings of our collective social psychology. That leads to finding simplifications, which convey symbolic understandings. The persuaders seek to reinforce existing attitudes, rather than convey challenging ideas. That's why so many slogans function like codes that often keep audiences frozen in their pre-conceptions, prejudices, and fears. They often play on our insecurities and resentments rather than to our hopes and real needs. They usually conceal the real interests of those who subsidize the messages.
Ewen and Stauber both cited the ideas of the late Edward Bernays, "the father of Public Relations," and a cousin of none other than Sigmund Freud. Bernays approach to news was about recognizing the real messages we draw from it. Ewen writes, that news for him was "when reality is distilled down to the most simplified and dramatized form and it appeals to the instincts of 'the public mind'."
The creation of such "news" then was for Bernays the essential job of the public relations counsel. Here is how Bernays put it. (I hope Eureka is listening):
"In order to appeal to the instincts and fundamental notions of the public, the public relations counsel must create news around his ideas. He must isolate ideas and develop them into events so they can be more readily understood and so they may claim attention as news."
In other words, drive the news agenda with your own pre-fabricated messages, issues and concerns. Yes it is elitist. And yes, it is anti-democratic. Yet, it has fostered techniques that have led (in Stauber's assessment) to more than 40% of the news we now consume being shaped and influenced by PR professionals. 40 percent! Not surprisingly we live in a society with three times as many PR people as journalists. (Read PR pro Fraser Seitel debating John Stauber on MediaChannel.)
This is not to say that everything is being manipulated. It does suggest, though, that more than we know is being generated through PR interventions. How is it done? Not by developing messages from the public, but by insinuating them into the public. And when possible, into the minds of people — especially into their subconscious minds.
That's what branding does. Repeated exposure to corporate logos imprint them on people's minds. When Nike took its name off the swoosh, everyone still identified the company with its symbol. When comedian Jay Leno went out in to the street to ask the public if they recognized a "Mr. Peanut " doll, everyone did. When he showed them a picture of America's most famous peanut farmer, former President Jimmy Cater, hardly any one knew who he was. Memories are always selective.
Public opinion is monitored so it can be better molded. That's why so much money is spent on sampling, market research, focus groups and political polling. Ad men or women spend small fortunes to understand product-buying habits and marketing approaches. PR flacks, on the other hand, are in the business of marketing ideas. They must go further, in Bernays words "to become conversant with the ingrained thought buying habits" through which public opinion operates. Simply put, the publicist must comprehend the mental processes of the public and "adjust" propaganda "to the mentality of the masses."
Note: Bernays used the term propaganda proudly and even wrote a book advocating its use. It is said that Herr Goebels, Hitler's propaganda chief, was an admirer of his approach.
Think about the messages of the terror war or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Note how each side defines words differently and uses them to shape core ideas and massage perceptions. I am thinking of hot button words like "evil" and "enemy," "terrorist" or "resistance fighter," "militants" and "martyrs," "incursion" and "atrocity," "survival" and "extinction," "security" and "insecurity." All of these terms are given different contexts. As a result, warring communities lack a common language as well as common understanding.
After a while, one only becomes interested in those facts that support one's views. Journalists are distrusted because they/we challenge conventional understandings. And practiced pundits take over with a quick sound bite or smart-ass comment. Soon context and caring disappear. Media becomes more about posturing than informing.
Noted Michael Kelly in a piece on TV talking heads filling in all available air time: "You have this great maw that has to be filled. It can't be filled with facts. There aren't enough facts. It can't be filled with wisdom, because there are not enough wise people around. And it can't be filled with cleverness, because cleverness is hard to come by. So it's filled with blatherers.... It's not the greatest threat the republic has ever faced, but it is part of the general trashification of everything."
We are in an age of growing polarization and partisanship, from the studios at Fox News to the best seller lists that swing weekly from the anti-media polemics of leftist Michael Moore to the transcribed, right-wing rants of Rush Limbaugh. Being politically incorrect is now politically correct. No one trusts the middle, perhaps because of its phony pretenses at objectivity.
But we have to be careful that truth does not become confused with one-sided ardor and partisan spin as the obsession with perception overruns our grasp of reality. This is a message that needs developing.
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Danny Schechter is the executive editor of Mediachannel.org and author of "News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics" (Akashic Books and Electronpress.com).
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