Jan. 30th: Propaganda vs. Public Relations

Overview of class:

1. Our first assignment was to pair off in groups of two and think of ourselves and the Communications Director of the Defense Department in the United States. The United States will go to war with a fictitious country named Baramundi. The Communications Director will provide strategies and tactics to the Army Chief as to how the media should be handled during this war.

Ade and I concluded that our strategy would be to control the messages and information sent our over the media. Our tactic would involve appointing key officials, including the Army Chief, to serve as the main source of information release to the media. The key officials would be the first point of contacts for the media. We also thought it was important for the officials to develop relationships with influential news mediums such as the Washington Post newspaper, the New York Times Newspaper, National Public Radio, and key television stations such as Fox and NBC.

In a crisis situation such as war, we thought it was important to make the United States Department of Defense (U.S. DOD) and its designated key officials the center of the crisis. The role that the media plays in a crisis situation can either severely help or harm your cause. The U.S. DOD should be the first organization to send information out about the war. This will help gain support from the media and possibly even the majority population of the country. In the book, Risk Issues and Crisis Management: A Casebook of Best Practice, Michael Regester and Jury Larkin note that “it is usually when the media believe the organization at the center of the crisis is unduly slow in providing information…or thought to be withholding information, that it becomes hostile.”[1] If the U.S. DOD was slow about sending out information, the media would become hostile and start speculating about the situation. If the media suspects that the government is hiding information then they will not speak favorably about the government’s cause for going to war. Since the media is influential on public perception, it is wise for the U.S. DOD to develop a good relationship with the media in order to control the messages that are sent out to the public.

2. The second half of class we viewed a film titled, War Spin, produced by BBC, the film documents the media’s spin of events that took place in the War on Iraq. The film focuses heavily on the Jessica Lynch story, the U.S. Central Command Media Center in Iraq, and the use of embedded journalist by the United States and Britain.

[1] Michael Regester and Jury Larkin. Risk Issues and Crisis Management: A Casebook of Best Practice, (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) (Kogan Page: London and Sterling, VA) p. 176

Youtube video:

Jessica Lynch admits her story was false