Inside Spin, the dark underbelly of the PR industry, Bob Burton, Allen & Unwin
review by Nicky Hager
For two days in August 1991 explosions and fire tore through the Coode Island chemical storage complex in Melbourne. One after another huge tanks ignited and flew through the air spraying their toxic contents. A cloud of poisonous smoke drifted across Melbourne. It was exactly what neighbouring community groups had been warning might happen.
The chemical complex owners’ first action was calling in multinational Public Relations company Hill and Knowlton to help limit damaging news coverage. The first “unconfirmed reports” said “lightning strike” was responsible. Then later a Police press conference announced the shocking news that the disaster was the result of sabotage. Front-page headlines uncritically declared the “Hunt for Coode Island saboteur”. The community groups opposed to the chemical complex were accused and harrassed.
The head of Hill and Knowlton Brian West later described this successful crisis management strategy at a marketing conference. He said the key to surviving the crisis was being “clearly seen to be in the victim box not in the culprit box” (New Zealanders may recognise this strategy in Don Brash’s ‘stolen email’ claims after he was caught lying over his Exclusive Brethren links). West’s colleague Rob Masters explained they had “close liaison with the Police prior to the [sabotage] press conference where we had them do the upfront work to save the company being the focus too much…. If the company said this sort of thing then people would be inclined to be a bit sceptical about how credible it was.”
Scepticism was appropriate. The authorities eventually found no evidence of sabotage and concluded it was in fact technically impossible. The disaster was entirely the company’s fault, caused by poor maintenance. But by then the issue has died down. The company had successfully avoided criticism and pressure to relocate the chemical complex away from residential areas.
This is just one of many examples in this new book about the ‘dark underbelly’ of Public Relations. Some others are: a fake environmental group attacking plastic milk cartons on behalf of cardboard milk carton manufacturers; a mining company hiding evidence of human rights abuses in Africa; pretend community groups set up to support corporations against real community groups; a fake bomb planted on a railway line just before an election to discredit the Green Party; and tricks used by tobacco and other companies to appear ‘socially responsible’.
Many people working in PR or ‘communications’ hate being associated with this dark side of Public Relations. They spend their time on open communications, such as producing annual reports and developing websites. The value of Inside Spin is that its hair-raising stories help us see what is reasonable and what is harmful and unethical.
As a former national president of the Australian PR industry association complained: “The media’s opinion of us is unfair but can we really blame them when their impression of us has been formed by our relentless flogging of manufactured stories, pseudo events, skewed survey statistics, an overuse of celebrities [and] non-disclosure of information in issues-rich situations?”
The problem is that, although media and the public feel negative towards PR, many of the tricks of the trade work anyway. PR companies get away with manufacturing news, closing down unwanted news, helping clients slide out of responsibility for wrong doing, causing trouble for or silencing their clients’ political and commercial opponents and generally manipulating events in their clients’ favour.
A frustrated Australian PR consultant complained that such tactics are unethical and “corrode democracy which relies on openness. [They are] usually undertaken by people who are afraid, or lack the skills, to engage in open and honest public debates.”
The best defence against PR tactics is understanding them and recognising them when they occur. Written in Australia but with various New Zealand examples, this book is an outstanding guide to how PR is conducted, the harm it can cause and what journalists and the public can do about it. It’s a book that needed to be written. When the next chemical fire happens, we should not be as gullible.
Nicky Hager co-authored a book with Bob Burton in 1999.