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▲t ethics in public relationsPublic relations people face a unique set of ethical issues compared to journal-ists, media-entertainment professionals, and advertising people. Like advertising professionals, their loyalties lie with the client, but like journalists, if they present false or misleading information, their credibility and that of their clients can be severely damaged in the court of public opinion. In addition, although some pub-lic relations practitioners like to claim they are the “conscience of the client,” the

ConvergenCe Context

selling a war

ethical lapses in PR can have far-reaching con-sequences, especially when it comes to poli-tics and war. hill and Knowlton was widely

criticized for its clandestine efforts to influence the U.s. government and the american public during the Gulf War. the firm was hired at a cost of more than half a million dollars by the government of Kuwait to foster support among the american public and the U.s. congress.

hill and Knowlton produced and distributed dozens of video news releases (VNRs) to television news operations around the country. Many of the sta-tions aired the VNRs without iden-tifying their source as either hill and Knowlton or the government of Kuwait. Many aired the propa-ganda without editing it, present-ing it as impartial journalism.

hill and Knowlton also helped organize the “congressional hu-man Rights caucus,” which held hearings on capitol hill. in Octo-ber 1990, a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah, spoke in tears, saying, “i volunteered at the al-addan hospital. While i was there, i saw the iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where .  .  . babies were in incubators. they took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”

For months after her testimony, the iraqi sol-diers’ killing of babies was repeated in the media and even by President George h. Bush as a rationale for the U.s. presence in the region. Later it was re-vealed that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, that her testimony was a fabrication, and that a hill and Knowlton vice president had coached Nayirah on what to say during her testimony. after the end of the war, the canadian Broadcasting corporation produced an emmy award–winning documentary on the hill and Knowlton campaign, entitled To Sell a War.

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