Lecture 4: PR, Politicians and the Art of Political

Imagery

In the last lecture, we have look at how contemporary politics in democratic societies are media-ized, which in turn witnessed the rise of a group of media experts who specializes in creating political imagery and hype. It should be noted that political imagery and hype is not a new phenomenon in democratic politics – it was well known in Athenian democracy – but taken on a new character with the introduction of the media in contemporary society.

Public Relations and Politics: The Symbiotic Relationship

in ContemporaryDemocracy

The Rise of Political PR

Although now a global phenomenon, political PR have its roots in the US.

Lippmann in the 1920s describe the emergence of a new class of ‘publicists’ and ‘press agents’ standing for US politicians and the media.

However, the PR-ization of politics really took off in the 1950s during the American Presidential elections of 1952 and 1956.

In both elections, the Republican candidate Eisenhower was able to defeat the Democrat candidate Adlai Stevenson because the latter could not adjust to the requirements of televisualized politics.

Eisenhower, on the other hand, was ‘made over’ by his media consultants, who televisualized his style.

The Eisenhower/Stevenson campaigns were the turning point in American politics.

After the 1950s, PR experts specializing in scripting televisual performances, became an ever-expanding feature of American politics – proliferating numerically; honing new tools; and become more influential in the American political scene. This phenomenon will subsequently spread to the rest of the world.

Such experts are also called as spin-doctors.

Why did Political PR Specialist Arise?

Firstly, democracy is grounded on the notion that governance requires legitimacy, i.e., the consent of the governed via voting.

But as McNair (1999) in his Introduction to Political Communication have noted: “consent can be manufactured.”

Ultimately, those who hold (or want) political power in democracies have two contradictory needs:

(a) to prevent the masses to be involved in the process of decision-making on resource allocation; and

(b) create an illusion that the masses are involved as democracy engendered the idea of ‘involvement of the people.’

Part of the solution for generating consent (and the illusion of involvement) on the part of the governed while keeping them from engaging in the process of decision-making is to pursue the strategies of distraction.

And this is where PR comes into the political game.

Secondly, with television becoming increasingly common in America (and subsequently in the rest of the world), it did not take long for PR specialist to realize the power of televised imagery in mobilizing and steering passive audience-citizens to support a given politician at a relatively low cost.

TV can effectively splice together, speedily and seamlessly, images and ideas that are in reality unrelated. And it creates way such linkages in ways defying scrutiny and logic. These can have enormous political impact because of the emotions generated by montage.

Thirdly, the power of ‘presenting’ politicians to the audience lies at the hand of the media. Thus, if journalists dislike a politician, they can have a negative impact on the career of that politician through their agenda-setting role.

Unsurprisingly, politicians wishes to retain as much control over political agendas as possible and this requires reducing the

journalists capacities to do so by employing spin-doctors who deploy their knowledge of media practices to side-step the establishment media and facilitate un-mediated communication voters.As a result, contemporary American politicians have a team of media-specialists whose job is to reach voters or potential supporters through the use of modern communication technologies without the need of mediation by the media establishment, i.e., journalists.

Creatingdistraction

Mobilizing& steering

voters

Control agenda-setting

Political PR Specialists

(spin-doctors)

The PR-izationof politics

Changes to the Political Process

We will focus our attention on the impact of PR-ization of politics on American society as it has moved farthest down this route and is the trendsetter in developing spin techniques.

The major changes which this phenomenon has on American politics are:

1. Spin-doctors are becoming increasingly important in delivering votes rather than the traditional party bosses (who cajoled the grassroots to work on persuading voters to support a political party on election day). This in turn, has changed the power equation within political parties.

2. Political leaders now require different attributes, i.e., need to be credible television performers, be visually appealing, and able to speak in soundbites.

3. Politicians are becoming increasingly concerned with image and sound bites as ways of garnering votes at the expense of debate and persuasion. This only ensure that the platform which the politician is campaigning on is not his/her own but rather by scripted by others, i.e., not conviction and rationality but pageantry.

4. PR-ization have made politics into a very expensive proposition because of the cost of political PR campaigns which has placed an enormous financial burden on political parties. This in turn, could enable parties with financial clout to influence political parties to support their cause at the detriment of the greater good.

5. Since television can reach mass audiences and stir emotions (by presenting audiences with simplified and idealized presentations), it is well suited to deflect voter attention away from rationally considering and discussing public issues by mobilizing support for a person or position; demonizing people; creating pariah groups; building selective outrage, indignation and hostility.

6. PR-ization of politics ensures the ‘politics of avoidance’ because it is governed by on-going opinion polls.

7. The press power within the political process has declined as politicians now reaches voters through either television or marketing techniques such as mass-mailing, advertisement, etc. As a result, print-journalist are increasingly being bypassed.

What is Political PR?

Political PR can be defined as a set of strategies and tactics geared towards putting a positive spin on the politician one works for and a negative spin on the rival.

Spin is a pejorative term signifying a heavily biased portrayal in one's own favor of an event or situation.

PR not only suits politicians but also media organizations faced by pressures to be economically viable. Contemporary media economics has produced a tendency towards downsizing and deskilling in the newsroom, i.e., pressures to employ fewer and cheaper staffers, which resulted in such organizations have to produce news with higher proportions of people not experienced to produce quality news.

However, these staffers are able to process media releases which become a cheap way of producing news. In a sense, the growing pressure to use PR materials is simply a form of journalistic outsourcing.

Thus, the core feature of spinning is understanding how the media works and exploiting one’s knowledge of journalistic practices to provide newsroom with what they need to produce news.

A good spin-doctor knows how to place their spin (stories) by making it easier for journalist to do their jobs by:

a) supplying them with the sorts of stories and images the need to please their bosses;

b) doing background research for time-pressed journalist to supply the information needed to produce stories;

c) leaking stories to journalist who are not experienced enough to know they are being used;

d) leaking stories to experienced journalists with whom one needs to develop a symbiotic relationship, e.g., providing exclusive story in return for future favor;

e) scripting speeches to provide sound-bites and leads to make journalistic task easier;

f) arranging photo opportunities guaranteeing good, cost-effective images which involves staged pseudo-events geared towards time-pressed journalists. Such events are baits designed to attract media attention and once attracted, other information can be supplied; and

g) arranging news conferences to make the collection of quotes as easy as possible. Well-organized conferences supply good sound-bites, good visuals and a good information package.

Apart from ‘manipulating’ journalists, the other ways which spin-doctors use the media include:

a) organizing teams to write letters to the press in order to create an impression of a groundswell of public opinion;

b) organizing teams who monitor and phone radio talk back programs;

c) lobbying key people in the media, e.g., columnists and op-ed writers;

d) providing journalist with access to politicians or ‘off-the-record’ information;

e) running smear campaigns against opponents; and

f) staged questions when politicians meet the ‘public.’

What do Spin-Doctors Want to Achieve?

1. Try and shift the audience/voter perspective about a chosen topic as near as possible to one’s own perspective, i.e., putting one’s own spin on the topic;

2. Distracting audience-voter as much as possible so they do not create ‘steering’ problems for political elites by demanding real participation in the decision-making process. It is also used to distract the audience/voters

from thinking about issues which politicians rather not they think about as it may bring about problems for the politicians/decision makers.

3. try and influence the political behavior of the audience to suit the agenda of the spin-doctor, e.g., getting the audience to support government policies, protesting policies, influencing public opinion, etc.

4. winning support of interest groups or targeted groups and reducing the support for one’s opponent of such groups; and

5. as a weapon to discredit people who disagree with the politician’s agenda.

The Tools of Political PR

Knowledge of journalistic practices as it can enable the spin-doctor to ‘manipulate’ the media to put the spin into the news the way the spin-doctor wants.

Media experts, i.e., know which media is most effective in influencing audiences which increasingly requires the knowledge of narrowcasting.

Conducting research to gauge ‘public opinion’ as well as knowing the contemporary trends that can have an effect on politics. Such research would also cover opposition.

Planning and executing PR campaigns on behalf of politicians.

Conclusion

• As we can observe from today’s lecture, politics have began to move away from traditional debates and discussions to PR.

• Increasingly, the media is playing an important role in media-ting politicians and the voters.

• We are now in an era where politics are essentially second-hand reality to voters who passively consume the images presented in the media.

Read

• Louw (2005) – Chapter 7 ‘Spin-doctoring: The Art of Political Public Relations’

• For those who are interested, you can also watch the movies (a) Wag the Dog &

(b) Primary Colors for a feel on how spin-doctors operate.