This Week: What Is Public Relations?

"Quote" of the Week: Institutional Racism

The Public Relations-ization of U.S. Culture Part I: What Is Public Relations?

Hidden Ideology in the News

Learn More About Racial Disparities

Greetings,

Nygaard Notes will be on vacation next week, August 2 through the 8th. I'll be camping, so no phone calls, no email, no nothin'. Yay! You'll therefore understand if you contact me and do not get a prompt response. Wait until August 9th. Please contact me anyway! I love getting feedback.

A short correction from the last issue. I wrote this: "And, at the root of it all, 12 percent of white people nationally are OFFICIALLY LIVING IN POVERTY. For black people, it's 33 percent. 33 PERCENT! 8.9 percent of white people nationally are officially living in poverty. For black people, it's 41.2 percent. 41.2 PERCENT!"

That second line was a typo. It should've read, "8.9 percent of white people in Minnesota are officially living in poverty. For black people in Minnesota, it's 41.2 percent. 41.2 PERCENT!"

All for now. See you after the vacation!

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week: Institutional Racism

"Institutional Racism is when racial disparities are created and/or exacerbated by key societal institutions such as hospitals, public schools and private corporations. Disparate outcomes are the measure of institutional racism—regardless of whether there is racist intent by the institution or the individuals acting on behalf of the institution. Racial profiling, predatory lending, and disparities in health treatment are examples of institutional racism."

That's from page 33 of the Minnesota Legislative report card on Racial Equity, 2007 version. Find it here. They draw this idea from the Applied Research Center, whose work I highly respect.

The Public Relations-ization of U.S. Culture Part I: What Is Public Relations?

Ed Note: If you're really into this whole business of Public Relations, Propaganda, Advertising, and the brainwashing involved (like I am), you may want to look at a couple of pieces that I published in the distant past that are closely related to this one. In Nygaard Notes #88 (Sep 29, 2000) you'll find the article: "Children = Markets." In issue #315 (Dec 23 2005) there are two related articles: "How Propaganda Works: Three Key Concepts" and "How Propaganda Works: ‘Branding'

In order to understand Propaganda, we need to understand Public Relations, and in order to understand Public Relations we need to understand a little bit about some things that are not Public Relations, and those things include Advertising, Marketing, and Branding.

Advertising, in simplest terms, is "the action of calling something to the attention of the public, especially by paid announcements." That's the Merriam Webster definition. Advertising is typically bought and paid for, and the buyer knows exactly what it is and what will happen with it. And everyone knows what it is and what it is trying to do. Well, not everyone, or it wouldn't work. But almost everyone.

Branding is more than that. Advertising writer Tig Tillinghast says that "branding is an association, created in the mind of a potential buyer, between a particular make of product and a desired characteristic." Sociologist and branding expert Dannielle Blumenthal says it even more simply: "Branding is an image-building activity." She then makes a crucial point, saying that "Reputation... is not brand. Brand is image, while reputation is reality." She makes it sound a little more clear-cut than it is. It is not necessarily the case, as she implies, that image is unrelated to reality. But her point here is that reputations must be earned, while images can be created. Branding, then, can lead people to make an association between a product and its actual reputation, or between a product and a "desired characteristic" that has been created through the branding process. Truth or, as Blumenthal says, "reality," really has nothing to do with it, as far as the branding process is concerned.

Advertising is used in relation to branding, or as a means to establish or "defend" a brand (in the jargon of the trade), but advertising is not branding.

When an enterprise has something to sell, it has to have some way to connect that item to the people it hopes will buy it. The process that enterprises use to connect buyers and sellers is what is called Marketing. Both Advertising and Branding are tools used in that process, specifically in the part of the process known as promotion; Marketing also includes the distribution and the actual selling of a product or service. The business writer Oliver Wu, speaking to a business audience, says that "Everything that affects the customers' perception of you is marketing." And here is where we enter the realm of Public Relations.

While both Advertising and Branding are concerned with promoting specific things that companies make or do, Public Relations operates at a deeper level. Edward L. Bernays, on page 83 of his book "Propaganda," says that "Business realizes that its relationship to the public is not confined to the manufacture and sale of a given product, but includes at the same time the selling of itself and of all those things for which it stands in the public mind." [Emphasis added.]

Public Relations thus attempts to do exactly what the name implies: To affect the relationship that the public has with the entire enterprise. The goal of Public Relations is to bring the public to have a positive attitude toward the enterprise, so that the public will be more accepting of whatever it may be that the enterprise decides to do. In an era when mega-corporations operate worldwide in multiple realms, and when Superpowers wield their power in multiple realms, Public Relations is more important than ever.

In summary, Marketing is all about getting goods and services to buyers. Advertising is telling the public about one's goods and services. Branding is creating a positive association in the public mind about one's goods and services. Public relations is getting the public to feel good about whatever goods and services one wants to sell. In a country with a democratic structure that wishes to maintain an Empire, the public will be asked to "buy" all kinds of things. In order to create an environment in which the public will consent to buy the Imperial products, great efforts will be made on the part of the Empire to "sell itself and all those things for which it stands in the public mind."

Next week, in Part II, I talk about Vietnam, Iraq, Ronald Reagan, and military PR.

Hidden Ideology in the News

I often talk about how there are hidden premises that shape how information is presented to us in the daily flow of news. They're not always very well-hidden, and it's refreshing when a major news organization lays out a controversial premise for all to see.

There are not many news organizations more major than the New York Times, so I wanted to draw attention to a couple of revealing sentences that appeared recently on consecutive days, on different subjects.

Everybody Wants to Privatize!

The first one was a story about Kosovo, which current mythology holds is the previous U.S. exercise in "nation-building" or, sometimes, "peace-building." The current one being Afghanistan. (No, seriously!)

Anyhow, the prime minister of the would-be independent nation of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, was in Washington last week when the International Court of Justice was to rule on whether the 2008 declaration of independence by Kosovo was valid. (They ruled that it was, apparently.)

The article, a long one, was stuck on page 12, and one had to read to the 11th paragraph to find this:

"Much like any other leader of a country seeking to rebuild after war, he talked about highway construction and privatization of state utilities and luring international investors."

I agree with the highway construction idea, but is it true that "any other leader" would talk about "privatization of state utilities"? Obviously not, and one could list a number of leaders who are currently doing the opposite. (Not every leader is seeking to "lure international investors," either.) However, the ideology of "free market capitalism" and the privatization that goes with it is strongly promoted by Washington, which apparently is enough for the Times to elevate it to the status of Universally Accepted Idea.

Forget Democracy, The General is Our "Focal Point"

The next day the Times had a piece on General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the head of the Pakistani military. Kayani "has been a focal point for the Obama administration" and was scheduled to retire this fall. He's not retiring after all, but has been re-appointed to another three-year term. "The United States," says the Times, "pays the Pakistani military an estimated $1 billion a year." That's a focal point, all right!

Anyhow, the telltale ideology revealed in this page-4 piece occurs in the ninth paragraph, which reads like this:

"Although a civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari is in power and the Americans have tried to support it, General Kayani makes all the vital strategic decisions."

I don't know what they mean by "in power," but most of us would consider the making of "all the vital strategic decisions" to be the real power in a country. Wouldn't we? Not the Times, though.

P.S. on Afghanistan: Three days later the Times ran a story—on Page One this time—on the recent release of secret U.S. military documents that "suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."

The head of that "spy service" for much of the time the alleged treachery was going on? None other than our "focal point," General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani.

Your tax dollars at work.

Learn More About Racial Disparities

Last week I said that I might publish a little list of resources for further reading on racial discrepancies in next week's edition. It's next week already, so here it is:

ON UNEMPLOYMENT

I relied heavily in #458 upon a report called "Uneven Pain—Unemployment by Metropolitan Area and Race" by Algernon Austin of the Economic Policy Institute. It's only 11 pages long, but crammed with important stuff. Find it online here.

ON INCARCERATION

There is so much research here that I hardly know what to highlight. I mostly cited an 81-page paper published November 23rd, 2009 called "What Explains Persistent Racial Disproportionality in Minnesota's Prison and Jail Populations?" by Richard S. Frase at the University of Minnesota Law School. Go online and click on "One-Click Download"

A piece that just came out—actually after I published my piece, so I didn't cite it—is an article by Bill Quigley, Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. It's called "Fourteen Examples of Racism in the Criminal Justice System." It can be found all over the web, but the easiest-to-read version is at the Huffington Post. (While you're at it, check out his organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is another crucial, long-term project for social justice.)

ON WEALTH

I cited a little four-page paper called "The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold" from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (that's a catchy name, isn't it!) at Brandeis University. Online here.

The amazing group United for A Fair Economy should be checked out, and particularly their program called "The Racial Wealth Divide." Find it here.

I don't really know too much about The Insight Center for Community Economic Development, but their Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative is worth a look. Especially their new paper called "Social Security at 75: Building Economic Security, Narrowing the Racial Wealth Divide."

ON HEALTH

Again, there is a lot here, but I'll offer just a couple.

The Minnesota Department of Health in 2008 published "Report I: Overview and History" as part of Minnesota's Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative (EHDI) 30 pages, available online.

A two-page summary of The Commonwealth Fund's study "Racial Disparities in Access to LongTerm Care: The Illusive Pursuit of Equity" is available here.

The Kaiser Family Foundation's 2-page chart ""Key Health and Health Care Indicators by Race/Ethnicity and State" is found here.

ON EDUCATION

I relied last week on the work of the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership. Specifically, check out their paper "Minnesota Coalition for Education Equity Comments on Race to the Top Funds."

And, also from MMEP, see their "2009 State of Students of Color and American Indian Students Report." 25 pages long, it can be found here.

Finally, I found not only statistics, but a very clear analysis at the website of the Organizing Apprenticeship Project, specifically, I would look at their "4th Annual MN Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity." Elsewhere in this issue I quote from their 2007 Report Card. If you go to page 33 you'll be richly rewarded.