The Role of Public Relations Companies in the Wars - Article Example

The Role of Public Relations Companies in the Wars In today’ complex business environment, organizations, countries and s have to care about their public image. No wonder many organizations strive to maintain good public relations with the local, national and even global audience. Business professionals have defined the term public relations in various ways. However, they agree on the fact that public relations is concerned with the cultivation of positive relations for products and organizations, to the key audiences, through the use various communication tools and channels. No doubt, public relations officers and organizations work closely with media houses so as to build a favorable image for their organizations. In most cases, the publicizing of the product or organization is done through print stories and other mass media. The general roles of public relations today include creating awareness and positive image for customers or organizations; monitoring various media channels on behalf of companies for public comments presented therein; building goodwill in the market; and managing crises that pose a threat to an organization or product. While public relations can be employed positively to encourage business growth and for the good of well meaning organizations, in some cases, it is applied to cover up ills committed through propaganda. This paper seeks to analyze how public relations companies played a role in publicizing various entities during the Syria, Libyan and Kuwait wars. The Role of Public Relations Firms during the Kuwait War In August, 1990, the Iraqi military force invaded Kuwait under the command of President Saddam Hussain. For a long time before this invasion, Iraq had been a close ally of the United States of America. During the Kuawait War, Kuwait engaged in a public relations campaign with an aim of convincing the world of the “ills” that Saddam and his blood thirsty troops committed (What Really Happened nd). One public relations firm by the name Hill and Knowlton played a unique role in this respect. The PR firm produced several video clips that cost well beyond 500 million US dollars, and free airtime worth tens of millions of US dollars. The video news releases (VNRs) were presented to viewers by various TV stations across the world. Little was known at this time that the public relations company behind these releases was run by Kuwaitis (What Really Happened nd). Instead of real journalism, innocent viewers were actually presented with well crafted propaganda in the form of news stories and footage. It was only after the war ended that the truth behind the releases came to be revealed. In fact, it was later noted that the more the people watched these releases the less they knew the facts about the war as they were. Even more, the more they watched these releases, the more people supported the Bush administration which locked horns with Iraq over the invasion. One Arthur Rowse sought to view some of the VNRs produced by the PR firm but the latter declined to offer him assistance in a bid to conceal the truth as noted by What Really Happened (nd). During the public relations campaigns, the Wirthlin Group engaged members of the public daily in opinion polls with an aim of helping Hill & Knowlton play to the highest with the people’s emotions. The essence of this was to establish the best themes and slogans that would best attract support for the US military action. One famous testimony that attests to the flawed representation of events during the Kuwait war is that of Nayirah (Fowler & Fedler 1991). The testimony, presented in October 1990 before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, by a girl called Nayirah had it that during the Kuwait War, Iraqi soldiers committed grivious atrocities even to babies. The soldiers, according to the testimony, took babies out of incubators in a Kuwait hospital and left them for the dead. Public relations organizations took advantage of the testimony, at that time appearing to be credible in every sense. Due to this and other emotional testimonies, the US senate and president were convinced of the need to engage in the Gulf War. Later, after the war ended, it was realized that in fact the Nayiorah testimony was in fact unsubstantiated and was questionable in credibility. While it was indeed found that some babies died in hospitals, this was as a result of the fleeing of doctors and nurses from the hospital during military invasions. In 1992, the truth regarding the authenticity of the girl in question and the facts of her testimony came to the light. In fact, her name was Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, daughter of a senior Kuwaiti government official (Fowler & Fedler 1991). Furthermore, it was realized that the testimony that she gave was actually organized on behalf of the Kuwaiti government by Hill and Knowlton. Roles of PR Firms in Syria and Libyan Wars Former Libyan leader, the late Muammar Gadaffi is noted to have sought the help of reputable public relations firms during the civil unrest that punctuated the country’s mostly peaceful history. During the NATO led strikes against Tripoli, various press releases were posted to inform the world of how evil the leader was, and how his regime had propagated atrocities against its people (Marshall 2011). A lot of propaganda was posted to the effect that the leader was preparing to unleash terror oh more of his people. According to Nimmo (2011), reports that the French foreign minister Alaine Juppe once called for the establishment of a public relations campaign to garner support for military intervention in Syria. This is based on the assumption that the country’s government is biased toward propagating crimes against its citizens. Conclusion As came be seen from the discussion presented above, public relations firms have been used to garner support for war or to present concerned parties in good light. In spite of the massive support some organizations receive based on the PR activities that they enjoy, some of the information provided to the public is pure propaganda and cannot face the light of truth. Reference List Fowler G. & Fedler F., 1991, "A Farewell to Truth: Lies, Rumors and Propaganda as the Press Goes to War". Florida Communication Journal 22 (1): 22–34. Marshall A. , 2011, Lies, War, and Empire: NATO’s “Humanitarian Imperialism” in Libya 2011, http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2011/08/26/lies-war-and-empire-nato%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Chumanitarian-imperialism%E2%80%9D-in-libya/ [Accessed 24 November, 2011] Nimmo K., 2011, Public Relations Campaign for Military Intervention in Syria Begins http://www.infowars.com/public-relations-campaign-for-military-intervention-in-syria-begins/ [Accessed 24 November, 2011] What Really Happened, nd, How the public relations industry sold the Gulf War to the US, the mother of all clients http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/incubatorlie.html [Accessed 24 November, 2011] Read More