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Korea and Turkey also used PR firms.” South Africa's attempt to purchase newspapers no longer seems so scandalous. Today's smart dictator would merely create an off- shore holding company with laundered money, and purchase newspapers as an ‘investment’. Our culture is so saturated with debased messages that abuse of media power rarely shows up on our radar. Even government officials get involved with illegal propaganda. In the mid-1980s, the US State Department, with CIA assistance, set up its own PR front and called it the Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD). This was a "private, domestic network designed to influence the Congress, the media and public opinion on behalf of the Administration's policies as related to the Iran-Contra affair." The investigation of OPD was minimal, and soon forgotten.” The media of the 1990s is significantly different from the media of the 1970s and 1980s. During the Gulf War, Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, collected US$11 million from their Kuwait account. One of their tricks was to arrange the testi- mony of "Nayirah" (full name unstated) to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. This 15-year-old sobbed while telling how she witnessed Iraqi soldiers in a Kuwaiti hospital pulling 312 babies from their incubators and putting them on the cold floor, then leaving with the incubators. This story was repeated count- less times before the war started three months later. Even George Bush used it. After the war, it turned out that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, her testimony was coached by Hill & Knowlton and the entire story was false. Since the US Senate supported the war by a mere five-vote margin, this story may have made a difference.* The media's behaviour during the Gulf War had a different quality to it. Their disinterest in anti-war demonstrations around the country was matched only by their fascination over Pentagon video clips from the nose-cones of smart bombs. The latter was understandable, since access to stories from the front was con- trolled by the Pentagon under its new "journalist pool" system. But the former felt strange for many demonstrators. Spectacular society leads us to dismiss our own experiences when it diverges too far from the official story. For example, the sustaining energy of the anti-Gulf War demonstrations in US cities was in part drained by trivialising, limited media coverage. In San Francisco, 100,000 anti-war protesters were just another "opinion" alongside 300 pro-war protesters in the suburbs. The reality of living through such a large demonstration became hard to believe when it was not reinforced in the real public sphere— television.* Twenty years ago, journalism schools were popular, in response to Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film All the President's Men. For a time there was even a television series about storefront lawyers, battling in court for the rights of the lit- tle guy in return for poverty-program wages. Fast forward to the 1990s, and watch a pack of coiffured, vacuous TV ‘journalists’ scratching for the best angle on one of O.J.'s lawyers every day for many months. Herbert I. Schiller, a retired communications professor and author of some 10 books, has squarely placed the blame on the big corporations: "What corporate domination of culture means is that those who get jobs in the varied cultural fields are subject, in different mea- sure, to the commanding logic of corporate business. This logic s on the unquestioned priority of extracting the largest profit possible from the specific cultural product. It should provide as well, unless it interferes with profitability, ideological comfort and support to the prevailing social order. These are the working APRIL - MAY 1997 instructions, hardly necessary to be put into manuals, for the employee cohorts of the cultural industries. Employees, whatever their rank and status, disregard them at the cost of their job securi- ty." Alex Carey, an Australian writer who died in 1988, goes even further. One of Carey's biggest fans is Noam Chomsky, who mentions Carey in interviews and speeches. Carey traces the his- tory of corporate propaganda from the early part of the century, drawing on the American experience but with an emphasis on its lessons for Australia. "The twentieth century," Carey wrote, "has been characterised by three developments of great political impor- tance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."”” If Carey were alive to consider the globalisation issues emerg- ing during the 1990s, he might have added a fourth development: along came the transnationals. But he would be correct to remain focused on corporate propaganda, which is where the struggle is being waged today. SAFEGUARDING OUR 'STAKEHOLDINGS' Our first task is to devalue the word "shareholder" in our vocab- ulary. US corporate law holds that the management of publicly- held companies must act primarily in the economic interest of shareholders. Federal law should return to the spirit of early state laws, perhaps by substituting the word "stakeholder" for "share- holder". Stakeholders include everyone—not only shareholders, but also employees, customers and local communities. If there is any justification at all for granting superpower corporations the rights of a person, it can only be in proportion to their respect and concern for all of the people. In addition, Congress and the Supreme Court should require the President to justify any giveaway of our nation's power to govern its own affairs. Our sovereignty is at risk. This has long been of concern to conservative populists, but recently the labour move- ment and environmental movement have also spoken clearly on this issue. A window of opportunity for some effective and timely organ- ising has abruptly come into view. If we fail to take advantage of it, this window may disappear just as unexpectedly. oo Continued on page 89 NEXUS © 17