Throughout the post-communist transition period, the relationship between media and politics has been intensely complex and rife with contradiction.

Today’s Balkan press functions more as an extension of politics than a representation of public opinion, and a sizeable portion of the media continues to be controlled by powerful political groups. Observations shared by a number of authors (such as Karol Jakubovicz, Mihai Coman, Colin Sparks and Tomasz Goban-Klas) characterizing the media situation in post-communist societies also apply to the Balkan region: The press became pluralistic, but not independent. Free, but still not independent.

The shift from the “Soviet Media Model” to the “Social Responsibility Model” seems to have been more difficult than anticipated. Habits inherited from the time of communism have politicians and political parties constantly trying to influence the media, as the conviction remains strong that whoever controls the information holds the power. The political classes, which as a rule are obsessed with maintaining power, “consider the media to be not a major, but the main instrument for politics” (Goban-Klas, 1997). Goban-Klas also explain that, “This vision of the media is one-dimensional, over-politicized and simplified, believing in a missionary role for the journalists and an ideological press”.

If asked to provide two key words to describe the fundamental problems faced by the media in the Balkans today, these words would undoubtedly be “re-politicization” and “clientelism.” In fact, these terms could be seen as two sides of the same coin.

By following the dialectics of the relationship between the media and politics, it can be affirmed that throughout the decades of post-communist transition, the media has been influenced and shaped by politics more than politics have been influenced and shaped by the media.

It is an inescapable fact that a conflict-ridden and highly politicized society (which is still the case with societies in the Balkans) infects the media.  Politicized societies also use media outlets as an important tool in waging conflicts – destroying their independence, impartiality and professionalism in the process. For some, it is even difficult to imagine a media system completely devoid of partisanship.

This partisanship is above all a reflection of the nature of politics, characterized by conflict rather than dialogue. It also reveals the fact that Balkan societies are more political than informational, and more political than civil.

The most common examples of political clientelism are found in public broadcasting, which in Albania appear from FYR Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro. These broadcasters continue to be under the control of the central governments, which use and abuse them during and beyond electoral campaigns. Although it would be far-fetched to compare today’s public broadcasters to the bastions of propaganda they were during the period of new authoritarianism, in most cases the so-called public television channels still remain “red carpet” stations, as they feature full of coverage of government protocol and information. These public channels resemble something more akin to “Ministries of Propaganda.”

Clientelism in the media is a complex phenomenon closely connected to the context of social and political development in the region. Politics in the Balkans are transformed into tele-politics. Generally speaking, political and public debates have moved from the mouths of protestors to the scenes of television debates, which is certainly a positive development. Yet it seems the media has paid a price for this change.

Tele-politics can be seen as one aspect of the mediatization of politics, an entirely normal development. But it seems that instead of the mediatization of politics, tele-politics exhibit the political clientelization of the media. As the focus shifts from the public to politics, the political system is served before the public. What one notices in Albania, Kosovo and FYR Macedonia is the use, misuse and abuse of the media by politicians.

Albanian analyst Fatos Lubonja uses the term “media regime” to describe the situation. According to Lubonja, “if in the so-called police or military regimes, the army or the secret service are used to ensure the regime holds on to power, in our case the media is used.” Perhaps the most appropriate term in this case is “media-ocracy.” While in theory, issues pertaining to the media are presented as issues of democracy, in reality they become a matter of power. As Sandra B. Hrvatin and Brankica Petkovic write, “today it seems impossible to remain in power without the support of the media.”

Samuel Huntington spoke about the dangers threatening democracy, suggesting that media outlets – mechanisms of democracy – may become mechanisms working “to reduce or destroy democracy.”

There exists another tendency, which, at first glance, seems to reflect a certain unrestrained independence. In some cases journalists can write and criticize as much as they like, however there is no reaction, no outcry, no notable change. This phenomenon has been observed in Albania, where the erstwhile nervous reaction to criticism is now replaced by a total indifference. Several important investigative stories have been published in Tirana’s newspapers over the last few years, but both the authorities and the judicial system failed to react or initiate the inquiries these stories demand. Journalists may have the right to speak, but perhaps the “right” people fail to listen. And sadly, indifference to criticism leads to the devaluation of the free word.

Excerpt from the article “Balkan Media: Lost in Transition?” published in Akt magazine, Nr.7, 2011.

The largest supplier of automotive technology, the Robert Bosch Group, recently celebrated its 125^th anniversary.

Rather than simply publishing a history of the company, the corporate communications department opted for a spectacular display of public relations, creating a “present day” Bosch book, featuring a kaleidoscopic 125 photographs shot at 125 different locations throughout the world at the same exact instant.

Bosch printed 450,000 copies of the photo book in 19 languages, delivered to 62 countries and 653 Bosch locations. Lucky Bosch employees – 285,000 of them – received the book as a gift and an additional 165,000 copies were distributed among customers and business partners.

Bosch’s Head of Corporate Communications, Uta-Micaela Dürig, and her project manager Anke Dewitz-Grube provide details about the planning and implementation in the special interest journal Kommunikationsmanager, writing, “Preparatory work took more than two years. Approximately 400 suggestions of topics from 40 countries and 800 portfolios of international photo journalists were checked. At the end, more than 1,000 people were involved.” These figures alone serve as an exceptional example of what globalization means and how worldwide corporate communications functions today. Bosch’s book project is, without doubt, a masterpiece of logistics and publicity. The feat of ensuring that 125 photographers shoot photos at precisely the same moment commands great respect in itself, as anyone who’s tried coordinating more than 10 individuals from different cultures and languages already knows.

*For the sake of transparency, it must be noted that as a young man, Stephan Russ-Mohl spent five years working for the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart. Ms. Dürig, Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Communications at Bosch, is his former student from the FU Berlin.

Published in Die Furche, Nr. 43/2011

The attacks in Oslo last month once again brought up the issue of framing in the media. As it turns out, not only do media outlets set the agenda for discussion in society, they also dictate how people should feel about the subjects in question.

Ironically, anti-Islam extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s case emphasized the tendency of Western media to use prejudiced language when it comes to covering politically motivated violence committed by Muslims. Breivik’s attack was widely dubbed an “act of terror” in the mainstream media… that is, until Breivik himself was identified. As authors of the blog Foreign Policy Watch Matt Eckel and Jeb Koogler describe, the Western press responded by “largely avoiding the term ‘terrorist’ when speaking of the blond, blue-eyed, Christian attacker…” It seems that even those members of the media who did not clearly state that the attacker had connection to the Islamic extremists had secretly assumed this is exactly what the investigation would reveal.

Hours before the Norwegian authorities released any official information about the executor of the horrendous act, many media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal and other sizable news sources published assumption-based stories about the terrorists’ alleged connection to Al-Qaeda. American political satirist Stephan Colbert found the news behavior hilarious enough to feature on one of his shows, saying that the American media uncovered the terrorist long before the Norwegian government, describing Breivik’s action as “Muslish” and “Islam-esque”. He even offers a general headline for the news: “Bad thing happens someplace. Muslims involved.” Funny or not, the situation emphasized a legitimate frustration among Muslim communities with regard to the media’s coverage of the tragedy.

Identification of the actual criminal, however, seems to have brought little comfort to Muslims. From then on, as Eckle and Koogler observe, Breivik is called a “fundamentalist” or an “extremist”, but not a terrorist – a label reserved for Islamic assailants. Glenn Greenwald, an American columnist, writes that even when Breivik was identified to be an anti-Muslim Christian fundamentalist, the media used the word “terrorism” only to describe that he was “mimicking Al-Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.”

One could argue, of course, that the wording doesn’t matter as long as the truth is released. Missouri School of Journalism researchers Kim and Cameron (2011)  prove the opposite in a recent study. As part of an experiment, news stories about a fictitious company were prepared. The stories were framed in two manners – anger-inducing (e.g. focusing on company’s intentional wrongdoing, which results in a battery explosion) and sadness-inducing (e.g. focusing on the victims of battery explosion). The content of the two articles is identical except for the headline and the second paragraph. Both versions of the news were distributed randomly among participants, who were then asked to evaluate their feelings towards the company after having read the news.

The chief finding indicated that individual responses to a crisis are largely affected by the framing of the news. Those, who were exposed to anger-inducing news had more negative attitudes toward the subject than those who read the same news in a sadness-inducing frame. Though the research was focused on audience responses to the framing of corporate crises, the findings may also be applied to terror coverage.

The results of Kimberly Powell’s (2011) research on media coverage of terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11 suggest that the act of terror is mostly used to describe  “Muslims/Arabs/Islam working together in organized terrorist cells against a ‘Christian America,’ while domestic terrorism is cast as a minor threat that occurs in isolated incidents by troubled individuals.”

Such framing is most likely to induce anger not only among the non-Muslim Westerners, who naturally fear a loss of  peace and well-being, but also among Muslims, who are forced to take a defensive position against the generalizing blame placed upon them by the Western media. Smoother coverage of domestic terror, on the other hand, puts two otherwise equal crimes on different levels of the brutality scale. It’s no wonder that misunderstanding and confrontation between Islam and the West continue to grow.

While wording in the media might explain Muslims’ frustration with the media and Christians’ fear of Islam to a degree, it remains unclear what is behind such skewed coverage in the first place. Apparently, it is time for media editors and journalism educators to think about introducing a new aspect of fair coverage – namely fair framing.

Hyo J. Kim, Glen T. Cameron (2011): Emotions Matter in Crisis: The Role of Anger and Sadness in the Publics‘ Response to Crisis News Framing and Corporate Crisis Response. Communication Research, XX(X), 1-30.

Kimberly A. Powell (2011): Framing Islam: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of Terrorism since 9/11. Communication Studies, Issue 1, Vol. 62.

How many are dead? Were bombs really dropped? Is Al Qaeda involved? As in other wars, misinformation dominates the news.

So how many people have been killed in Libya?  One thousand, 2,000 … 10,000? And how many cities have fallen to the rebels? Two, three, 10?  The Libyan crisis is thick with sensational and shocking news – potentially untrustworthy news.  We were all horrified to learn that Gheddafi may have ordered his air force to bomb the crowd, a scenario that the bishop of Tunis has not confirmed.

Telephone communications in Libya are far from ideal and online communication is fragmented, yet each new day brings dramatic videos, both pro and anti-regime.  We’ve seen videos of mass graves, or at least things appearing to be mass graves.  They were, instead, sixteen holes in the ground just like those that are dug in every cemetery.  Tripoli’s television broadcast images of thousands of Libyans celebrating in the square to show that the Colonel is loved and still very much in power.  But who’s lying? Alas, there’s no point asking – they are all lying.  In times of crisis, videos of dead bodies and destruction are often later revealed to be archived images of events that took place years ago, or in other countries. A few simple zoom tricks can make dozens of protesters in a square look like a sea of people.

Do you remember the image of the black cormorant from the first Gulf War, a symbol of the ruthlessness of Saddam who – they said at the time – had opened the oil pipelines?  The image was a fake.  And the massacre in Timisoara, Romania during the revolt against Ceausescu?  It never happened. The most recent war in Iraq saw the media spread an enormous quantity of falsehoods, which no one in real-time recognized as false. Or almost no one.  The few skeptical voices were drowned by the impetus of breaking news and overwhelming excitement, the need to shock or stun, sweep away or repress, thrill or frighten.  What counts is the immediate effect.  Modern wars are waged and won in the media.

During every conflict, every civil war, the same old movie is played out, with the same victim every time – truth.   Journalists become vehicles for propaganda, in a vortex that in an era of global information is of dizzying proportions. All-news TV channels, Internet sites and live radio programs all go for sensationalism, feeding an insatiable hunger for news.  No one verifies facts anymore, and every newsroom worries only about beating the competition, even if only by mere seconds.  And if later the news turns out to be fake or plagiarized?  Nevermind, because soon enough it will be forgotten or pushed aside by another story, which may also be false. Let’s take the 10,000 killed in Libya last week.  And who spread this fact around? A Libyan member of the International Criminal Court – an apparently authoritative source.  Interestingly enough only a few moments earlier the same Court declared that it could not investigate war crimes due to a lack of reliable information.  And yet few media organizations caught the contradiction, and instead of reporting the news with caution and skepticism they blasted it about freely, involuntarily helping the rebels, who count on international indignation to help bring down the regime, as happened in Egypt and Tunisia.

And Gheddafi?  He’s lying, too.  He denies the massacres, invents unlikely enemies and attempts to unload the blame on Al Qaeda, which he even accuses of  “putting drugs in the food of the people to induce them to rebel.” He claims to control cities where, actually, as reported by Western journalists, the crowd marches under the flag of the former king.  The Colonel, like every dictator in power for too long and facing massive trouble, loses his perception of reality.   He does not realize that his citizens no longer believe the official truths, precisely because they are by nature untruthful and manipulative.  And he sinks deeper into the ridiculous.  He reminds us of Saddam Hussein during the last days of his regime.  The Iraqi leader continued to proclaim an imminent, glorious victory over the American invaders until the very end. He abandoned the presidential palaces, and began making sudden appearances on the street in a farce of sorts, just as Gheddafi did when he appeared in a van holding an umbrella, an image that was meant to be reassuring but instead proved surreal.  Or like the speech Gheddafi delivered to the crowd days ago…by phone.  Even he lost the connection.

These behaviors are disastrous for his public image, foreshadowing demise. Unless, of course, the rebel propaganda has been extraordinarily efficient.  Yet the plain truth is that no one really knows what is happening in Libya.

To the reader, who rightly wishes to know and tries to understand, we can offer only this advice: be skeptical, be skeptical, be skeptical – knowing that, in these precarious situations, it is almost impossible to distinguish facts from propaganda.

Published in Il Giornale, February 25, 2011 by Marcello Foa. For original Italian version, see here.

Translated by Ann Wise

Marcello Foa explains the political context of recent events in North Africa.

To understand what is happening in Tripoli, we must first consider the complete strategic picture.  We’re not looking at spontaneous uprisings, but rather actions encouraged in an effort to replicate in North Africa what took place in the former Soviet Union at the end of the 80’s. At that time the insurgence also began in a small country – Lithuania – and initially no one would have imagined the fire would spread to neighboring countries. The notion that the Soviet Union could implode was  unfathomable.  The Maghreb is not the Soviet Union and there are no superstructures to blow out,  however the parallels are apparent.  Tunisia is the smallest country in the region and it served as a fuse igniting others.  On its heels the Mubarak regime fell, Libya sank into turmoil and tomorrow it could be Teheran, perhaps even Algeria, Morocco and Syria will follow.  What did the regimes of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have in common? The fact that their leaders were authoritarian, old at this point, discredited, and planning to hand power over to their children or other inept henchmen.

It’s no mystery that the uprisings were amply encouraged – and in many ways arranged – by the U.S. government.  Washington had considered the explosion of popular malcontent inevitable for some time, and fearing that Islamic extremists or radical groups might guide the revolt, proceeded with what appears to be a controlled explosion, at least in Egypt and Tunisia.  Why do I say controlled? Because before making things difficult for Ben Ali and Mubarak, the Obama Administration reinforced its already solid relationship with the military in these countries, which, in fact, never lost control of the situation and took responsibility for the revolution.  Let’s not forget that today it is the generals who are in charge in Cairo and Tunis, and they’ll continue exert a decisive influence in the future as well.  In a sense Washington has won twice. It secured the loyalty of these two countries for many years to come, while simultaneously scoring greatly in terms of public image, showing the whole world that America is on the side of the people and of democracy, even with regard to regimes that were seen as friends mere days ago.

The dynamics in Libya differ as Gadhafi was not a U.S. ally and because the NGOs linked to the U.S. government were unable to establish contacts and ties with the civil society in Libya; in other words, they weren’t able to fertilize the soil on which to grow the uprising.  It burst forth nevertheless, by way of contagion and feeding of not the army’s loyalty, but its malcontent.  As is the case in all revolutions, the army decides the outcome of popular revolt.  In these hours Gadhafi is paying for mistakes made in the past.  As Domenico Quirico pointed out in La Stampa, the Colonel, old coup leader that he is, never trusted the generals and proceeded to purge them a number of times.  The men in uniform feared him for 42 years, and never exactly came to love him.  As a result, now many are either taking flight or passing over to the side of the rebels, particularly in towns far from Tripoli.  Gadhafi can only count on the private militias and a small component of the army.  This is the reason for a move that is otherwise hard to explain: the recruitment of hundreds or maybe thousands of African militants.

The consequences are inevitable: blood, blood and more blood.  The impression is that Gadhafi in the end will be forced to flee.  The ridiculous image of the Rais in a car with an umbrella brings back images of Saddam Hussein as he was hunted down by the Americans during the fall of Baghdad.  In any case the situation could prove to be very embarrassing for Italy.  Should the regime fall, Libya will once again be the port of departure for tens of thousands of immigrants heading toward Italy’s coasts.  If the regime holds, it would be embarrassing to maintain relations with a leader who has blood on his hands.  And in both cases million dollar contracts that our companies have with Libya will totter.  ENI above all.  Remember, a good portion of our energy supply comes from North Africa.  There is a risk that the “controlled’ explosion could be, in any case, devastating for the commercial interests of our country.

Original posting can be found in Italian on Marcello Foa’s blog or on EJO’s Italian site.

In spite of a decidedly uncertain media landscape, talk radio  – conservative talk radio in particular  – maintains a high level of success in the U.S.

Often the soundtrack to highway traffic jams, petulance-pushing talk radio programs continue to appeal to millions of listeners stranded in cars. Gridlocked drivers call on personalities like Rush Limbaugh and ever-honorable cultural humorist Dr. Laura Schlessinger to pass the time, to gather information about moonie liberals and global warming hoaxes, or to seek morally responsible dating advice.

Offering a level of interactivity by inviting callers to spar on-air,  successful radio shows require not only provocative hosts, but provocative callers.

While debating the quality or veracity of select political programming is surely disheartening, being able to make the distinction between informed, news-oriented dialogue and contrived, real-ish entertainment remains critical. With that in mind, consider a service offered by Premier On Call (see here for cached version of mysterious vanishing website). Premier On Call auditions actors and matches them with talk shows in need of particular types of callers. Actors are then given scripts and asked to sign confidentiality agreements.

As reported by Liel Leibovitz of Tablet Magazine:

Premiere On Call was a service offered by Premiere Radio Networks, the largest syndication company in the United States and a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, the entertainment and advertising giant. Premiere syndicates some of the more sterling names in radio, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.

‘Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service,’ read the service’s website, which disappeared as this story was being reported…’We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get you the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners.’

One might deduce, then, that perhaps a few novel on-air gems could be less than authentic.

Of course talk radio is a business, and thus motivated by revenue. The equation is simple: conflict boosts ratings and ratings equal money. Self-adulating sourheads - dreaded by business travelers and window-seat passengers alike - are somehow valued pillars of authoritry on the radio.

Conservative talk shows may thrive in the U.S., but then again, so does professional wrestling. A combative combination of choreography and improvisation may look like the real thing (kind of), but how long can a person really be asked to disregard the physical realities of a piledriver?

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Polish journalists enjoy their jobs, but at the same time note a continual professional deterioration, according to the Institute of Media Monitoring’s (IMM)  “Journalists 2010” report.

The report found that more than three-quarters of Polish journalists surveyed were satisfied with their profession, with 59% considering it a vocation as well as a passion. Yet a huge gap exists between the current state of affairs and what is desired in the workplace.

Of more than 500 survey respondents, 64% said the driving force behind their journalistic work could be attributed to the expectations of employers. On the other hand,  journalists reported feeling as though their work should instead be motivated by conscience (59%) and codes of ethics (24%).

The rise of the Internet, declining professional standards and media tabloidization were indicated in the disconnect between journalistic work and expectations. Almost half of the respondents cited the presence of many non-professionals in the journalistic field as a major industry problem. Among other significant concerns, politicization of the profession (46%), salary reductions (39%) and manipulations (36%) were mentioned. Almost all journalists participating in the survey reported experiencing some variety of pressure or manipulation, but  only 36% found this to be a significant concern or industry problem.

The IMM survey goes on to examine the relationship between journalists and public relations workers. One of the most interesting discoveries is that almost every second journalist considered becoming a PR professional at some point in his or her career. The lure of higher incomes in the PR arena seems to be of significnace. Assessing the cooperation between journalists and PR professionals, most media workers complained about PR material having low factual values and being irrelevant or unsuitable for the profiles of certain media outlets.

For more on the IMM report in Polish, see here.

But with the business of burying information booming, how accurate can this be? In a recent NPR story, Peter O’Dowd discusses digital marketing and tampering with the supposedly “free” flow of information. “Unseen battles are waged every day to protect and destroy brands and reputations,” says O’Dowd, who cites Elixir Interactive, a company with an image problem specializing in search optimization, and controversial Congressional candidate Ben Quayle in his examination of brand management.

There’s colossal cash to be had in the stifling of search results – according to digital media research firm eMarketer, search optimization and suppression is a $2 billion industry. The very business of search optimization stirs provocative questions about free speech in the digital era.

Perhaps there’s truth to the fact that establishing a reputation on the Internet is inextricably linked to being able to pay for one, or at least being able to pay to have one polished and restored when appropriate. Take BP and Toyota for example: both mega comapanies tossed startling amounts of money at “managing” more than a few wee image issues (see Marcello Foa’s analysis of BP’s communication campaign).

The game’s not a fair one, but then again, was it ever?

See NPR for more.

Image is everything in the communication era, especially for politicians.

Everyone knows this. One small blunder can ruin a reputation. It is therefore only to be expected that politicians tend to protect their images down to minute details. Yet sometimes they can take things a bit too far, like Nicolas Sarkozy, whose recalcitrance over communication is often over the top. When he visits factories, for example. Last year reporters discovered that the workers of the Faurecia factory at Caligny were selected based on height and that, many of them being too tall, shorter workers were bussed in from other nearby factories. The Eliseo understandably denied the claim, yet the workers confirmed it.

It now seems that Sarkozy is about to do it again.

On the 22nd of June 2011, he is scheduled to inaugurate the new department of the Turbomeca factory in the Pyrenees. A big event in these hard times; something to celebrate in style.

Once again, a trick lies in wait. For several days now officials from the Eliseo have been on site, but it seems they’re present for more than checking safety measures. Like what went down last year at Caligny, it is said they’re using aesthetic criteria to select personnel, casting people as if for a soap opera. A director who stands 1.85 meters tall appears to have been rejected based on his height. Considering his high position in the factory’s hierarchy, he was readmitted, taking a few precautionary measures. Rather than accompany the president during the visit, it seems he’ll only make an appearance to illustrate the technical characteristics of a machine, with Sarko standing on a platform raised by fifteen providential centimetres. The crafty construction will allow the men to look the same height.

As before, there have been a number of denials from official sources, though eye-witnesses cited in local newspapers confirmed the story.

No one residing in the centre of power admits to spin doctoring, yet the truth manages to find its way out eventually. Ronald Reagan, for example, was told to wave from the top of airplane steps whenever he landed in a foreign capital. The airports were nearly deserted for obvious safety reasons, but television viewers were given the impression the president was waving to a cheering crowd. Barack Obama, a genius of communication, refuses to speak in public if he can’t read from a teleprompter. Former French president François Mitterrand had his photograph included in the opening credits of Antenne 2’s eight o’clock news programme. Viewers weren’t consciously aware but their eyes registered the image, subliminally influencing psyches. This particular technique is now banned.

Occasionally governments cooperate, managing to deceive public opinion with ease. After the war in Iraq, the then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travelled to Paris to seal newfound affinity between the two countries after months of polemic. She took part in a meeting with the students of the Sorbonne which proceeded swimmingly under the banner of harmony. A few weeks later it came to light that the students had been carefully selected and that all the questions had been agreed on in advance.
Sarkozy has a terrible relationship with the press. He is allergic to criticism and can be vindictive. In 2006 he asked for and was given the head of the editor of Paris Match, who was guilty of publishing a scoop (which turned out to be true) regarding the split from his second wife Cécilia. He recently demanded – and once again obtained – the resignation of two journalists from the Journal du Dimanche, guilty of having published a blog with indiscretions about Carli Bruni’s  recent affair of the heart. A journalist from Rue89.fr risks five years in prison for publishing an outtake on a website in which the president scolds a technician who refused to greet him.

These are troubling indications, and the French press seems to be intimidated. Has political power overstepped the limit?

In the Gulf of Mexico BP is desperately trying to stop the oil leak, but that’s not the only front it’s fighting on.

The other is that of the media, with interesting and, in many ways, disturbing implications. For starters, the fears of those who believe that American democracy is overly influenced by lobbies have been confirmed. Let’s suppose the accident had occurred off the coast of any other country. What would have happened? Public interests would have prevailed over those of the company and the army or civil protection of said country would have taken over operations to plug the leak. Instead, BP demanded permission to do everything independently. And the White House allowed them to do so, relinquishing control to the oil lobby which preferred to keep a hand on the situation for obvious reasons. A great deal of time has been wasted with no effective solutions discovered. Perhaps in 10 days responsibility will finally be handed over to the army. Yet too little, too late.

Here, the second implication comes into play. Having to control the emergency, BP designed a communication campaign aimed at dissimulating reality and limiting damage to its reputation.

How? First, by manipulating the numbers. We now know that many more barrels of crude oil have leaked into the sea than BP originally admitted to and that the multinational also tried to conceal other highly sensitive information.  For example, top management declared that the slick was on the surface of the sea only, while in practice the solvents used caused huge accumulations of oil below the surface. The resultant damage is enormous. But the world only became aware when Jacques Cousteau’s son dove down and filmed what was happening. Despite the evidence, British Petroleum continues to deny this.

BP then applied the “Google washing” technique which influences the ranking of particular pages that turn up in a search. So, if you entered the words “oil and leak” in Google, the first links in the search results were “find out how BP is helping.” The British company also bought advertising space, again on Google, to reinforce the effect.

The Facebook population denounced this manoeuvre, and the widespread agreement it received partly neutralised it, but not completely. Even although the general opinion remains critical, BP still managed to limit the damage to its image, working in other directions.

For example, BP recruited several PR companies and hired Anne Womock-Kolton, Dick Cheney’s spin doctor, in tandem with the production of dozens of television commercials in which the number one of the company – Tony Hayward – demonstrates contrition and penitence. It’s a pity, mind you, that during a press conference he quipped, “Since the accident I haven’t had a life. I’d like my life back,” which sparked a wave of indignation considering the environmental damages and the people whose lives have, in fact, been ruined but who do not enjoy his financial resources. BP also recruited personalities of international renown such as Romano Prodi (who in truth was already a consultant to the company and denies that he received an assignment ad hoc), Jos Bolten, former Chief of Staff to George W. Bush, and Peter Sutherland, former chairman of BP and current chairman of Goldman Sachs.

BP spent a great deal on stopping the leak, but also several million on fighting the war of information, using ethically debatable techniques.