Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close --Episode 25

 

                                         Democracy For Hire 

   Washington D.C.'s major growth industry consists of for-profit public-relations firms and business-sponsored policy institutes engaged in producing facts, opinion pieces, expert analyses, opinion polls, and direct-mail and telephone solicitation to create "citizen" advocacy and public-image-building campaigns on demand for corporate clients. William Greider calls it "democracy for hire." Burson Marsteller---the world's largest public relations firm, with net 1992 billings of $204 million---worked for Exxon during the Exxon Valdez oil spill and for Union Carbide during the Bhopal disaster. The top fifty public-relations firms billed over $1.7 billion in 1991.
   In the United States, the 170,000 public-relations employees engaged in manipulating news, public opinion, and public policy to serve the interests of paying clients now outnumber actual news reporters by about 40,000 ---and the gap is growing. These firms will organize citizen letter-writer campaigns, provide paid operatives posing as "housewives" to present corporate views in public meetings, and place favorable news items and op-ed pieces in the press. A 1990 study found that almost 40 percent of the news content in a typical U.S. newspaper originates from public-relations press releases, story memos, and suggestions. According to the 
Columbia Journalism Review, more than half of The Wall Street Journal's news stories are based solely on press releases. The distinction between advertising space and news space grows less distinct with each passing day. 

While the Republicans have long been known as the party of 
money, the Democratic Party was historically the party of the people, with strong representation of working-class and minority interests. The Democrats once depended heavily on their strong grassroots political organization ---on people more than money --- to deliver the votes on election day. These structures in turn forced politicians to maintain some contact with the grassroots and 
ensured a degree of local accountability. Ties to the party were strong. With the growing role of television in American life and the decline in the U.S. labor movement, costly television-based media campaigns have become increasingly central in deciding election outcomes. As a consequence, the grassroots organization that was once the foundation of the Democratic Party structure has 
disintegrated, causing it to lose its populist moorings and leaving those who once constituted its political base feeling unrepresented. 
   With the breakdown of this structure, those who run for office under the Democratic Party banner have become increasingly dependent on developing their own fund-raising organizations. This has left them more vulnerable to the influence of monied interests and greatly strengthened the hand of big business in setting policy agendas of both parties. William Greider maintains that the policy direction of the Democratic Party is now set largely by six Washington law firms that specialize in selling political influence to monied clients and in raising money for Democratic politicians. Working closely with Republicans as well, these firms are in the business of brokering power to whomever will pay their fees. This is the sorry state of American democracy.
   The Republican Party has responded most handily to the new circumstances, expertly adapting sophisticated techniques of mass marketing to the task of winning elections. With these techniques, it has accomplished the improbable task of exploiting the alienation of powerless citizens to build a populist political base in support of an elitist agenda. 

     As men of commerce, Republicans naturally understood marketing better than Democrats, and they applied what they knew about selling products to politics with none of the awkward hesitation that inhibited old-style politicians. As a result, voters are now viewed as a passive assembly of "consumers," a mass audience of potential buyers. Research discovers through scientific sampling what it is these consumers know or think, and more important, what they feel, even when they do not know their own "feelings." A campaign strategy is then designed to connect the candidate with these consumer attitudes. Advertising images are created that will elicit positive responses and make the sale. 


American democracy isn't for sale only to America's transnational corporations. The Mexican government spent upwards of $25 million and hired many of the leading Washington lobbyists to support its campaign for NAFTA. In the late 1980s, Japanese corporations were spending an estimated $100 million a year on political lobbying in the United States and another $300 million building a nationwide grassroots political network to influence public opinion. Together, the Japanese government and Japanese companies employed ninety-two Washington law, public-relations, and lobbying firms on their behalf. This compared with fifty-five for Canada, forty-two for Britain, and seven for the Netherlands. The purpose is to rewrite U.S. laws in favor of foreign corporations ---and it often works.