Image is everything - in war, in crisis and in selling a power utility to Quebec
Published Thursday November 19th, 2009
I have no opinion on the sale of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec.
Really. But I was surprised to hear our government hired public relations consultants to sell the agreement to the public, especially since the first strategy was to call any opposition emotional and that we should do it for our children.
The CBC reports that the lead PR consultant hired to promote the deal is Steven MacKinnon of Hill and Knowlton's Ottawa office. He once worked as former premier Frank McKenna's executive assistant.
Hill and Knowlton, a prominent public relations company, has handled some very difficult cases in the past.
The proposed deal to sell NB Power for $5 billion is controversial, even though the government says it would erase the utility's debt. Residents would receive a five-year rate freeze and industrial rates would drop. For Hydro-Québec, the deal delivers a province full of new customers and a ready-to-wear transmission system to the New England market.
The announcement has irked Danny Williams because of the historic shafting of Newfoundland in the Churchill Falls hydro project. It also stymies Nova Scotia's attempt to develop a Maritime green energy grid.
But back to public relations. The strategy of putting down all opposition to the deal as emotional is a simple but patronizing technique. Far more sophisticated was a campaign designed to sell a reluctant American public on the need to go to war with Iraq, the first time. The tide turned when George Bush said Iraqi soldiers had pulled babies from incubators, leaving them to die.
The person who originally told that story was the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter, and the firm hired by the Kuwaiti royal family was Hill and Knowlton.
In 1992 the Centre for Public Integrity published its report on public relations efforts by repressive regimes. Hill and Knowlton topped the list, making $14 million in one year from a list of human rights abusing states, including China, which hired it after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
In 1988, when the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring with the Medellin cocaine cartel to launder $32,000,000 in drug trafficking profits, Corporate Crime Watch reported the bank hired Hill and Knowlton to manage the scandal.
In 1990 controversy erupted within the PR company for a contract it took with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to assist in altering the tone of public debate around abortion.
Other difficult cases it has assisted on are the nuclear catastrophe at Three Mile Island, lobbying for big tobacco, Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky crisis, and an explosion at a chemical plant in Australia falsely blamed on environmentalists.
The book "Inside Spin: the dark underbelly of the PR industry" says when the Coode Island chemical storage complex exploded in 1991 due to poor maintenance, it was reported to be the work of an environmental saboteur. A Hill and Knowlton public relations executive later described the strategy as portraying the company as the victim, not the culprit. Everybody deserves a defence, even corporations with questionable tactics.
Back to Iraq. John MacArthur of Harper's magazine uncovered the story that may have helped start the first Gulf War. In testimony to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, a young girl called Nayirah told how, when she worked as a volunteer at a Kuwaiti hospital, she saw Iraqi soldiers take babies from incubators and leave them to die on the cold floor.
The story captured the media's attention, was repeated countless times, and had a huge impact on public opinion. Amnesty International said there was no support for it and Nayirah was exposed, amid allegations she had been coached by Hill and Knowlton.
So what does all this have to do with the price of electricity?
I don't know, but I'm waiting to see what the next public relations strategy will be to sell us on this deal.
Please come up with something rational. Just don't tell us it's for the babies.
Chris McCormick teaches criminology at St. Thomas University. His column appears every second Thursday.
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Fortunately we can see right through their little games.
All you have to do is go into any of the articles in the times, gleaner, or telegraph, and all the proponents do nothing but name call and say we're being led by our emotions, but as soon as we start to quote from the MOU they all run away like rats from a sinking ship.
Sure, Afganistan was a whole new ball game for Canada's military and no doubt they would do some things differently next time, but what good does the airing of dirty linen in public do now, except hurt the country in the eyes of the world and undo any good done in Afganistan. Maybe the opposition has hired Hill and Knowlton. Will the Liberal party pay any price to win?
One small note. The ambassador's daughter was portrayed on TV as a destitute because of Iraqi actions. It was later recognized as the ambassador's daughter. That is the ethical standards of Hill and Knowlton.