In their book “In Search of an Audience,” authors Bradley Morrison and Kay Fliehr wrote, “We were led inevitably to a conclusion best expressed by a public relations professional, John Bos, now managing director of Philadelphia’s Theatre of the Living Arts, saying at a national conference; ‘Press agentry in resident theatres is the exercise of selective honesty.’” In essence,” the authors wrote, “(Bos) meant that theatres cannot afford to be greedy and undisciplined in the search for publicity. They must seek out only the honest presentation of what they are. This does not imply management or control of hard news.”
I was, in fact, referring to a specific PR episode when, prior to Philadelphia, I was publicity director for the highly regarded Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. We had received a negative review from the Washington Post, but good reviews in the then Evening Star and Daily News. The Post was by far the most important newspaper when it came to influencing our audience. Its well-known critic had panned our production. What did I want the readers to read without avoiding that review in our weekly newspaper ads? I couldn’t just ignore it because it would look like avoiding a bad review. I decided to tell selective truths from all the reviews by interspersing the negative Post quotes among positive quotes from the Star and the News. I wanted to infer “See? It’s only one man’s opinion! Look at what others have to say!”
I was reminded of my “selective honesty” quote by musing about today’s communications environment which is well on its way to destroying democracy by employing selective dishonesty — notably in Russia and the U.S.
The “information revolution” now spinning around us started on Oct. 4, 1957, the day Russia launched Sputnik. Referred to as the “Dawn of the Space Age,” Sputnik has had much greater negative impacts on Earth than in outer space. The plethora of disinformation impacts on democracy is originating from the same nation that launched the damn satellite 65 years ago and the Ukraine invasion in February earlier this year.
According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, there were 7,389 individual satellites (Sputniks) in space at the end of April, 2021. Since the inception of the UN database, 11,139 satellites have been launched, of which only 7,389 are actually in space. The others have either burned up in the atmosphere or have plummeted back to Earth in the form of debris.
The purpose of 1,832 of these satellites is communication. Without them there would be no world wide web. There would be no internet. There would be no Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and the fake news ecosystem that preys on some of our deepest human instincts. Respondents to a Pew Research Center study said “humans’ primal quest for success and power — their ‘survival’ instinct — will continue to degrade the online information environment in the next decade. They predicted that manipulative actors will use new digital tools to take advantage of humans’ inbred preference for comfort and convenience and their craving for the answers they find in reinforcing echo chambers.”
In the March 13 New York Times, Richard Hasen wrote that “The same information revolution that brought us Netflix, podcasts and the knowledge of the world in our smartphone-gripping hands has also undermined American democracy.” “There can be no doubt,” he said, “that virally spread political disinformation and delusional invective about stolen, rigged elections are threatening the foundation of our republic. It’s going to take both legal and political change to bolster that foundation, and it might not be enough.”
“We are now living in a time of extreme partisanship and weak political parties that can no longer serve as moderating influences on extremists within their ranks” Hasen says. “It is expensive to produce quality journalism but cheap to produce polarizing political ‘takes’ and easily sharable disinformation. The economic model for local newspapers and accurate news gathering has collapsed over the past two decades.”
Without intact and viable professional journalism, the “news” will be shaped ever more to avoid, bend or deny what is real in the service of those who would exploit American democracy for their own financial, power and political ends.
To put the matter succinctly, Hasen writes, “if we had the polarized politics of today but the information technology of the 1950s, we almost certainly would not have seen the insurrection of Jan 6, 2021 at the United States Capitol.”
Selective dishonesty has infected the truth in today’s “news.”
“Connecting the Dots” appears every other Saturday in the Recorder. John Bos is a contributing writer for Green Energy Times and the editor of a new children’s book “After the Race.” Questions and comments about today’s column may be sent to john01370@gmail.com.