PR as propaganda and control

Last week, I attended an excellent debate at the London School of Economics hosted by the Polis media team and addressing the issue "Why did we not see it coming" referring to the role of media and the crash in financial markets.

For the PR industry it was disturbing as a number of the panellists highlighted the baleful influence of financial PR companies and PR generally in obstructing alternative views about issues such as the "primacy of unregulated markets" and denying access to senior management.

Those speaking and on the panel included: Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman; Evan Davis - BBC; Alex Brummer - City Editor - Daily Mail; Gillian Tett - Deputy Editor of FT, and author of shortly to be published new book looking at role of exotic financial products on the crash and Wilhelm Buiter -LSE and formerly on Bank of England policy committee. The event was chaired by Howard Davis, Vice Chancellor of the University (superbly). Huge number of media folk in the audience.

What came through very strong from three speakers (Brummer, Tett and Vince Cable) was the dire influence of financial PR over a long period in making it very difficult for journalists and other voices to raise concerns or different perspectives from de-mutualisation of building societies in the 1990s onwards. Some of the best quotes which I took down were as follows:

"Incredibly powerful public relations machine whose job it is to lie and dissemble", Alex Brummer, City Editor of the Daily Mail.
"a ferociously powerful PR machine...a PR machine controlling the rhetoric", Gillian Tett, Deputy Editor of the FT.

Two further contributions highlighted how the whole rhetoric and discourse about the role of the City were circumscribed. Vince Cable described being called in during the 1990s and asked by City high-ups why he was trying to damage the City and UK plc for putting forward views that demutualisation of the building societies was not a healthy development. Equally significant was the perspective of Wilhelm Buiter, a former member of the Bank of England interest setting committee who said that everybody - economists, media, politicians etc - were "captured cognitively" by the rhetoric of financial markets.

The PR industry is only just starting to debate the role of financial PR but this is, or should be, a powerful issue in the months to come. Just as we are witnessing the demise of unregulated financial markets so surely we must be witnessing the end of financial PR as currently practised. Perhaps in time financial PR as currently practised/perceived might be seen as one of the last bastions of PR as propaganda and control - or is that wishful thinking.