Chapter Three

The Business of Bad Publicity

It would be superficial to discuss media and dissent without examining their relations to government politics and business considerations, given that news agencies are influenced by their own business commitments as well as their allies in politics. Mainstream political actors clearly have an interest in working with the media, too, given the extent to which public opinion matters in a democracy (since the public vote in government). ‘News management’ is key in controlling who wins elections, and which issues get funding and support (Livingston, 1994). “A central function of some public administrative agencies is the publicizing of narratives about threats remote from daily experience, for these narratives create the rationale for intelligence organizations, national police agencies, and departments of defence” (Edelman, 1988).

If an administration wants to focus on high security and to fund war, for instance, then creating a scenario where the public also want high security or war is key. The publicity of dissent can work for government – perhaps more than it works for dissenting groups. Publicity relating to dissent can be oxygen for the establishment, often as it poisons dissent. Whether intentionally or not, Thatcher’s statement was very misleading. The terrorism story can be great PR for the government, rather than mere advertisement for revolution.

Behind the Scenes

The relationship between dissent and the media, then, is one influenced by these other powers, as well as, possibly, an existing voyeurism of the public that dissent and media (and politics and business) all cater to. Governments often have an interest in influencing media organisations to cover dramatic political stories, particularly if they want to persuade the public to back policies and parties that push for high security measures and funding. In that vein, coverage of terrorist attacks is actually beneficial to some leaders, as highlighted by the paper ‘Deliver Us From Evil: The Effects of Mortality Salience and Reminders of 9/11 on Support for President George W. Bush’，which showed a rise in support for President Bush according to how often ‘death’ and specifically 9/11 were mentioned on television (Ogilvie et al, 2004). The threat of terrorism and the memory of it increased allegiance to the President and his government. The implication of this is that certain leaders and administrations have a major interest in the media’s coverage of terrorism, given that it can sway public opinion in their favour, and increase the popularity of related security measures and other political decisions. If there is public expectation that ‘more needs to be done’ regarding terrorism, then not only the administration but the attached security forces (and involved businesses) benefit.

This may not be entirely beneficial to governments in the long term, however. Pressure on governments to react to specific attacks in a retributive, often unconsidered way, which may be disproportionate to the act itself, may be a problem for governments. Prime Minister John Major was asked about the effect of ‘CNN Syndrome’ on political decision-making in an interview and pointed out that: “I think it is bad for government. I think the idea that you automatically have to have a policy for everything before it happens and respond to things before you have had a chance to evaluate them isn’t sensible” (Plate and Tuohy, 1993).

Whether or not a government benefits from dissent and its media coverage depends on the specific political intentions of that government. If a government wants to go to war and needs a way to persuade the public to back it, then a terrorist attack, widely publicised, is probably helpful as a means of persuading them. Furthermore, if a country is already at war, and needs to raise morale for its soldiers and the public, then demonising ‘the enemy’ via the media, and in response to particular catastrophes, can be helpful as it dehumanises them. This can work in the favour of the government in several ways: it makes violence seem sensible in an abstract sense (so that the population will not oppose military action, for instance), as well as on a more personal level. People in the military may have an easier time waging war on ‘the enemy’ if they have been convinced that their opponents are sub-human or not deserving of the same rights that they have or desire. Dehumanisation makes it possible for people to dispose of their own compassion and humanity; it is the perpetrator’s humanity, in fact, that is undermined ultimately.

However, if a government does not have a way of benefiting from such dehumanisation, it can be pushed into emergency policies that are not good in the long term (or even short term) for the state. The manipulation of the content of the news, furthermore, undermines the integrity of journalism. What we are describing is not against ‘freedom of expression’, exactly, but it is a monopolisation of expression. The media exists not simply to further the objectives of government and business, and yet there are times when it can seem as if only government and business interests are really served, at the expense of true democracy and fair discussion. Whether one supports a dissenting group’s cause or not, that the establishment should use the media against it (when it cannot censor it entirely) is some cause for concern for anyone attached to the most basic of democratic principles. The use of the media by any political actor, while inevitable perhaps, can blur the perception of the reality they propose to change, and hinder transparency and public debate. The public, should they wish to have any control, should exercise some critical viewing of the news, whether sympathetic to the government or dissenting groups, or any political actor. Otherwise, the public becomes merely an audience, taken in by the political spectacle, but effectively disengaged from the real issues behind it. The spectacle distracts from the important debate, from democracy itself. For dissenting groups, this means that they must be aware of the spectacle and, where necessary, learn to play in it for its own benefit. For individuals who wish only to see clearly the issues that engage them, they need to learn to see through the smoke and mirrors that all political actors are inevitably affected by.

How (and Why) Dissent is Re-framed

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. (CHOMSKY, 2002, 21)

As Chomsky has written, governments and businesses in liberal democracies cannot hold power over their own people through force in the way that they were able to a century ago, so ‘public relations’ was invented, so that those in government and business may control the people, since to control decision-making is to acquire power.

Even when dissenters capture the eye of the public, through the media or otherwise, the government and its allies can usually transform this interest to repulsion and condemnation if they so wish. The public (when it becomes an audience) can be fickle, after all. The fictionalisation or dramatisation of terrorism (and counter-terrorism) means that information about the political issues at stake is more easily manipulated. Because such apparent conflict is seen as a story and a spectacle, no matter how serious the implications, the public opinion on those issues can be manipulated simply by framing the narrative a certain way – by sustaining the idea of all revolutionary action as ‘evil’ because it is ‘terrorist’, and all counter-terrorist action as ‘good’ because it is protecting national security.

Of course, there are competing interpretations of the story. As has been seen recently in the NSA scandal, the image of the counter-terrorists has been challenged, with the representation of counter-terrorism as unnecessarily intrusive becoming an important idea. The images that have emerged from Abu Ghraib, furthermore, showed another side of military intervention in the name of the War on Terror, as criminal and inhumane rather than heroic.

There is an on-going PR conflict when it comes to the establishment versus dissent narrative, which usually but not inevitably strengthens the state’s position regarding revolutionary threats. This depends on revolutionary violence being termed ‘terrorism’, first of all, and on ‘terrorism’ more generally being portrayed as ‘evil’ in news media and fictional media. While ‘terrorism’ usually refers to violent dissent, the story of ‘terrorism’ and the fear of ‘terrorism’ taint the public image of all dissent in some way.

There is always a degree of risk when it comes to a PR stunt – whether it’s a terrorist act or a celebrity endorsement – because that stunt can be interpreted and received in so many ways, both flattering and detrimental to its cause (or client, if we’re talking PR). A stunt may not have its intended effect, because how it is perceived, how it comes across, makes such a difference.

Usually, revolutionary action is framed in such a way as to strengthen the perception of the state, and to undermine the idea of revolution or dissent, as well as any possible reality of change through revolution. While the media may not be complicit with the establishment in an overt, explicit way, in effect it has been, for the most part, when we consider the way that revolutionary violence has been depicted in the media, and, conversely, the way in which state repression of dissent is glamorised in film and other fiction, but kept secret outside of that. Dissent and its repression is not, and never could be, represented with full accuracy, given the nature of the media and PR. So simply attracting attention to a cause and gaining public awareness is not enough; communicating the right or most persuasive message is vital. Politics and art have that much in common: an audience, and their hearts and minds to compel. Rhetoric matters as much as reality, style as much as substance.

New Media, Old Story

PR has changed and challenged dissent, then. Protesters are depicted as out-of-control, reckless youths, or unrealistic old hippies who never left the Sixties. Peaceful marches and occupations have been depicted as futile and more like festivals than political statements. Those who use violence and break the law, meanwhile, are demonised, perhaps called ‘terrorists’ or ‘hacktivists’, and threatened with draconian punishments and public wrath through the tabloids and the justice system. Meanwhile exhibitionists have used ‘political’ violence for attention – causing terrible loss of life but little if no political gains.

This refreshed emphasis on the public relations of dissent is partly because new media has changed the way we watch the news. Since censorship by the state (as in during the IRA years in the UK, or during the Cold War in the US also) is now particularly ineffective, the war of images and propaganda is more significant than ever. Giving a movement bad PR is the easiest way for a state or corporation to crush dissent.

In many ways, dissent has been hijacked by the media, and especially it’s tendency to depict dissent as fashionable or exhibitionist rather than meaningful and political. When dissent is not presented as trivial, it is portrayed as demonic and evil. This is understandable when figures such as Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed are linked to the deaths of thousands of people in terrifying attacks on civilians, or when groups such as ISIS post videos online of children beheading people, of innocent journalists being executed, and yet more civilians being killed because of their religion (if a cause is given). There are many atrocities that seem so horrendous that a word such as ‘evil’ seems the only one that can begin to describe the repulsion and dismay they inspire, and they happen daily. Some of this is committed by groups that are anti-establishment, or anti-Western, or anti-UK and -USA. Some of it is committed with a political justification spoken as it happens, or in amateur press videos afterwards. So we can, in many cases, link scenes of true horror to political groups and revolutionary individuals.

There are many occasions in which politics has a part in the provocation and justification of awful violence and it is unhelpful to ignore this fact when discussing dissent in a general sense. Sometimes political enemies carry out demonic acts against civilians and military targets alike. Sometimes, inevitably, certain movements do qualify as unethical and evil in their actions and disregard for human life. Sometimes those actions are in response to equally awful acts by our own states and others, and sometimes the reasons are more complicated.

To call out political violence as ‘evil’ is often a necessary and commendable thing to do. To criticise political enemies for their behaviour often makes sense. To abhor violence and to communicate that repulsion seems to me to be a natural reaction to learning of such events. But too often it does nothing to stop that violence or those perpetrators; rather, it fans the flames of animosity. It berates people who have not done anything terrible simply because they come from the same country or religion as those who have. This language, this naming of people as evil and alien and inhumane, does not stop violence; it is a form of dehumanisation itself and often divides people rather than helps build peace or reconciliation anywhere. It is one thing to renounce evil, but to stop there, to revel in denouncing evil, to obsess over how bad other people can be, seems to me unhelpful at best and provocative at worst. When it comes to the media, this naming and shaming can seem closer to a witch hunt than anything else, and in demonising political enemies, it runs the risk of fuelling further conflict.

A related problem is that in calling some anti-establishment figures evil, however justified that may be, as well as deepening divisions between people on various sides of a given conflict, we make it hard for people to understand that there are grey areas – that there are people neither good nor evil, and that there are complicated conflicts that cannot be easily simplified in such a way. Pointing to one event or person, calling them ‘evil’, and then using that to generalise and judge an entire people or cause, makes it very hard to negotiate or to understand that conflict on any other terms than the language of fairy tales.

There is also a tendency (already mentioned) for the media and state to generalise not only the people in one cause or group as dangerous, but to generalise all forms of dissent as dangerous simply because they are against the establishment. This is an overly simplistic approach to politics, clearly. It is damaging to those peaceful dissenting groups, but it is also damaging to the state, and to the public. It is a self-righteous and naïve position to take, to assume that any criticism against the establishment is bad or an existential threat, rather than a reasonable part of living in a democracy where debate about ways of doing things, ways of living, ruling and thinking should be open to discussion. Controlling what and who is acceptable, implying that every criticism is bad, makes that political debate tyrannical. It leaves no room for improvement, and makes for a paranoid and controlling state rather than a free one. While that probably appeals to some people in power, there are surely others who sleepwalk into positions of paranoia when it comes to dealing with antiestablishment thought within a democracy.

To take the most pragmatic viewpoint, this attitude leads to a waste of resources at the very least. Why waste so much money in training the police to deal with peaceful protesters as if they are lethal enemies of the state? Why spend so much money housing people in prisons when they could be contributing to society instead, for far less? Why assume that everybody who questions established thought and institutions is an enemy? It is all very well to treat actual threats to national security as such, but to extend this militarised defensiveness to deal with every stray end of debate is to risk falling into tyranny.

Even the use of the word ‘terrorist’ to describe certain perpetrators of political violence is problematic, and an example of the conflation of different forms of dissent. For a start, the word is rarely used to describe states – only political actors working separately to the state (even if they work for the state, indirectly, in proxy wars). So the word ‘terrorist’, although it refers to an attention-seeking tactic of war, is used only to describe anti-establishment warfare, rather than the various instances when similar behaviour is used by states in warfare, whether legally or not. Because the term ‘terrorist’ is used to mark out anti-state and sub-state groups, it becomes a way to say, “This cause is illegitimate,” as well as shorthand for “these people are immoral, unreasonable and against us.” It is a way of saying “we do not like them” (Jackson, 2005). It is a way to alienate and to ‘other’.

While this may be all very well as a political tactic in itself, when the state is dealing with genuinely existential threats and wants to ensure mass repulsion of whatever cause they are dealing with, the word ‘terrorist’ is used to refer to other anti-establishment, dissenting groups. Even if they do not use terrorism as a tactic, or are not particularly threatening to the public or state, they are nevertheless lumped into the same broad category of public enemies and objects of state paranoia. Legislation such as the Terrorism Act (2006) means that individuals can be arrested and imprisoned for things like lending someone a publication that could “be useful in the commission or preparation of such acts and be understood, by some or all of those persons, as contained in the publication, or made available to them…” (Terrorism Act, 3b). This means that possession or distribution of a book that “glorifies the commission or preparation of such acts (whether in the past, in the future or generally)” (Terrorism Act, 4a) can be used to arrest and imprison someone, as that can be used to ‘prove’ intent. While proving intent is always complicated, proving it by pointing to one’s book collection seems over the top.

The state uses surveillance not only on violent groups that threaten national security, but also on peaceful, democratic protest groups. Evidence has emerged that over the last several decades police officers were sent in to spy on various protest groups such as animal-rights groups, environmental groups, and left-wing groups, using the names of deceased children and (now infamously) engaging in intimate relationships with unknowing women for years. The Special Demonstration Squad spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence, as well as the families of other victims of alleged police brutality and racism (including Jean Charles de Menezes, the young Brazilian shot in the London Underground by police in 2005, and Cherry Groce, who was shot by police during the Brixton Riots of 1985). The unit itself was in operation from 1968 until 2008 (although this is no guarantee, of course, that such operations have ended at all). MI5, meanwhile, spied on left-wing academics such as Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill, among many others, for decades (Milmo, 2014).

These people were often innocent, or at least not of grave threat to the country. And yet, the police and other government agencies considered it justified to spy on them. Sometimes this was for rather sinister reasons, such as worrying about information coming out about police brutality, or undermining left-wing sentiment in the country even if it represented no threat to democracy. CND activists and student protesters against education cuts, for example, seem largely unthreatening, and certainly pose no existential threat to the state or its principles (quite the opposite). At other times, the reasons were a little more complicated. While the aforementioned academics Hobsbawm and Hill may have been peaceful, the cause that they were associated with – the Soviet Union’s Communism – was not. The state was perhaps justified in spying on a range of people it suspected of supporting their enemy, then.

Evidently when it comes down to justifying who is and who is not dangerous enough to watch and sabotage, the waters become rather murky. How can the state know who it should be against? How can it know whose data to collect and secrets to rifle through, when there is (nowadays more than ever) so much information, and such a range of possible threats?

While the state often has reason to be suspicious of certain dissenting groups, the problem is that it is not only genuinely dangerous threats (or associates of them) that are treated as such. Unfairly suspicious treatment towards peaceful groups and individuals is made possible by portraying various, or any, dissenting groups as related by some family resemblance, when often there is little connection and little threat.

This is a PR problem, insofar as it is the public image of the groups that is part of the issue, and helps justify excessive surveillance of peaceful and democratic groups alongside genuinely dangerous enemies of the state (such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, these days). When groups are depicted as against the state, against the country, or even just associated with those who are, then the public does not leap to their defence if they are undermined by those in authority and treated undemo- cratically. Public relations is not generally the reason why some people and groups are targeted, but when they are targeted, bad PR can make the difference between the public caring about the infringement of civil liberties and democratic rights, and not caring at all. While there are times when the state’s action against dissenting groups is justified (for example, when there really is an existential threat to the state and people in it), there are also many instances when people are treated unfairly, and rhetoric that places them all in the same category of threat means that the public does not know the difference or think to question that action. Too often, the phrase “for the sake of national security” is used to denounce groups that pose no such threat at all.

There has been some talk lately of how ‘new media’ has changed dissent. As Neville Bolt has written in The Violent Image (2012), dissenting groups (he focuses broadly on insurgents) have greater means to control their public image, because the Internet makes censorship less effective and less of a realistic strategy for dealing with ‘insurgent propaganda’, or letting one side of the story dominate. Indeed, Al Qaeda benefited from its use of social media in the sense that it enabled communications and recruitment via Internet forums and the distribution of radical material, such as its magazine, Inspire. But as Gilbert Ramsay has explained (2015) this use of the Internet does not always, or even often, lead to actual political violence. Extremism and what is known as ‘terrorism’ are distinct, and the former does not always lead to the latter. So although the Internet is, as it is for most industries and groups, a resource, it is not quite as terrifying or game-changing as is sometimes implied. This is worth remembering when, for instance, people talk of the need to increase surveillance and prison sentences and impose other controls, with that supposed connection as justification.

The Internet is threatening to the establishment in other ways, though. The Abu Ghraib scandal showed how a few leaked pictures could change the image of a superpower, very much against its wishes and its own rules. So the new media, in that respect, has changed the original ‘oxygen for terrorists’ strategy: if publicity is oxygen then the state cannot so easily cut it off. What is interesting though is that it is not necessarily the propaganda of terrorist groups (or protest groups) that the state need worry about; rather it is exposure of the state’s own misadventures and illegal activity that is most damaging and thus threatening. Understandably, though, the state does not use this as its justification for attempts to control the new media; it uses the familiar excuse that demonic ‘terrorists’ lurk in the Dark Net; they must be stopped, they must be cut off…

So has ‘new media’ really changed the dynamic? Or is it merely the next chapter in a rather consistent story, where, censorship or no censorship, dissent is framed as ‘bad’, no matter its specific characteristics or tactics, and the establishment is framed as ‘good’, no matter the secrets it hides? Does it matter that censorship is less realistic, if all publicity is bad publicity (for dissent), and if the story remains the same?

The old story, the tale of good versus evil in a spectacular political theatre, persists. It resonates partly because the audience – the public – likes the simplicity and sensationalism of this story. They like to be part of the winning side, and for complicated issues to be conveniently simplified as ‘good’ against ‘bad’. They like to be good. They like to be titillated by bad.

New media has not changed this. The same narratives run on; they have merely been adapted to a new medium, much like an old classic being re-released as digitally re-mastered and sold over again. The ‘old media’, meanwhile, has not really gone anywhere. People still read the tabloids in print, as well as online, and the stories are the same. Often, the social media presence of dissenting groups can be their undoing, anyway. Twitter accounts have been used as evidence for ‘inciting violence’ and terror; Facebook profiles give motives to police; and iPhone signals make public enemies easily trackable. While social media and the Internet more generally can be an asset to dissenting groups, they can be even more useful to those government or corporate agents who wish to contain them. The mainstream media, whether ‘new’ or ‘old’, persists with its power, then. Bad publicity is a business and an art.

With all of this in mind, dissenting groups face myriad problems, or opportunities, when it comes to communicating their messages to the public. Perhaps the main issue is recognising how easy it is for one’s actions to become merely a strange form of entertainment, rather than having any political effect. A group can slip into this situation whether it is violent or peaceful, whether it embraces old or new media, and whether it really poses a danger to the government or not. No matter how convincing a group’s ideas may be, if it does fall into this trap, and if it is represented negatively, then the public will never be swept up in its vision. It is necessary to understand the theatrical nature of politics, and how to approach it so that it is of benefit rather than detriment to one’s cause.