| Lately, I have been thinking about an interesting | | | | winner) and it returned with 659,000 entries. Pardon |
| news item category. It all started, when few months | | | | me Prof. Sen for even comparing. |
| ago almost every mainstream daily newspaper in the | | | | However, this demonstrates the power of public |
| UK reported the sad demise of Jade Goody on the | | | | relations and how PR firms exploit it. |
| front page. While it certainly is a sad event, when I | | | | I am amazed to see that society as a whole what |
| saw this news item grabbing 2 of the top 5 read | | | | do we really look for and how our thoughts can be |
| news on BBC website two things clicked in my mind | | | | manipulated. Reminds me of Edward Bernays - the |
| with regard to celebrity hype and the PR strategies | | | | father of public relations and the nephew of Sigmund |
| and marketing. | | | | Freud - who believed in manipulating society and |
| Firstly, in Liverpool I had an academic colleague who | | | | resultant public opinion. In one of his seminal works |
| researches into the area of celebrities and their | | | | 'the propaganda' he argued that the manipulation of |
| impact on masses. He also happened to be a fanatic | | | | public opinion was a necessary part of democracy. He |
| football fan and I remembered him telling me that he | | | | successfully used it in 'breaking the taboo against |
| had read umpteen number of celebrity biographies | | | | woman smoking in public' and even helping United |
| (including many footballers and entertainers) and had | | | | Fruit Company (today's Chiquita Brands International) |
| concluded that there was hardly anything inspiring in | | | | and the U.S. government to facilitate the successful |
| those memoirs (BTW, jade goody had one!). It was | | | | overthrow of the democratically elected president of |
| just one skill which had put most of these people in | | | | Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. |
| the mainstream media and once they are there we | | | | Today's high tech public relations firms have honed |
| know the human struggle to be there. | | | | their skills with such a finesse that a 'Miss Piggy' who |
| The second thought which arrived in my mind related | | | | reportedly thought a ferret was a bird, an abscess a |
| to the power of high tech public relations (PR). I | | | | green drink from France, that Pistachio painted the |
| might be completely wrong but even the BBC | | | | Mona Lisa, that there was a part of England called |
| obituary of Jade Goody notes "...she hit the headlines | | | | East Angular and that there was a language called |
| as a young woman with shockingly poor general | | | | Portuganese (Jeffries, 2009) gets 2 out of 5 top |
| knowledge, who was often the object of her fellow | | | | news items on BBC and gets coverage on all the |
| housemates' derision" (BBC, 2009). However, when | | | | world media. I have hardly ever seen that being |
| you just type Jade Goody in Google it turns up with | | | | achieved... |
| 5,130,000 results. These include a Wikipedia which is | | | | Something has surely going wrong at the macro |
| several print pages long, official website, news | | | | societal level or I guess Bernays was so right when |
| (obviously in terms of celebrity gossip), a perfume | | | | he said "The public has its own standards and |
| website and a FAN website (yes...)! | | | | demands and habits. You may modify them but you |
| Thinking about this I ran another Google search for | | | | dare not run counter to them." This is what we |
| Prof. Amartya Sen (yes, yes, the 1998 Nobel prize | | | | demand as news today, don't we? |
