The Pricelessness of Publicity

From MURRAY KEMPTON WASHINGTON Evil comes to us men of the imagination mearing as its mask all the virtues. I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

—W. B. Yeats: Dramatis Persona.

MAY an American,,from the ruined morality of greater age, suggest how young and innocent your Profumo matters seem from this ancient capital? We have, I am afraid, outgrown your sort of scandal which, being essentially per- sonal and private, seems to us the trouble of an underdeveloped nation. Our sinners have most of the private virtues and act for their families and not against them.

Senator James W. Fulbright has, for a year now, been conducting an investigation of the effect on American foreign policy of the work of American lawyers and publicity men hired to stand in the corridors of power to importune each passer-by. Senator Fulbright operates with the care and discretion we have come to expect from him; the persons he investigates are re- spectable men and are so treated; they are usually interrogated in private; once every month or so, the Senator releases the testimony of one of them, like a serial on the way we live now. No sensation is attempted and none created, beyond a vague public stir which, as in the Profurno case. is only about the irrelevant. We do not, thank heaven, talk about a moral crisis; to us the developed national habit for making a living does not constitute a crisis.

Last week, Senator Fulbright made public the results of his investigation of Hamilton Wright, Senior and Junior, the public-relations firm which, in 1960, was being paid to argue the case for Nationalist China, the Union of South Africa and the Mexican tourist agency with the American people.

Hamilton Wright, Senior, started his public- relations firm in 1906, when Picasso had just begun to conceive the ladies of Avignon, two reflections of how old are the institutions which still seem new to less developed societies. He has dedicated the enterprise to the comfort of his child and his child's children, and it achieves without question the national standard for an honest business. A dishonest businesS sells what it does not own; an honest one sells what is not • worth buying. The Wrights sell, as an instance, access to space in the editorial pages of news- papers and time on radio and television; in other words, those instruments whose private pro- prietors give away public information and educa- tion in order to sell advertising with them.

Mr. Wright and his son approached the Chiang Kai-shek government in 1957 to say 'how en- Thusiastic and excited' they were about the chance to tell the American people 'the amazing story' of Free China. 'The work must go on day after day--non-stop. As per your suggestion, $300,000 would be the minimum agreeable to us for the first year of the campaign.' Two years later, their dedication was undiminished: 'I have,' Mr. Wright, Senior, wrote his client, 'repeatedly told my New York staff ". . . always remember Free China must squeeze every ounce to secure $300.000. Make every penny count. This is the greatest opportunity anybody ever had, a titanic cause to be associated with, a historic epic be- yond the telling." ' Mr. Wright had promised that, through his skill, knowledge and the respect and affection key persons in the press, the newsreels and the broadcasting companies had come to feel for him, he could, for his $300,000 fee, get as much time and space for Free China as would cost nearly $2,000,000 if spent for paid advertising.

By 1960, he could report significant evidence of fulfilment of that promise: Free China would produce a twenty-minute film short to be called Taiwan—Asian Show- case. 'Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will distribute the picture . . . under the title "MGM presents" (and not as a piettire marked "Government of China," etc.)' There is almost no profit in movie shorts, Mr. Wright explained to the Senate; the distributing companies, since they cannot afford any longer to make or buy their own, take them for free from governments or private corpora- tions advertising a national interest or a com- mercial product. They must, of course, be dis- guised. 'If you go to Radio City Music Hall and ask them to run a piece of propaganda on the screen, they would revolt at it. You wouldn't go in and pay $1.75 to see a piece of propaganda.' Or more properly, you do, but you would hardly be enchanted to discover it from a label.

'United States publicity will continue, hard and en 'nasal': Mr. Wright told his client, 'reaching deeper and further to thought leaders, political thinking, and to the American people. Grass- roots publicity is priceless.' Mr. Wright could re- port as an instance of past performance the com- position of a statement opposing recognition of Communist China, its acceptance by United States Senator Paul M. Douglas and its release over the Senator's signature to hundreds of news- papers. Senator Douglas did not know, of course, that his words were composed by Donald Frifield, one of Mr. Wright's employees on the Nationalist China account.

'More can he done; more will be done. . . . After two years of laying the groundwork, we feel that Taiwan is in the news enough to in- terest the largest magazines.'

The organisation had honed Don Frifield to the p6int where he 'is regarded by US news-. papers as a lop authority on China problems.'

'In order not to appear as a "propaganda outlet" for Free China, we have arranged for Don to write on many subjects on the Far East, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, etc. This gives depth and recognition to his work and opens the way to penetrate with publicity to Free China.'

Frifield had composed articles purchased for niggling prices and distributed to their newspaper clients by North American Newspaper Alliance and the Herald Tribune syndicate. The single sample of this work from the committee's files was an interview breathing force and lire from one of Chiang's lieutenants on Taiwan; it was difficult, by the standards of these things, to distinguish it as paid propaganda; it read all too much like what is depressingly normal in syndicated press coverage of friendly nation,.

Many American news syndicates are, like all agencies of public education, straitened as to budget and glad to take for free anything they can then sell as a piece of information. Mr. Wright could, for that reason, take pictures of Taiwanese prosperous, vigorous and aroused to liberate the mainland and have them dis- tributed tinder the label of the United Press and the Associated Press, which could not have afforded the expense of mounting and filming them. The newsreels have an even greater need for services like these: Mr. Wright reported that a 'film on Chiang Kai-shek's re-anointment by his parliament had been distributed in the United States by Universal International News- reel, in Italy by RAI, in Australia by ABC-TV, and in forty other countries, including Ethiopia and the Sudan.

Mr. Wright had gone far to prove his law about mass communication in its fullest development: you can buy the space labelled 'information' for one-sixth the price you pay for the same space labelled 'advertising.' Nrine of these lessons made quite the impression they deserved on the Free Chinese, who might have been excused if they had wondered if anything got so cheap was worth the getting. The public litany for Taiwan was as loud as ever; but the public indifference seemed to remain what. it was.

By 1960, even Mr. Wright confessed himself dissatisfied. The emergency was worse; Senator Kennedy talked openly of abandoning Quemoy. The time had come for Taiwan to fight back, if not on the mainland, at least 'in high-powered publicity.' The means were, inadequate, and now Taiwan proposed to make them less adequate still.

`Cutting our budget one-third and then to half,' Mr. Wright wrote the Chinese, `has only helped to curtail our operations. . . .' (They must be increased) 'particularly during the presi- dential campaign and after the new US Presi- dent takes office. . . . An investment in stepped- up publicity is one of the most important phases in today's battle for men's minds. . . . We are 1,000 per cent sold on Free China and her cause. . . Today the pen is still mightier than the sword.'

But Taiwan remained unencouraged. Hamil- ton Wright, Senior, was in South Africa making a film on that republic's progressive and en- lightened policy on ostrich-farming when his Taiwan representative reported a discouraging lunch with the director of Free China's Gov- ernment Information Office: 'They are hurt about South Africa. . . . [They] understand that we are not only taking pictures of wild life but trying to show how good the Africans treat their Negroes! . . . "Hamilton Wright Organisation does not care who it takes as a client. . . . You know, they have brought grave insults to the Chinese and their govern- ment.". . . He said he was considered a hard- headed businessman and wanted something for his money.'

Americans are more developed than the Chinese, who do not seem to feel that what, in our corruption, we have learned how to sell is worth buying. Senator Fulbright's revelations, perhaps from the same reflection, have produced no visible shock in the American public. We have outgrown a time when our public men need to tell private lies; and we are too old to be shocked when we are reminded that the public lie has become a professional discipline.