Intellectuals in Residence at Corporations, the Self-Righteous Press, and Bias versus Objectivity in Public Relations and Journalism

In the early 1970s, in mid-town Manhattan, I worked for a service firm to the public relations industry. My clients were both senior and junior public relations professionals. We printed their press releases and mailed them to the media. My work involved interaction with the pros, mostly by telephone, but also in person, and I read a lot of their press releases.

One thought I had at the time was that the personal identity of many public relations professionals is that of “intellectual in residence at corporations.” My thought continued, “Given the present intellectual atmosphere [the Progressive’s denigration of big business], that’s not good for the future of capitalism.”

My clients were highly competent and honest, but the profession—then and today, as well as in its beginning in the early nineteenth century—was, and still is, imbued with the unexamined and unacknowledged Marxist premises that “we, the ethically astute intellectuals in the company, must communicate to the public our apologies for selfishly making a profit.”

Appeasement of the critics, not moral indignation toward them and condemnation of their ideas, was, and is, the accepted norm. A slightly exaggerated press release headline, for example: “We gave $xx millions of dollars to charity last year, so please don’t attack us.”

Considered something of a PR coup, to give a real life example, The Texas Company—Texaco—for 63 years sponsored the Saturday radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. Texaco’s public relations message: “See? We’re not greedy, materialistic money grubbers. We support high art.”*

The problem is that business executives are not intellectual. They are ignorant of a proper defense of business and capitalism and are decidedly timid, lacking courage to defend themselves with moral defiance against the attackers. So, they let their spokespersons speak for them.

Now let’s switch to the press and the journalistic profession. This is an easy switch, because journalists and PR pros are trained in the same schools of journalism (now called schools of communication). Job hopping is frequent between the two professions. In my day, PR was the more lucrative and preferred hop.

Journalists, today and in the past, unfortunately, often are the ones who self-righteously lead the attacks on big (and small) business, although they are supposed to be uncovering facts and presenting the truth of any story. The result is charges from critics of the press of yellow journalism (in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) and of bias and fake news today.

The job of the journalist, however, as stated by the American Press Institute, is to use objective methods in the search for and presentation of facts and truth. The difference between the two concepts? The facts are that the bus hit the car. The statement of the facts—the bus driver was drunk and wanted to kill people—may or may not be true. How good, that is, how objective was the reporter’s method? How did the reporter acquire and verify his or her statement of the bus driver’s motivation?

If methods are less than objective, bias, those unexamined and unacknowledged premises, enter to influence the reporter’s statement of the facts.

In previous posts (1; Applying Principles, pp. 130-32), I have touched on bias and objectivity. I stated that bias per se is not bad because it just means leaning in one direction. (This blog for the past twelve years has unmistakably leaned in one direction.) Unexamined and, especially, unacknowledged underlying premises, as I stated in the earlier posts, create what I called “negative bias.”

A negative bias disparages opponents by ignoring or denying the existence of valid alternative viewpoints and by expressing moral outrage at anyone who challenges the writer’s or speaker’s fairness. Dissenters and critics are often punished.

Such negative biases dominate university classrooms and today’s media. Publicly financed universities, as well as most private ones, and most mainstream media, are explicitly committed to freedom of expression for all viewpoints.

They also are supposedly committed to reason, facts, and truth, but they fail miserably on all counts.

Some private universities and media state an explicit viewpoint as their driving philosophy and therefore lean in one direction, but they are aware of and acknowledge that viewpoint.

Many universities and media, unfortunately, practice explicit suppression of alternative viewpoints, often because they are oblivious to what guides them—or are willful in the suppression.

Indeed, those journalism schools, where PR pros and journalists are trained, have for many years been teaching that objectivity is impossible. This derives from the post-modern destruction of Aristotelian logic and has become prescription for the spectacle we are witnessing today: whoever shouts the loudest and longest wins the argument, though I am being generous to call what goes on today an “intellectual argument.”

Objectivity—in journalism or anywhere else—is the accurate perception and communication of our objects of perception. Our method of awareness is guided by Aristotelian logic to correctly, that is, non-contradictorily, identify the facts we are examining.

This means being aware of and acknowledging predispositions (underlying premises) we may hold guiding our investigations and presentations.

To youth who are looking for an academic career in an applied field that desperately needs rehabilitation, I recommend a job in one of those schools of communication, to teach future public relations professionals and journalists the valid concept of objectivity and the role of bias in our perceptions.



* I hasten to add that these two examples are one specialty—sometimes called “image” or “social responsibility” PR—in the larger field of public relations. Journeyman professionals may spend their efforts on product publicity, personnel announcements, writing and editing the internal employee magazine, or entertaining certain reporters to convince them to write a feature story about the company.

On Bias and Its Underlying Theories of Human Nature

Let us suppose a US president recommends a plan to reduce capital gains and income taxes to fifteen percent. (I would prefer zero for both, but fifteen will do.) Here are three possible headlines:

“New Tax Plan Promises Increased Wealth for the Poor and the Hope of Freedom for America’s Persecuted Minority”

“Tax Cuts for the Rich”

“New Tax Reductions Unveiled”
The first would be my fantasy headline, one that I do not expect to see in the near future, but would like to see spread across all columns of major newspapers. It is biased, though I would call it descriptively accurate and I do acknowledge that it rests on the premises of Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand, and assumes a specific theory of human nature.

The second is biased in the other direction, assuming a different theory of human nature, and the third is neutral, not giving away, or at least not intending to give away, underlying premises or views of human nature.

“Bias” per se is not bad, as it just means leaning in one direction, but when a presenter, such as a news reporter in the media, ignores or denigrates opposing viewpoints, does not acknowledge underlying premises, and claims to be impartial and objective, negative criticism becomes justified.

Consider three more headlines, describing a recently (hypothetically) adopted government policy:

“New Entitlements for Those the Left Considers ‘Weak,’ ‘Stupid,’ and ‘Ignorant’”

“New Aid for the Unfortunate and Underprivileged”

“Help for the Unemployed and Uneducated”
The first is how I might write the headline, describing what I think of such programs, and indicating the view of human nature the other side espouses. The second, again, would most likely be written by someone with an opposing point of view, and the third is neutral, or my best attempt at writing a neutral headline. The neutral headline hints at my theory of human nature, because I don’t see such people as “unfortunate” or “underprivileged.”

A theory of human nature describes the essence of who we are—each one of us as individuals—and what we are capable of. Are we all equal in the sense of possessing the same capacity to reason, to learn, to choose values, and to act to achieve those values, or do some people possess those capabilities while others do not, or do some possess the capabilities in greater degree than others? Are we in control of our lives, especially psychologically, so that we can overcome considerable obstacles, or are we victims of genetic inheritance and environmental circumstance?

Advocates of the first headlines above tend to agree with the former descriptions, namely that we are all free to think for ourselves and choose our own lives, free to evaluate what confronts us, and free to determine how to proceed to achieve our goals.

Advocates of the second headlines agree with the latter view of human nature. Indeed, this theory is built into Progressive ideology that some people are better than others, either by genetic inheritance or privileged circumstance. That is why experts are needed in government to identify hardships and provide remedies.

This is noblesse oblige, the obligation of the privileged to provide comfort and aid to those less well off.

These theories permeate economics and political philosophy, which in turn influence how one—anyone—interprets actions of the government, and therefore how observers of government actions, say, the press, report on them.

So, if everyone possesses a normal intelligence (that is, a normal brain) and is capable of making informed judgments, or capable of acquiring sufficient knowledge to make informed judgments, they can then fend for themselves without the need of handouts or regulation and control of their lives. This takes us to individualism, and from there it is a short step to laissez-faire capitalism.

Such a view instructs the first headlines above.

On the other hand, if some people are slow and dull-witted, cannot discern good from bad in their lives, and are incapable of acquiring the knowledge needed to improve their lives—well, one might conclude that they are “weak, stupid, and ignorant.”*

This view influences the second headlines.

More can be said. For example, the second headlines are dripping with unacknowledged Marxist premises, including Marx’s view of human nature that we are determined by economic circumstances.

Suffice it to say that negative bias, the kind that leans in one direction without providing alternative viewpoints and does not acknowledge underlying premises, dominates our culture, including the news we absorb from the media.

Come to think of it, it’s the same situation in academia. College professors, under the guise of academic freedom, are expert at negative bias. Alternative viewpoints are almost non-existent and underlying premises almost never presented or examined.

Reporters are only doing what they observed in the ivory tower and were taught by their professors.


* Recently, Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn cited a spate of articles by Leftist writers encouraging their compatriots to be less condescending to the poor and uneducated. One, however, could not even recommend less condescension without being condescending in the process, by suggesting broader appeals to those “persuadable, low information folks,” that is, those who are weak, stupid, and ignorant.