Strategic Communications Quotes
In the 1960s, the cigarette companies and their lobbyists paid consultants and some scientists to demonstrate that tobacco did not cause cancer. By the beginning of the 21st century, the practice of lobbyist bought research was very common. The lobbyists realized that their many might alter the approach and quality of the research so the results would support their political points of view. If the studies did not, the lobbyists and industries simply did not make the results public, and the terms of their financing often prohibited the consultants from releasing information on their own,
Ailes was the inventor of the "Video News Release", a deceptive practice which was so successful that politicians of all political stripes started using it. Then government agencies started promoting their programs using it. But soon private corporations adopted Ailes technique and made the Video News Release a mainstream advertising and public relations technique and by 1990, it had lost all ethical taints and was used throughout the world with very little of the old moral and ethical compunctions or stigma.
