Communications: Information Transparency or Advocacy and Propaganda

It was interesting to attend last week’s mayoral election and hear our new Mayor, John Seybert, speak. A couple of his comments however were of major concern. He made it clear that he liked sports metaphors and explained that he would prefer to think of himself as a supposed basketball point guard mayor who will distribute the ball to the rest of his team members in the manner that he sees best fit to advance his agenda. I wonder if he also picked that metaphor because he realized that in basketball there are only five players on the field.

Fortunately the reality of sports metaphors is that they are also some of the ones that best illustrate the problems created by having a team that is made up of individuals with the same strengths and weaknesses. Imagine a soccer team with eleven goalies, they may never lose but they will also never win. Not to mention the team of only forwards that is fated to lose no matter how many times it scores. The fact is that to be a successful soccer team you need at least one goalie, five defenders and five midfielders and forwards. Pretty much any other combination is likely to in the long term be a losing proposition. In the same manner a city that has more high tech workers than any other type of worker is not likely to be viable in the long-term. Group after group heralds the fact that for every high tech worker at least five support personnel are required and yet as a local city we are insisting on putting policies in place that displace and crowd out all but those very same high tech workers.

The second comment that just elected Mayor Seybert made that really concerned me was his suggestion and I hope that is all it is for new Vice Mayor Bain to focus on communications. A communications and public relations leader in the private sector, as the Vice Mayor is, advocates for positions that will benefit his or her company. However in government there isn’t supposed to be advocacy; there is instead supposed to be transparency. In fact when governments advocate for certain outcomes that is considered to be propaganda and is illegal. But then again this is the city that for thirteen years had a communications manager that after retiring was hired by another nearby city to help massage and better communicate the nearby City’s agenda’s which resulted in formal complaints being lodged with the Fair Political Practices Commission, the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office and the grand jury. http://almanacnews.com/news/2014/11/03/menlo-park-consultants-proposal-was-rejected)

More recently this past week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was instead of communicating and informing the public in violation of propaganda and anti-lobbying provisions:

“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated publicity or propaganda and anti-lobbying provisions contained in appropriations acts with its use of certain social media platforms in association with its “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rulemaking in fiscal years 2014 and 2015. Specifically, EPA violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition though its use of a platform known as Thunderclap that allows a single message to be shared across multiple Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts at the same time. EPA engaged in covert propaganda when the agency did not identify EPA’s role as the creator of the Thunderclap message to the target audience. The agency’s #DitchtheMyth and #CleanWaterRules social media campaigns did not implicate the publicity or propaganda prohibition. EPA also violated anti-lobbying provisions though its hyperlinks to certain external Web pages in an EPA blog post. Both of the external Web pages led to appeals to the public to contact Congress in support of the WOTUS rule, which taken in context, constituted appeals to contact Congress in opposition to pending legislation. EPA associated itself with these messages through its decision to include the hyperlinks in its blog post.” http://www.gao.gov/products/B-326944

Interestingly enough before deciding to run I interviewed now Vice Mayor Ian Bain and asked him about this very subject given that as I already mentioned he is the communications director of a high tech company. At the time he also shared some of my concerns. Given so many projects in the pipeline including the Inner Harbor Specific Plan, I am hoping that the fact that our new Mayor wants to make our new Vice Mayor responsible for communications will not mean that he or anyone else either on Council or on City Staff ends up crossing the line into advocacy and propaganda.

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