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Aughie and Nis discuss the Gillette Amendment, 5 United States Code Section 3107, and the use of public relations specialists by the United States Government.
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Government Public Relations
Announcer: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
Nia Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
John Aughenbaugh: Morning Nia. How are you?
Nia Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
John Aughenbaugh: I'm good. Thank you.
Nia Rodgers: I don't know if you've noticed this, but I bet you have because you're dash clever this way. That the messaging around vaccinations has had an ongoing PR problem in that it has been, I think maybe PR people might call it messy. It's been a bit messy.
John Aughenbaugh: It's one of those things and listeners, Nia is making reference to the fact that here we are at the time of recording, we are now well over a year and 1/2 into the US version of COVID-19.
Nia Rodgers: Wear masks, don't wear masks. Wear a mask, but wear this kind of mask and not that kind of mask. Everybody should get a vaccination, but we're going to start with our medical staff because that seems like a good idea. In case it doesn't work, we'll kill all of them off and then nobody can give us medical care. I don't know why the United States did that. Other countries started with their old people. That seems dangerous too. Hey, let's inoculate old people in case it doesn't work. But it does work, the vaccines work. But like don't give it to pregnant women, give it to pregnant women, don't give it to the immunocompromised, give it to immunocompromised. Then now there's talk about boosters and all this kind of stuff. I know that part of it is because the science changes.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: As they find out more and as more studies are done, then they know how things are passed. Remember when you had to wipe down your groceries?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. I remember.
Nia Rodgers: Now they're like, turns out it doesn't really live on surfaces that long.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. I remember that in the first few months of COVID-19, for those of us who like to exercise outdoors, we're actually told you had to wear a mask, which for many of us who like to run or bicycle outdoors we're like, "We've got to wear a mask to do this stuff?" Now they're just being outdoors is probably the safest place to be maskless.
Nia Rodgers: Exactly. They like you to make your indoors as much as outdoor as you can. They'd like you to ventilate.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Whatever spot you're in.
John Aughenbaugh: A lot of the difficulty and there's a lot of ways to unpack the issue of how does the government during a pandemic convey information so that the public cannot be harmed by, in this instance, COVID-19 because it's a public health crisis. The job or the job for the government is to, if you will, come up with public health solutions that mitigate the harm. For our listeners, if it sounds like you're getting a decidedly homeland security and emergency preparedness, for this one is.
Nia Rodgers: World video. You are.
John Aughenbaugh: Please recall that Nia, one of her degrees is a master's degree in homeland security and emergency preparedness. Also remember too for a good chunk of my professional career, I was a faculty member in a Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Department, Academic Department.
Nia Rodgers: Chair for quite awhile.
John Aughenbaugh: Well, Chair for a number of years.
Nia Rodgers: It's not like it wasn't central to both of our keeping you awake at night, all of the things you worry about kind of thing.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Pandemic was one of those. Because pandemic is so hard to stop. As both President Trump and President Biden have found out, it's not a partisan issue. Pandemics are not a partisan issue in the sense of oh, well, only Republicans are going to get sick or only Democrats are going to get sick. That's ridiculous. Doesn't work that way. I would put that I think that the ever evolving standards have made both presidents look mildly ineffectual.
John Aughenbaugh: Ineffectual.
Nia Rodgers: I honestly believe that both of those men would have stopped the pandemic in a day if they could have figured out how. I believe that both of them did not want Americans to die in the hundreds of thousands, they did not want to have to shut down economies, they didn't want to have to do all that stuff because what President wants that on their record.
John Aughenbaugh: On their watch.
Nia Rodgers: When I was President, we lost $80 billion, million, zillion out of the economy. Go me.
John Aughenbaugh: Nia, you're well aware of this. One of the American presidents have been long fascinated by is Herbert Hoover. Hoover was President when the Great Depression hit.
Nia Rodgers: Hoovervilles.
John Aughenbaugh: I've said this a number of times and people roll their eyes. If you look at Herbert Hoover's career, he was an exemplary public servant except for the fact that on his watch, the Great Depression commenced. But this is the guy who's credited with saving millions of lives because he came up with the food program during World War 1. This was a guy who after he was President, was employed by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to reorganize the executive branch of the US government. He was a great manager, but on his watch the Great Depression occurred. He's forever going to be labeled the guy who wouldn't respond to the suffering of the Great Depression. No President wants that. No President wants to be known as the guy or the person who while they were President the country faltered.
Nia Rodgers: Well, no President wants to be known for Hoovervilles.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Which were homeless camps basically.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Just like the Mayor of LA would love to clean up homelessness in LA. A mayor, some Mayor, any mayor would like to do that because can you imagine having that achievement on your resume? Your next stop is either the Senate or the White House if you can end homelessness in LA. But getting aside from all that. But what we're talking about here a lot of it is messaging. I want to ask you, did President Washington have a PR guy?
John Aughenbaugh: No. Our first President, George Washington, did not have a public relations person. He didn't have a press secretary, he didn't have a director for the Office of Communications. The idea that in government there would be public relations people really did not arise until during and after the Civil War.
Nia Rodgers: For a long time presidents got by without having to and I quote, "Talk directly to the people." Which is what you're trying to do when you're messaging out of the White House is you're trying to bypass media and other institutions.
John Aughenbaugh: Other institutions to speak directly to the people.
Nia Rodgers: Until then nobody want to speak directly to the people.
John Aughenbaugh: Well, but also too remember Nia, with a few notable exceptions, most presidents. For that matter, the executive branch of the US government was not the dominant branch.
Nia Rodgers: It would've been Congress.
John Aughenbaugh: It was congress. Certainly not the courts. Okay?
Nia Rodgers: Well, the courts is at the beginning where you were saying they were like an afterthought, I guess we need some courts and.
John Aughenbaugh: It wasn't a desirable job.
Nia Rodgers: I'm going to need you to ride all over the United States on horseback.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, remember the United States Supreme Court doesn't get its own building until 1935.
Nia Rodgers: Yeah. [inaudible 00:09:26] moved up haven't they.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. But in bureaucratic politics, if you don't have your own building, you can go. I mean, that sends a very clear message.
Nia Rodgers: I see.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: Don't you have a building? Well, then you're not important. Oh my goodness.
John Aughenbaugh: I mean, think about this Nia, within our own little world of bureaucratic politics at VCU. If you don't have your own office, it says so much about how the institution values your position.
Nia Rodgers: And if your office is in one of the older, leakier buildings.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: All that other stuff. That says something different than if you're in one of the woo-woo nicer.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right, and is your office close to positions of authority? The old maxim in real estate; location, location, location. Go back to this idea of public relations. I've had students, particularly those students whose major or their second major or their minor is mass communications. Okay, will go ahead and ask me, why should the government be concerned about the messages it sends to the public? I frequently respond with, okay guys. The underlying theory of most western democracies is what's known as the Social Contract theory. The Social Contract theory says that the public hires others to govern. In exchange, the public gets things like order, stability, security, et cetera. But to make decisions about who to hire for positions in government, the public needs information. At some point, the government has to convey what they've been doing, how they've been doing it, why they've been doing it.
Nia Rodgers: Or not. We didn't do this thing because the following reasons. So that they don't get blamed for not doing a thing.
John Aughenbaugh: That's right.
Nia Rodgers: Because you can get in as much trouble for not doing a thing as for doing the wrong thing. As Hoover found out.
John Aughenbaugh: Again, apply this now to something like COVID-19 and Nia, we started this episode with the claim, how has the government done an effective public relations job in regards to COVID-19? According to many, the answer is, not all that well.
Nia Rodgers: There's so much to unpack with that because the first thing that you have to get at is the idea of who are you even trying to reach, and how do you have a broad enough message that it reaches everybody, but specific enough it targets specific groups that you needed to target? It's hard, it's a complicated thing, and I'm assuming that there are a lot of years of history of trying to get it right and trying to build how one does that, and how one does that legally because I'm assuming there are things that the government cannot, I mean are there limitations on what the government can release information-wise or what the government can promote?
John Aughenbaugh: Well, in there what you're talking about, first of all, what can the government do in regards to public relations? Are there limitations? Now, there are certain limitations. For instance, as we've discussed in previous podcast episodes, when you have things like the Freedom of Information Act or the Sunshine Act. You know that this idea that there is certain government information that can be kept secret.
Nia Rodgers: If it's going to endanger people's lives, if it's going to endanger ongoing operations, if it releases people's medical information, then those things are not to be released.
John Aughenbaugh: That's right.
Nia Rodgers: So the CIA may very well have had people stare at goats trying to make them pass out, but I bet they could hide behind HIPAA and not tell you.
John Aughenbaugh: There is that, they could also go ahead and say, "This is part of us trying to figure out how to best collect intelligence against enemies both domestic and foreign.
Nia Rodgers: All right.
John Aughenbaugh: But then you also have budgetary constraints. Congress may not allow the executive branch to release certain information.
Nia Rodgers: Because of budget?
John Aughenbaugh: Well, the Congress can go ahead and say to a federal agency, "You don't have the money to go ahead and tell people about Acts, even if agency wants to."
Nia Rodgers: I see. We're not going to let you print that book or that pamphlet because it's going to cost $18 million to get it to every American, and we just are not going to give you the money to do it?
John Aughenbaugh: That's right. Or to think about, for instance, at one point, the United States Congress passed what was known as the Gillette Amendment. The Gillette Amendment was attached to the authorizing legislation for the Interstate Commerce Commission. And the Gillette Amendment basically said, "The Interstate Commerce Commission was not allowed to hire individuals for public relations positions." Congress was basically telling an executive branch agency, "We don't want you to engage in public relations."
Nia Rodgers: Is that because they were worried that it would be massaged the way like the big PR firms on, I'm thinking Mad Men type. Where they tell you the truth, but it's dressed up the way they want you to see something because-
John Aughenbaugh: According to various mass comm scholars, there were a number of reasons why the Gillette Amendment was passed by Congress, and one was interest groups didn't want certain government agencies that have regulatory authority, to be publicizing their regulatory efforts.
Nia Rodgers: They didn't want competition?
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: So you have say, Monsanto doesn't want the Department of Agriculture to go on some PR campaign saying, "You shouldn't buy seeds that don't reproduce year after year. You should buy year-long seeds." Because they could actually put Monsanto out of business.
John Aughenbaugh: Or they didn't want the government to go ahead and demonstrate to the public that there are regulatory efforts were actually achieving measurable public goods.
Nia Rodgers: We've brought salmon back to this river because we regulated it and bloody, bloody, bloody see, nice salmon. Then the people who want to capture the salmon.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, like bad government.
Nia Rodgers: That's interesting.
John Aughenbaugh: But there's also a larger undercurrent. You see this a little bit with people's response to the government's effort to quell COVID-19 and that is the government engaged in propaganda. The government is trying to convince people to do things that they would not normally want to do through the use of propaganda.
Nia Rodgers: Congress didn't want that.
John Aughenbaugh: There have been members of Congress who are very skeptical of the Executive Branch doing that thing.
Nia Rodgers: Well, because I guess if it were victory gardens, that's a good thing, but if it were the purge, that's a bad thing. You can't control that message because you can't control that White House so you can't say you can only release good information or positive. Because you could get a government that decided that there was going to put out pamphlets to say, I don't know, something wildly anti-Semitic, for instance and have people assume that that's the position of the government. I see. Part of that would be to prevent the government from endorsing activities that could be dangerous or debilitating. Not only to corporations but to individuals.
John Aughenbaugh: Individuals. I mean, think about how effective the Nazis in Germany were at propaganda.
Nia Rodgers: They had regular people believing that somehow Jews were the devil and out to get them in. Thus made it easier to go along with the [inaudible 00:20:16] later.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Or the the Soviet Union in programs. Where the enemy of the state, you should go ahead. Whoever the enemy of the state was that particular year, that particular decade. You should turn in, those enemies of the state.
Nia Rodgers: In China, you see social media points being awarded?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes, yes.
Nia Rodgers: If you don't get the points there's things you can't do. It's a way to control your population without actually appearing to control your population.
John Aughenbaugh: Without officially suppressing them.
Nia Rodgers: It's a velvet glove over an iron fence.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. But the larger issue here for public administration scholars is the fact that the government does so much, particularly post Great Depression, post-World War II. The rise of the modern administrative state. For many public administration scholars, the issue is most federal government agencies are terrible at public relations. Because we want the government to communicate with the public. Think about, for instance, we want the government to communicate with those Americans who could receive government benefits, needy and poor people. Because there are federal government programs to help them.
Nia Rodgers: Apparently one of the problems with the granting of money for the rent relief is that a lot of people didn't know how to go about it. Then of course, we had problems with state setting up programs and there's all kind of issues with that, but people didn't know they were eligible.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Think about, for instance, all those public service announcements about how to get rid of child abuse, spousal abuse, elder abuse. Why are those public service announcements only on late night TV? Why aren't they part of prime time viewing TV? Why aren't they on social media? We have federal agencies that are designed to go ahead and stop the use of defective products, drugs, et cetera. Part of the issue is, is there a saturation point? Because if the government engaged in all of that public relations, all of that education, at what point does the public just go a head and say, enough, I'm not going to listen anymore.
Nia Rodgers: So you have to pick and choose? Is the reason that some of that stuff is not made. We have two things at work here. I'm sorry, let me finish this thought. We have two things that work here, which is one, the Gillette Amendment, which limits the amount that the government can do that. Then two, the government sends self-limit imposed limitation of, there's only so many times I should say this because it will stop being effective if I continue to say it. Or I'm not saying it effectively. You have both of those streams working together to limit but I put to you, I do not believe that public relations has gone away.
John Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness. No.
Nia Rodgers: I suspect that it's gone underground or it's called something else.
John Aughenbaugh: It's called something else.
Nia Rodgers: The urge to brag is extraordinarily human. I can't imagine that the Congress saying, Hey, turn that off would actually work.
John Aughenbaugh: Nia you're correct. I mean, it's not gone away. Instead, the positions in most executive branch agencies are not called PR people. What was the phrase that Orwell used?
Nia Rodgers: They get more Orwellian. We can use that phrase about him.
John Aughenbaugh: What I mean, there are entitled now public information officers or public affairs officers. Communication specialists, facilitators.
John Aughenbaugh: There was a period in the late 1980s, early 1990s when you had total quality management. The public were not citizens, they were clients. Then you have federal agencies create client relations manager, right?
Nia Rodgers: Buzzwords.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Then if you were playing, drinking bingo, you can get smashed.
John Aughenbaugh: Oh my goodness, yes.
Nia Rodgers: On hearing the buzzwords. Not encouraging you to do that, just it's possible.
John Aughenbaugh: This was in the 1990s, the Republicans in the House of Representatives formally requested the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration to do a study of how many federal employees were designated as, "information specialists" and OMB stopped counting after they got to 5,000. It's not that the federal government, particularly the executive branch doesn't have the capacity to do good public relations. The issue becomes, as you just pointed out, how do you do it effectively depending on a particular purpose or a particular situation or particular context. How do you do it effectively? Again, if we go back to the example, Nia, of COVID-19, part of the issue as you pointed out a few moments ago is; what should be the targeted public for a given presidential administrations, PR, if you will strategy? What is the effect of the public? Again, this gets back to the fundamental question of when I teach public policy. Who is the public that is being targeted by government policies?
Nia Rodgers: Right.
John Aughenbaugh: Should it be a majority of the public? Well, if that's the case, what about minorities or the minority, right?
Nia Rodgers: Right. We would back to the majority at that point. But also define majority because if you're talking about maternal health, that's women. The majority of those folks are women and so reaching men with a message about maternal health probably is a waste of your time and effort, for the most part. Men care about women who are pregnant but they cannot do anything about women who are pregnant. They can't make them eat differently or take medications or do whatever. Even within something like that, how do you figure out which targeted group and then how do you get to them without getting to everybody else?
John Aughenbaugh: For instance, Nia, you and I discussed this with our colleague, Judy Twig in a previous podcast episode about COVID-19 as a pandemic. Who do you target for the government's public health efforts? There are certain populations who will do what the government wants them to do to respond to a public health crisis. They will wear their masks. They will get the vaccination. They will socially distance. Those millions of people you could basically just go ahead and roll it out in one press conference and they will follow it until they are told otherwise. But then think about all of the sub-populations in the United States who have not followed individual components of the public health response of the government. So, Nia and listeners, you probably know folks who are vehemently opposed to getting vaccinated. Why don't they want to get vaccinated? You have to mine down even deeper, okay?
Nia Rodgers: Right, because it's a different message if they're doing it for a religious reason than if they're doing it for a health reason than if they're doing it for a political reason or social pressure reason. Those all are going to be different messages to encourage them to stretch their boundaries a little bit.
John Aughenbaugh: How do you go ahead and convinced people that after a year-and-a-half plus of wearing masks, that the might have to wear mask again?
Nia Rodgers: That's a current question that's people are like, "But I'm vaccinated." Why do I have to wear a mask? There's scientific reasons for that, which we're not going to get into here.
John Aughenbaugh: What about social distancing? For a lot of people going just one or two months without seeing people, without having close contact with others is debilitating mentally, psychologically. For others, for instance, somebody like myself, perhaps you, go a couple of months. Then what's the big deal?
Nia Rodgers: Well, and Zoom is enough for some people.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, whereas others, they want to be in the room. They want the conversation, they want the energy, they want to see real time, no more than six inches away somebody else's face. In this case there is difficulty here, But then you throw on science and this has been one of the biggest criticisms of first the Trump administration, but now the Bush administration. How do you accurately but also effectively convey the evolving science in response to a public health crisis?
Nia Rodgers: It's a moving target.
John Aughenbaugh: This is where you're starting to see a lot of criticism, for instance of Dr. Fauchi, but also the current director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Lewinsky.
Nia Rodgers: Can I make a suggestion here for just a moment? Sometimes the other thing that happens and I think that may be happening with Dr. Fauci a little right now and has happened with other people in the past, is there's person fatigue, where you get tired of hearing it from a person. I'm not in any way, I'm not a smoker. I don't promote smoking. In fact, I would urge people strongly not to start and to stop if they possibly can. It's detrimental to your health. But remember Surgeon General Koop, pretty much said it every time he opened his mouth. He would say, "I'd like white wine with dinner and by the way, stop smoking." It was a constant thing for him and in part, it's because smoking was at that point there was the whole thing with the industry and trying to say, it's not addictive, even though they knew it was addictive. But he pushed that message so much that I think there were smokers that stopped listening because they had heard from him over and over and over and over and over again. He was the front face of that effort. I wonder if people are a little fatigued with Dr. Fauci, and if maybe there should have been more of a team and less of a one-person that was in the media that made a lot of appearances and that kind of thing.
John Aughenbaugh: Particularly, when that person is so unwilling to go ahead and budge from certain talking points. I find your example of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to be rather fascinating, because Koop was so unwilling to go ahead and budge from that particular message, right?
Nia Rodgers: Right.
John Aughenbaugh: It got to a point where members of Congress who were supportive of his message stopped having him testify at congressional hearings. He was surgeon general at least for one administration, the Reagan administration, who stopped inviting him to public health meetings because the rest of the White House was so tired of him just beating them over the head with that message.
Nia Rodgers: It's not that it's a bad message. There's fatigue in the message. Then a lot of times those people are what I call true believers, which means that when they are confronted with a member of Congress who pushes their buttons in some way, then when they're testifying or when they're speaking, they can get a little [inaudible 00:36:10] and dismissive and rude.
John Aughenbaugh: Then they're hostile.
Nia Rodgers: The other thing is if there's a team of people, nobody knows how to push your buttons, all of you. But once they've gotten to know you, they know exactly how to push your buttons. It's like when the press used to be in Rumsfeld's press conferences, they knew how to rile him up faster than just about anything because they hung around with him all the time. They knew how to get under his skin, and I think Rand Paul has discovered how to get under Dr. Fauci's skin.
John Aughenbaugh: Listeners, Nia just gave the example of then-Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld during the Bush 43 presidential administration. Rumsfeld frequently held press conferences to discuss how the United States was doing post 9/11 in Iraq, in Afghanistan. But the questions about Iraq in particular just annoyed Rumsfeld to no end. Because his attitude was, we made a decision, Congress has given us the authorized use of military force, and this is what we're going to do. The pressure go ahead and, basically, rah, rah, rah, rally behind the flag. They went rallying behind the flag. Rumsfeld was as just like, "I answered that question three months ago," and the press was just like, "Yeah, but there's new evidence," and Rumsfeld was just like, "Yeah. Well, we've discounted that evidence. Next question." He was just openly dismissive of the press corp.
Nia Rodgers: I do think that if you're an agency, you have to be careful who's speaking for you. Because you can really get that buggered up pretty quickly.
John Aughenbaugh: Now, both liberals and conservatives love it when Fauci goes to Congress and testifies in front of the United States Senate and Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky gets the floor. The mean machine goes on overdrive.
Nia Rodgers: It's a popcorn event.
John Aughenbaugh: Liberals are just like, Fauci just handed Rand Paul's lunch, and conservatives are like, Rand Paul went ahead and exposed Fauci for the duplicitous the government official that he is.
Nia Rodgers: Both sides think I win and in fact, I'm not entirely certain anybody wins. But more importantly, the message of both sides gets muddled.
John Aughenbaugh: Part of the difficulty here is and Nia, you've heard me say this in a number of my colleagues in the Political Science Department have heard me say this, the difficulty or the criticism I've had of both the Trump administration first, and now the Biden administration second, in regards to this COVID-19 public health crisis, is the unwillingness to acknowledge that the science is going to be ever-changing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nia Rodgers: But presidents don't like to come across as not knowing facts.
John Aughenbaugh: This reminds me, and I know listeners, you're probably tired of me and Nia referencing this old TV show. But this does remind me of a West Wing episode, at least part of it is, is entitled Green Beans.
John Aughenbaugh: This is a West Wing episode where President Bartlett's bag person, door person, Charlie, responds to a foodie magazine who asked, what does President Bartlett like or dislike in regards to food? Charlie reports that president Bartlett likes steak, he likes lobster, but he doesn't like green beans. The West Wing staff goes just bonkers because they're just like, how did that, [inaudible 00:40:58] how did you say that?
Nia Rodgers: There's thousands of green bean farmers and what if they-
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, particularly, in states that we barely won in the last election. And Charlie is befuddled because Charlie's like, "He doesn't like green beans. He doesn't say the green bean farmers are bad people. He just doesn't like green beans." Right?
Nia Rodgers: Right.
John Aughenbaugh: But no presidential administration wants to come out and say something. Okay, that would suggest that they don't know or what they do know will upset people. They hedge. They say, "Well, hey, if we get to this threshold, then we should return to normal.? Okay? What they could've said was, "If we get 75 percent or 70 percent of the population vaccinated, each should lead us back to being able to do certain things." But there are caveats, and one of the most important caveats is the delta variant, right?
Nia Rodgers: Varying delta lambda, now we've got the lambda to variant. It's a disease people, we can't predict it entirely. That's what they should have said. But both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and I think frankly, every person who's ever sat in the White House, does not like admitting they don't know, or I don't think they're comfortable with ambiguity when it comes to their image. They want to lead with, "Well, of course, I know things and I'm the president and you should have confidence in me." I think that's probably natural for that job but the problem is, when you get a disease, you can predict some stuff, but some stuff is always going to be what is it? Rumsfeld's known unknowns. There's going to be something, by the way, in case listeners want to watch that episode. It's called Galileo and it's a fabulous subset of West wing. But that scene ends with CJ saying to him, "This is a real problem because in an election year everybody is stupid." And he says, "No, everybody is treated like they're stupid."
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: That's part of the problem. If there is a level of honesty with the American public of, "We have no idea if this is going to work or not, we're going to try it. We're going to see if it works and if it doesn't, we're going to come back with something different. But instead, you get these solid messages of, "Okay everybody wash their groceries." Then six months later, "Okay, forget washing your groceries," and we're like, "Wait, did the signs change or did you not know at the beginning and you took the hardest line possible?" It undermines confidence.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Whereas if you'd started off by saying, "We don't know, so we're going to tell you to do a bunch of stuff hoping that some of this spaghetti will stick to the wall when we throw it. We're going to ask you to wear a mask, social distance, and we're going to ask you to wash things and as we figure out what doesn't work, we will tell you and you can stop doing that." But that's not what they did. They came out with these edicts and then they lost people's confidence. I think a lot of people now don't want the vaccine because they have lost confidence in the entire system.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That's what I'm afraid.
Nia Rodgers: Me too.
John Aughenbaugh: Again, I do this for somewhat personal, selfish reasons. As long-time listeners know, I have a nine-year-old, for the last year and a half, she's done virtual learning. She's supposed to go back in-person.
Nia Rodgers: But she can't get a vaccine yet, right?
John Aughenbaugh: She cannot get a vaccine yet. I mean, if you want to talk about a PR problem, think about the subpopulations who are wondering why the FDA has not given final approval to the current vaccines.
Nia Rodgers: Right.
John Aughenbaugh: Okay.
Nia Rodgers: We've tried them out on 45 percent of the population. Now is probably an okay time to say, "Well, this was a big study with lots of participants," I mean.
John Aughenbaugh: Okay. But I don't know about you Nia, but I've watched, I've read the transcripts of a number of press conferences coming from the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA. I can't recall any of them actually explaining the approval process for the vaccines?
Nia Rodgers: No, they have not. Other people have had to step in and do that. The media has stepped in and done that, I think. But they have not explained their process. It seems opaque to people, and it seems random. Which again, not building confidence.
John Aughenbaugh: But I also have selfish reasons and I think Nia, you and I are on the same page on this. We work at a place where we have contact with one of the subpopulations that hasn't been vaccinated.
Nia Rodgers: Right.
John Aughenbaugh: Okay, or they have the opportunity to be vaccinated, but their vaccination rates aren't all that high. Again, why is it that this particular population that's been bombarded with all this information and with all these exhortations that they get vaccinated, still aren't getting vaccinated?
Nia Rodgers: Yeah. I mean, VCU has a relatively high vaccination rate.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: We're fortunate for that because I think that other schools that aren't requiring are not seeing as high a vaccination rate among many young people. I suspect that part of that is mixed message. That's the other thing, is they're getting messages on social media. They're getting messages from friends that say, "We don't need to, it's fine, we'll be fine. We're young, we can handle it, blah, blah, blah," or young people just don't need it if they're healthy. Then they're getting the message from the government of, "Oh, no, everybody needs it and they're getting messages from their university that says, 'It's mandated." If I were them, it would be really complicated for me to try to figure out who is giving me the best information. It doesn't help them that the information is evolving.
John Aughenbaugh: Some of this is generational. I mean, Nia, this past weekend, I got to spend some time with a colleague and good friend, Chris [inaudible 00:48:42] . We are of a generation where starting at the age of one and a half, we were vaccinated.
Nia Rodgers: I had the MMR, I had all the different things. When I came to college for the Homeland Security Program, they said, "Have you had a meningitis vaccine?" I said, "I don't know," and they said, "Well then you have to get one." I said, "Okay." I'm not resistant in any way because my generation we just took vaccine. If somebody told you had to have one, you rolled up your sleeve and you got a vaccine. Everybody in my generation is used to it.
John Aughenbaugh: The conversation I had with my colleague, Chris El Nino was, and I went back and I researched this. Ours was the first American generation that got max vaccinated. Because our parent's generation was the generation where they actually came up with vaccines to deal with things like polio and smallpox and chickenpox.
Nia Rodgers: Tuberculosis.
John Aughenbaugh: TB, etc. But before that, the idea that the government might put a shot into your body was completely unheard of.
Nia Rodgers: That's not going to be the government that does that. Now we're to the point where not only did the government come up with a vaccination for this thing but it's free. In our generation, parents had to pay for that, they had to pay for that at the pediatrician. It probably wasn't very expensive, but they still had to pay for it. Now the government is like, I will give it to you if you will just take it.
John Aughenbaugh: Now we see government jurisdictions that are paying people or enrolling them in lotteries. I even joked with Saladino, "Man I should have held out for a couple of months."
Nia Rodgers: I said that not too long ago I visited North Carolina. They are currently giving $100 to college-age students. I was like, "Man, that's better than selling your plasma. Just wait a minute and then go over there and get it," but my mother said that is not even funny. Because my mother is an elderly person.
John Aughenbaugh: Saladino and I went to Yankee Stadium to see a couple of Yankees games. While we're waiting in line to be admitted into the ballpark there were signs everywhere. If you come out next week and get vaccinated at the stadium, you get two free tickets for the Bleachers. I'm almost just like.
Nia Rodgers: I'll be back, I'll be back to get another vaccine.
John Aughenbaugh: [inaudible 00:51:52] . But again, what is the most effective messaging?
Nia Rodgers: Right. Because some of that lottery stuff is not working. People who are truly dug in about this and really don't want it, you could offer them a billion dollars and they don't want it. They're afraid for reasons, and simply saying get over it is not effective. That's not going to work. I think that that so far has been the tack that both administrations have taken, is the will you just do it because you need to do it. That's not getting at the reason that some people are resistant. Owning reasons, legitimate reasons why people are resistant would be more helpful in those messages.
John Aughenbaugh: This is probably my closing statement for this podcast episode. What we just got done discussing with this example of messaging in a public health crisis really does demonstrate Nia, the difficulty of doing effective public relations for the government.
Nia Rodgers: Yeah. There's 336 million of us and we're all individuals because we're Americans, and Americans believe in Individualism.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Pretty much that's the hill we die on.
John Aughenbaugh: Right.
Nia Rodgers: That's all of us. That's our hill.
John Aughenbaugh: That's our Omaha Beach, World War II reference. That is the metaphorical line in the sand where we're like, don't you dare cross that.
Nia Rodgers: Coming up with 336 million messages, it's a hard thing to do. I'm criticizing lovingly. I criticize because I don't think it went as well as it could have gone. I think maybe hiring professionals would've been a good thing except they can't because it's against the law. But they do all kinds of stuff that's against the law they probably could have done that too. She said bitterly. But I think you're right that it shows the complexity of reaching hundreds of different kinds of communities. How do you talk to the BIPOC communities and all the BIPOC communities are not the same? There's no monoliths that you can get your hands around to try to convince people. It's been a tough road.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I was having a conversation Nia, with somebody the other day who was openly critical of identity politics in group politics. They were like, "If so many Americans identify by particular characteristics or as membership in groups, should the government be able to target their message to individual groups?" I said, "But you're assuming that everybody in the group receives messages the same way." Mass communication studies tell us that's not the case. It might be cost-efficient to think that, but again just think about, for instance, older religious people. You and I we have family members who fall into that category, older, religious people. My mother and my grandmother couldn't wait to get vaccinated.
Nia Rodgers: My parents either.
John Aughenbaugh: On the other hand Nia, I go to church every weekend with folks who are older and religious and they're not going to get vaccinated.
Nia Rodgers: Well, because if the Lord wants to take me that way he can take me that way.
John Aughenbaugh: Exactly.
Nia Rodgers: Their faith in religion is stronger than their faith in the government.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. Nia Rodgers s: How do you reach them?
John Aughenbaugh: How do you reach them?
Nia Rodgers: God called he'd like you to take this vaccine, please. They're not going to believe that, especially from a heathen, somebody who's not of their faith.
John Aughenbaugh: Even excluding politics, some states are more Republican than Democrat, other states are more Democratic than Republican. Even if you include partisan politics, think about for instance, how those who have been vaccinated and who are more willing to wear a mask tend to be in the upper economic and social classes. How do you reach? This has been a problem historically when the government wants to do things for the lower economic and social classes. How do you reach them? Because these are the groups who historically have very little efficacy. They don't believe in the system, they don't believe in government.
Nia Rodgers: They're wildly distrustful and within many cases, good reason.
John Aughenbaugh: For good reason. This isn't a partisan politics thing, this is a fact that we have people in this country who are like the government has left us behind, the system doesn't work for me. Now they are telling me to go ahead and put a shot in my arm where the government experts have not given official approval to.
Nia Rodgers: The FDA holding off approvals is troubling for me and I understand the system more than other people because I study government just like you study government. If it's troubling for us I can't imagine what it is for people to whom the government is just a mystery. Just a giant mystery that occasionally comes in, wreaks havoc on their lives, and then goes on. It's like a black hole for them. I have enormous sympathy. I still think that people should get vaccinated. I think that our final message should be, please get vaccinated if you can, if you're physically able to. Some people can't because of their health conditions, but it will protect you, it will protect your family, it will protect your friend's kids. I mean, part of the reason I got vaccinated was because of Max and kids like Max that I can't protect any other way than to try to not make them sick. Same with my elderly parents. But the other message we have is for the government. Aughen, I would like to tell you all if you're listening, could you all just get your act together, please.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: If you need pointers, call us. We would be happy to help because neither one of us is a PR person so you could hire us and you wouldn't be breaking the law. I'm just saying. Thanks Aughie. This is complicated and I suspect we'll be back with it again at some point because I don't think we're done.
John Aughenbaugh: By the way, I really don't like the Greek alphabet right now because if I see another new strain.
Nia Rodgers: It's like hurricanes. I'm starting to get nervous about the various names, what letter we're on. When you start getting up into the Hs and the Is and the Js, then it's nerve-wracking.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because you're just like, oh, good Lord, we have another 10 letters. All right Nia, have a good weekend.
Nia Rodgers: You too.
John Aughenbaugh: All right. Bye.
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