Techniques · Structural

Leak and plant

Placing a message in the press through an unattributed leak or a story arranged to look independently reported, so that the audience receives it as news rather than as the interested party's statement.

Family Structural First documented 1928 Exploits Authority bias, Halo effect Related fallacy Appeal to authority
How it works

A statement from a company or a ministry is read as advocacy; a story that a reporter "has learned" is read as fact. The device produces the second kind of story from the first kind of source. A leak to a chosen journalist, an "exclusive" arranged by a press office, a survey commissioned to generate a headline, a "senior official" quoted without a name: each puts the party's message in the paper under the paper's authority, with the party's fingerprints removed.

Bernays was candid about the method in his own memoir, describing how he arranged for physicians to be surveyed about breakfast so that the resulting story, "doctors urge heartier breakfasts," could sell bacon for a client. Intelligence services call the unattributed version gray propaganda; public relations calls it earned media. Exploits Authority Bias and the trust in independent reporting.

Historical examples

1920s · public relations

Hired by the Beech-Nut Packing Company to sell bacon, Bernays arranged for a physician to write to some five thousand colleagues asking whether a hearty breakfast was healthier than a light one. The physicians' predictable answer was released as news, "4,500 physicians urge bigger breakfast," and bacon and eggs became the American breakfast. Bernays told the story himself as an example of his craft.

Bernays, Edward L. Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965; Tye, Larry. The Father of Spin. New York: Crown, 1998.

1976 · Church Committee

The Senate committee chaired by Frank Church reported that the Central Intelligence Agency had maintained relationships with journalists and news organizations through which material could be placed in the foreign press and, on occasion, fed back into the American press without attribution. The report's account of "gray" placement is the official description of the device at state scale.

U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Final Report, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence. Washington: GPO, 1976, "The CIA and the Media."

In advertising and commerce

2008 · journalism research

A Cardiff University study of British national newspapers found that a majority of domestic news stories were wholly or mainly derived from press-agency copy or public relations material, and that most were published without independent checking. Nick Davies's Flat Earth News named the result "churnalism": the planted story as the ordinary case.

Davies, Nick. Flat Earth News. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008; Lewis, Justin, Andrew Williams, and Bob Franklin. "A Compromised Fourth Estate? UK News Journalism, Public Relations and News Sources." Journalism Studies 9, no. 1 (2008): 1–20.

Classroom prompt

Find a news story with an unnamed source. Who would want this story published? Does that party's interest match what the source said?

In the wild

Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.

1
"Sources close to the deal say the merger will create 2,000 jobs." The sources are the company's advisers; the figure is the company's.

What to notice. The party's claim printed as the paper's report, with the party's name removed.

2
A "new survey finds Britons want more sun holidays." The survey was commissioned by a tour operator and released to travel editors.

What to notice. A story manufactured to be reported, so the advertiser's message arrives as news.

3
Three papers ran the same "exclusive" on the minister's rival, from an unnamed "party source," on the same morning.

What to notice. A coordinated leak placed to look like independent reporting.

Sources

  1. Bernays, Edward L. Biography of an Idea. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.
  2. Davies, Nick. Flat Earth News. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008. ISBN 978-0701181451
  3. Lewis, Justin, Andrew Williams, and Bob Franklin. "A Compromised Fourth Estate?" Journalism Studies 9, no. 1 (2008): 1–20. doi:10.1080/14616700701767974
  4. U.S. Senate Select Committee (Church Committee). Final Report, Book I. Washington: GPO, 1976.