Don Meyer, a special assistant for communications strategy in the Department of Defense, revealed a behind-the-scenes account of the Bush Administration’s public-relations operations and shared career-networking advice Wednesday. He addressed more than 50 students at a Public Relations Student Society of America meeting in Vilas Hall.
During a speech that lasted approximately 50 minutes, Meyer considered the pressure among the Bush Administration’s public-relations departments as they dealt with Sept. 11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I really haven’t had a typical day in three years,” said Meyer, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication who started working up to 15-hour days at the Pentagon in July 2001. “We are fighting a perception that there’s widespread chaos in Iraq right now, and it’s very daunting to try to correct that perception.”
Meyer cited the department’s Coalition Information Center, a network of communication centers located throughout the world, as an example of one of the Bush Administration’s new ideas to respond to U.S. military actions and quickly dispel any potential disinformation in the 24-hour news cycle.
In addition, he touted the presence of 400-600 journalists in the Iraq war as a major success and as very beneficial to both the U.S. government and to the American public.
However, he also talked in length about difficulties and pressures the Bush Administration’s public-relations departments have faced since the United States began efforts to reconstruct Iraq.
“We’re learning that sometimes we have to do things that we (in the United States) see as repugnant,” Meyer said, discussing the communications strategy of working with major news operations before releasing the pictures of Saddam Hussein’s dead sons. “The decision was made that pictures of [Uday and Qusay Hussein] had to be shown to show Iraqi people that these guys weren’t coming back.”
Meyer added, “There is news about a soldier getting killed every day — or almost every day — and then there’s [news like] a hospital getting a new roof put on. The challenge for us at the Pentagon is to acknowledge the bad news and figure out ‘What’s our strategy for getting (positive) news out?'”
Reactions from the audience, comprised mostly of PRSSA members and a few students interested in politics, were generally positive. Afterward Meyer spent time offering career advice to some of the public-relations students.
“I [came] to get some insights in the world of political communication,” UW senior Scott Larrivee said. “It’s definitely something I am interested in, and I thought it was really interesting to see the perspective inside the Pentagon.”
Meyer has also spoken to journalism and political classes on campus this week on an invitation from the UW School of Journalism, which he says he was encouraged to accept as part a Department of Defense program to publicize and discuss the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq.
“He’s an amazing person to [have] visit us, especially with the situation in Iraq right now,” UW PRSSA President Sarah Lehrman said. “He’s definitely on the front of everything that’s going on (in Washington).”
