Reject help from media manipulators
By BRADLEY J. FIKES
It's false to think of the reported economic upturn as a "jobless recovery." Thousands of jobs are being created by American companies, but many are being created in India, where millions of trained, English-speaking workers are available there for a fraction of the cost of American equivalents.
This makes for a heart-wrenching story: Greedy companies throw out Americans and hire foreign replacements very cheaply. Outsourcing advocates sound cold and heartless when they correctly point out that a company endangers its own health ---- and the future of all its employees ---- if it turns down a chance to cut costs and become more competitive.
Because the story is so inflammatory, India's software trade association, Nasscom, has done what seems logical: It has hired a PR agency to help refute anti-outsourcing sentiment. But it made the worst choice possible: the infamous mega-PR firm Hill & Knowlton.
PR firms, with some honorable exceptions, are paid to present one side of the story without any attempt at balance. But Hill & Knowlton has an especially infamous history of deceit in an area that may arguably be described as lethal. I'm talking about cigarettes.
Hill & Knowlton started working for the tobacco industry in 1953, when courageous voices in the medical establishment began warning of the deadly effects of smoking. The firm continued its disinformation campaign until 1968.
John Hill, the firm's late founder, personally coached the tobacco industry on how to manipulate public opinion and cover up the evidence of smoking's harm. You can search the history of this man's deadly campaign for Big Tobacco at http://tobaccodocuments.org.
Today, of course, even the tobacco companies admit that smoking kills. Their major defense in tobacco litigation is that everyone knows smoking is dangerous, so smokers knowingly consumed a deadly product.
But for decades Hill and his kind were supremely successful in covering up the truth about tobacco. They helped millions of people around the world to unknowingly puff their way into early graves.
Despite this record, Hill & Knowlton still reveres its founder. That, without too much of a stretch, may tell you a lot about its present-day ethics.
By no means is Hill & Knowlton the only PR firm with a dishonorable past. Many of its competitors represented dictators such as Nicolae Ceausescu, the brutal Romanian tyrant killed by his own people in 1989.
India's software professionals will not be well-served by such amoral connections. My advice to them: Tell your own story, and reject the temptation of media manipulators. Unless, of course, you want to wind up as popular as Big Tobacco.
NCTimes
It's false to think of the reported economic upturn as a "jobless recovery." Thousands of jobs are being created by American companies, but many are being created in India, where millions of trained, English-speaking workers are available there for a fraction of the cost of American equivalents.
This makes for a heart-wrenching story: Greedy companies throw out Americans and hire foreign replacements very cheaply. Outsourcing advocates sound cold and heartless when they correctly point out that a company endangers its own health ---- and the future of all its employees ---- if it turns down a chance to cut costs and become more competitive.
Because the story is so inflammatory, India's software trade association, Nasscom, has done what seems logical: It has hired a PR agency to help refute anti-outsourcing sentiment. But it made the worst choice possible: the infamous mega-PR firm Hill & Knowlton.
PR firms, with some honorable exceptions, are paid to present one side of the story without any attempt at balance. But Hill & Knowlton has an especially infamous history of deceit in an area that may arguably be described as lethal. I'm talking about cigarettes.
Hill & Knowlton started working for the tobacco industry in 1953, when courageous voices in the medical establishment began warning of the deadly effects of smoking. The firm continued its disinformation campaign until 1968.
John Hill, the firm's late founder, personally coached the tobacco industry on how to manipulate public opinion and cover up the evidence of smoking's harm. You can search the history of this man's deadly campaign for Big Tobacco at http://tobaccodocuments.org.
Today, of course, even the tobacco companies admit that smoking kills. Their major defense in tobacco litigation is that everyone knows smoking is dangerous, so smokers knowingly consumed a deadly product.
But for decades Hill and his kind were supremely successful in covering up the truth about tobacco. They helped millions of people around the world to unknowingly puff their way into early graves.
Despite this record, Hill & Knowlton still reveres its founder. That, without too much of a stretch, may tell you a lot about its present-day ethics.
By no means is Hill & Knowlton the only PR firm with a dishonorable past. Many of its competitors represented dictators such as Nicolae Ceausescu, the brutal Romanian tyrant killed by his own people in 1989.
India's software professionals will not be well-served by such amoral connections. My advice to them: Tell your own story, and reject the temptation of media manipulators. Unless, of course, you want to wind up as popular as Big Tobacco.
NCTimes
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