Spokesperson – the institution of transparency in situations of politico-military crisis

Sarmiza (Bozga) ANDRONIC

Abstract: The present study aims to investigate the profile of the Spokesperson institution in situations of politico-military crisis. The first part of the analysis highlights both the low frequency with which the subject “Spokesperson”, as an institution, appears in the literature, and the very small space given to this topic in academic courses, communication and PR academic books, communication studies. The second part of the analysis tries to verify the working hypothesis, according to which, within politico-military crisis situations we deal, in fact, with a derivative of the spokesperson’s institution when compared to the fundamental attributes of it during peacetime (transparency, fact-based information, honesty). Case analyses of the behaviour of this institution in the Cuban missiles crisis (1962) and the Security Council of the UN (2003), along with specific information offered by the military personnel who activated in the fields of operation during the first military intervention in Iraq (1991) offer consistent support for the fact that the politico-military crises cannot have a spokesman institution that respects the basic characteristics that define it during the peacetime. In the conclusions we consider that we have to do with a validation of the research hypothesis concerning the falsification of the spokesperson institution during the politico-military crises, at least for the cases in which the transparency, the honesty, the information based on facts, endanger the life of soldiers in the war field or the state interest.

Keywords: Spokesperson, Politico-military crisis, Cuban crisis, Security Council, Communication.

Introduction – the aim of the study, hypothesis, methodology

The objective of the present ana­lysis is to sketch the unique profile of the spokesperson’s institution in situations of politico-military crisis by referring to its hypostasis in situations of peace. The two radically different relational and communi­cation contexts seem to require equally different profiles, if we refer to some of the key attributes of this institution, such as transparency, correct and fact-based information, the honesty of the communicator in relation with the public or the press. This presupposition is, in fact, the basis of our working hypothesis, ac­cor­ding to which the spokesperson’s Institution in situations of politico-military crisis is an institutional derivative that falsifies the original profile of the spokesperson’s Institution in peacetime.

The working methodology we will use has three components.

The first component refers to a review of the presence of the spokes­person institution in the Romanian and English specialized literature. The monitoring we propose does not have the merit of exhaustiveness in either of the two mentioned lite­ratures. Our intention at this level is to highlight the extent to which the spokesperson’s institution enjoys the interest of communication and PR works, using specialized works and legal literature for the Romanian language, along with the database of two online libraries for literature. English – JSTOR and Francis and Taylor. At this level we will follow not only the profile of this institution, but also the frequency with which it appears, along with the space given for each individual case of the books, courses, articles, methodological guides that contain references to the spokesperson.

The second component of the working methodology is related to the necessary comparative analysis. Thus, the profile of the institution of the spokesperson in politico-military crisis situations will be analyzed by comparison with the profile of the institution in peacetime, working with two hypostases that seem to have the most consistent resemblance to the profile of the military spo­kesperson: spokesperson in crisis si­tuations and spokesperson in emer­gency situations. At first glance, it would seem that dealing with a crisis situation in all cases, the institution of the spokesperson can be transferred and can operate under the same regime in all three crisis situations.

The third methodological compo­nent refers to the case study. In this regard, we will present how the institution of the spokesperson works in situations of politico-military crisis using two radically different cases of spokespersons in terms of organizing the state on whose behalf it commu­nicates – a democratic state (USA, former General Colin Powell before the UN Security Council, February 5, 2003) and a totalitarian state (Ambassador Valerian Zorin, repre­sen­tative of the USSR in the UN Security Council, October 25, 1962).

In this methodological context we will try to verify the extent to which our hypothesis is validated, in the sense of the degree to which situations of politico-military crisis can change the profile of the Spokesperson’s Institu­tion, its definition and the functional regime in which it operates in peacetime.

The Institution of the Spokesman in Contemporary Literature

1. The literature from the field of Public Relations often assimilates the spokesperson with the specialist in Public Relations, the institution as such not being present under exactly this title every time in the analyses of the field. Since 1952, on the line of one of the most influential works in the field of Public Relations – PR prac­titioners as Scott M. Cutlip, Allen H. Center, Effective Public Relations (1952)¹, have been presented from the perspective of their roles in the overall communication process of an institution or organization. The ap­proach has been preserved for more than half a century, being put into circulation for the Romanian aca­demic and research market by trans­lating from Comunicare.ro Publishing House: Scott M. Cutlip, Allen H. Center, Glen M. Broom, Efficient public relations (2010).

Given the extent of the research, the objectives of theoretical and practical training assumed, we would expect that in such a work, consi­dered by many as a “Bible of Public Relations” is able to clarify the pro­fes­sion and skills of the spokesperson more than any other courses and books of the field². The taxonomy of the public relations practitioners proposed in Chapter 3 by the authors of the paper has a structure that does not satisfy any expectations regarding a “niche” profession, the spokes­per­son being systematically a pro­fession derived or subsumed to one of the professional categories “Communication/ Public Relations Technician”, “Expert Advisor”, “Communication Facilitator”, “Problem Solver Facilitator”. The predominant roles in practice are those of Public Relations Technician and Public Relations Manager.”³ In the classification of the roles of practitioners in Public Relations, the Spokesperson as a niche profession in public relations would mostly be­long to the professional category of Communication Facilitator, given the role of this type of facilitator in the economics of communication and the logic of organizational interaction, on one hand and the logic of commu­nication with different target audien­ces, on the other hand:

“Practitioners who play the role of communication facilitator are in a po­sition to serve as sources of informa­tion and official links between orga­ni­zations and their audiences. (…) Facilitators of communication act as a bridge and serve as an element of relationship between the organization and the public. (tr.a.)”⁴

The specialized literature does not have large amounts of space granted to the spokesperson, which, more­over, is a “niche” specialization, in terms of importance, this expertise being equivalent to the specializa­tions of the team that ensures the com­munication of an institution with the media and the general public – The Relationalist, The Communication Professional, The Communication Director.

The institution of the Spokes­person is not a mandatory presence in books, treaties and courses in the area of Public Relations, which are often presented as excellent approaches and definitions-configurations of the field, some with emphasis on its dynamics and evolutionary perspec­tives, along with analysis comparis­ons or proximity of PR with other fields – marketing, journalism, adver­ti­sing⁵. Dumitru Iacob et al., Public relations. Cohesion and efficiency through communication (2011)⁶, resume in the Romanian literature of the field the already traditional-clas­sical idea of “roles of the public relations expert”, offering an ap­proach to the competencies and qualifications of the Public Relations specialist, together with the attribu­tions and content of the profession as such. Following the line of the field classics, the analysis of Romanian authors organizes the taxonomy of qualifications and occupations of practitioners in Public Relations from the perspective of the roles they play in organizations: Technician, Expert, Communication Promoter, Problem Solver Facilitator, treating the insti­tution of the spokesperson as a whole of application-derived competencies from these institutional roles of media relationship management and the general public.

The spokesperson as an expert in Public Relations appears, rather, in books, research, courses, training guides with an applied-practical di­mension, having a different purpose and objectives from those of lite­rature and academic research and training in the field of public rela­tions, which also assumes a neces­sary theoretical dimension in the construction of the message about the field, as a whole.

The institution of Spokesperson becomes the subject of analysis and theorizing in the academic literature of the various sub-domains of com­mu­nication science, such as, for example, the sub-domain of crisis communication. The Communicator, Facilitator or Promoter of Communi­cation in the Public Relations approach, for example, becomes the “spokesperson” in the practical ap­proach in the course Communication in Crisis Management (2011) signed by Ion Chiciudean and George David. The authors offer a series of theoretical and practical landmarks regarding the Spokesman as an institution, the theme having distribu­ted only a section of 1442 words – a section equivalent to a physical space of 3 pages, in the economy of the 208 pages of the paper. In this space there is no place for a historical dynamic of the institution of the Spokesperson we were looking for, the authors focusing on profile elements of the expert, imperatives of communica­tion with different audiences in crisis, recommendations on attitudes to­wards audiences and the need for expertise for this position in the com­munication team, etc. The analysis perspective does not therefore re­quire, through the purpose and ob­jectives assumed, the appeal to the history and dynamics of the Spokesperson’s institution⁷.

An even more applied approach (in the sense of “sub-domain of the sub-domain”) regarding the insti­tution of the Spokesperson is that of the special course dedicated to the profession by Andrei I. Vocilă: Crisis Management and Communication for Spokespersons (2010)⁸, the part on the Spokesperson having a share of about 1/10 of the total training offer, which includes components of crisis management and communication – concepts, types of approaches, tech­ni­ques, strategies and ways of ma­naging media crises. In other Public Relations courses, the “Institutional Communicator” is in a genus-species relationship with the Spokesperson, Antonio Sandu, Public Relations – Course Support (2014), allocating to both institutions a space of 1085 words (approximately 3 physical pages in the overall economics of writing the paper). The institutional commu­nicator is, in this case, the Public Relations institution, and the Spokes­person is one of the forms that this institution acquires in the commu­nication of the organization with the outside:

“(…) That person designated by the organization to represent it in front of the public and the Media, properly transmit­ting the messages of the organization. The institutional communicator is usually the spokes­person, who is, or should be, the only person empowered to express an official view of the organization⁹.

The remaining 3 pages of the course refer to the skills and respon­sibilities of the spokesperson, perso­nality characteristics, attitudes to­wards different categories of target audiences, ways of communicating with the media in typical situations and in those of crisis communication.

As a profession, we find that the spokesperson can also be trained on the private training market, in a mo­dular multidisciplinary course organi­zed with “training experts” in fields complementary to such expertise, which the bidding institution defines the intersection of (1 ) public rela­tions and their specific techniques, (2) communication management, (3) protocol English and (4) media relations, (5) online communication courses to optimize the institution’s image, to name just a few of the courses offered by the Higher School of Communication and Television¹⁰. The courses for the training of the spokesperson do not seem to have a tangent with the dynamics of the institution, given that, in fact, from the mission and the objectives assumed, the training of expertise during 6 months, with two courses per week, is focused on practical situations and concrete-empirical dimensions of expertise. We do not have specific information on the con­tent and effectiveness of this inten­sive multidisciplinary Spokesperson training program (we could not expect such a detailed information from a private training offered in conditions of market competition, actually), but that is not the purpose of the present analysis. However, the offer of an intensive and applied training program in this niche spe­cialization seems to have maximum chances of success for students who already have the theoretical bases of an academic training program in communication, the offer suggesting to be an excellent practical-appli­cation context of a niche specializa­tion in the extension of an integrative academic experience, for students who already have an academic qualification in the field of commu­nication.

There is another scientific sub-field of public relations in which we identify references to the spokes­person’s institution. We refer here to the Romanian legal field of orga­nizing communication in emergency situations, which is presented as another sub-field of communication science. For example, the Department for Emergency Situations subordi­nated to the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs uses in its activity several normative acts (we introduce here as an autonomous legal act the ones that were modified, republished and amended) that establish the areas and procedures, methodologies and attributions that define the activity of the spokesperson. Emergency situati­ons (e.g., natural or social disasters, the result of a human error or natural incident – earthquake, flood, explo­sions at an electrical or chemical plant, atomic plant, etc.) are a sepa­rate area of the spokesperson’s insti­tution perhaps the closest to the field of the politico-military crisis in terms of the type of information or the seriousness of the situation in which communication with journa­lists and the general public must be managed by a spokesperson, etc.¹¹

The National Strategy for Com­mu­nication and Public Information for Emergency Situations of 2008¹², for example, establishes a specific communication Guide for such situations, which dedicates a special section to the institution of the spo­kesperson. According to the Strategy, the Guide becomes operational when the situation calls for the convening of the Committee for Emergency Situations at different levels of state organization – central, county, local –under which operates a Communi­cation and Public Information Center, whose coordination is held by the Public Information Officer and which is dubbed as the direct leadership of the Chair of the Emergency Situa­tions Committee (Articles 4.3., 4.3.1). The spokesperson is subordi­nated to the Chairman of the Emergency Situations Committee, collaborates with the Public Infor­mation Officer and is responsible for the content and quality of the information that is made public (art. 4.3.4). The Communication Guide of the National Strategy for Communi­cation and Public Information for Emergency Situations of 2008 gives the spokesperson a number of 532 words, which establish the attribu­tions, responsibilities, affiliations and the chain of command of which the spokesperson institution is part of, the institution that activates it and under which it operates in case of legal triggering of the emergency situations (art. 433-4.3.4). The Insti­tution of the “message bearer/com­mu­nicator” (persons under the leader­ship of the National Emergency Management System) is defined by a number of 54 words, and the institution of the Public Information Officer (support team coordinator, art. 4.3.1) has allocated a space of 48 words. According to the legal act, the function of the spokesperson is very important in the communication team:

“(…) All members of the Emergency Committee and of the institutions invol­ved, shall comply with the spokesper­son’s recommendations regarding emer­gency public communication. It will not be contradicted in front of the press. The spokesperson shall attend the meetings of the Emergency Committee, monitor the decision-making process and benefit from the support of its members in the performance of their duties.¹³”

The Regulation on the organi­zation and functioning of the Infor­mation and Public Relations Directo­rate of 2011 abolishes the institution of the Spokesperson, who becomes an employee of the Directorate, the adopted Regulation allocating to the Spokesperson (part of the staff of the Directorate) a space of 183 words (attributions, responsibilities), subse­quent amendments to the regulation assimilating the institution within the Directorate of Information and Public Relations¹⁴.

The conclusion that is required for this sequence of monitoring the literature dedicated to the PR area in Romania, is that the institution of the Spokesperson has a marginal space in the field of training, if we judge the importance of the institution by reference to the criterion of presence in the literature on one hand and the criterion of space allocated to the institution in training courses in the field of PR and communication, on the other hand. The most consistent training course dedicated to the spokesperson on the Romanian aca­demic market seems to be the one offe­red by Cosmin Irimieş, Spokesperson Institution (2017), built in a training paradigm structured on theoretical knowledge and application activities dedicated to the formation of specific skills in this niche segment of Public Relations. The course aims to:

“(…) Establishing the relationship with the media, communication in crisis situations, drafting press releases, orga­nizing press events (conferences, brief­ings, press statements, etc.), organizing and operating a communication / PR department / office, respectively relations with the press¹⁵.”

A different approach regarding the institution of the spokesperson in the Romanian literature of the public relations field is offered by the paper published by Adriana Săftoiu, Voices of Power. Speaking with spokesper­sons (2007)¹⁶ which, unlike the theore­tical and applied approaches mentioned, provides information on the perception of this function by people who have worked as spokes­persons for various institutions of the Romanian state since the early 1990s, when academic programs in the science of communication were non-existent. Most of the spokespersons of this period had to adapt to an aty­pical context of public communi­ca­tion, of a specialization of communi­ca­tors and relationalists for political leaders who were themselves in the same process of specialization as public figures in political communi­cation. Perhaps the author’s most surprising conclusion after analyzing the interviews of these spokesmen is the difficulties of this profession, which came primarily from the press or the general public, but from the political leaders on whose behalf they communicated.

17. The research of specialized online libraries also shows the very small number of studies dedicated to the institution of the spokesperson, in general, to the institution in its historical dynamics, in particular. For example, the Taylor & Francis Online Platform for Studies and Research Articles included in De­cember 2020 a number of 911 articles containing the word “spokesper­son¹⁷.” The hypostases in which this central term of our analysis is found are among the most diverse and that of a central subject or a particular research topic of a study or spe­cialized article being the least represented. One of the rare analysis articles of the Spokesperson’s insti­tution is that of Olga Krasnyak, “Foreign ministry’s spokesperson in public diplomacy: a case of Russia” (2020)¹⁸. The author provides an analysis of the profile of the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, with empha­sis on the profile of the institution in the history of Russia, where the function of the spokesperson was permanently linked to the promotion of the image and interests of the Russian/Soviet state. The spokesman of the Soviet state had a precise function, from a political and ideological point of view this being related to the specific strategy of confrontation during the Cold War. In the post-Cold War period, the position of spokesman referred to by O. Krasnyak retained its “state” pro­file¹⁹, the people communicating within the institution being assimila­ted to civil servants, unlike in the United States, for example, where the institution has as spokespersons not only politicians or statesmen, but also journalists, experts in the field of po­litical marketing, in general, people who do not belong by career to state structures. Global technological changes and the diversification of the means of communication assimilated in public communication at the level of the Russian state spokesperson institution in the post-Cold War period, represented the main specific difference in relation to the Soviet era of the spokesperson. In both histo­rical epochs, however, the author points out, this institution of com­munication is different from its coun­terpart in democratic countries. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the institution of the spokesman assi­milated to it continued the already “traditional” policy of setting up and communicating messages in the international media, whose favorite target was the United States and Western countries, as had happened during the Cold War²⁰.

The article “Beijing’s Political Crisis Communication: an analysis of Chinese government communication in the 2009 Xinjiang riot” (2012), listed in search of the term “spokes­person” on the same research platform Francis & Taylor, no longer proposes an institutional analysis like the previous one, the institution of the Spokesperson being analyzed con­textually, in terms of its use­fulness and efficiency in the condi­tions of overlapping its profile with that of some party and state insti­tutions. “Spokesperson” is therefore present this time referring to Chinese state officials who participate in press conferences and who have the function of providing information to journalists. The analysis emphasizes that the institution performing this function – “Office of News and Public Information” – is strongly ideo­logized, as a result of its opera­tion under the Department of Party Propaganda. The effectiveness of the institution of the Spokesperson of which the study speaks is also affected by the lack of a thorough expertise of communicators in the field of this “art of communication with journalists”, because state com­municators have only a superficial expertise, acquired through short training and communication work­shops. The study indicates that the spokespersons – those who speak on behalf of the state – perform both ideological and political functions, along with administrative functions of heads of communication and internal and external propaganda departments²¹. The study refers to the institution of the Spokesperson as having an “contaminated” ideological and politico-administrative profile. However, the institutional analysis on the topic “Spokesperson” stops here, the institution as such not benefiting from a dedicated research approach.

The first of the 26,127 articles listed by the search engine of the JSTOR²² library database in which the word “Spokesperson” is present, treats the spokesperson as a referent: a person who performs the function of “spokesperson” of the Maoist Party Communist of India, speaks on behalf of the party in the article “On the election boycott tactics of the Maoists” (2009) and responds to accusations of an electoral boycott generated by a political competitor in a previous article: “The Maoists, Elections, Boycotts, and Violence” from 2009. The reference to the spo­kesperson is therefore a simple deno­mination²³.

The second article in the category listed by JSTOR – “Using Response Latency to Assess Spokesperson Effectiveness” (1987)²⁴ on empirical research that assesses the effects of celebrity recommendations – “pro­duct spokespersons” – for the level of perception of consumers, the study having as research theme the nature and the force of impact of the association “celebrity – product” in the public perception.

The third entry on the JSTOR list is a one-page statement from a person who claims to be happy and honored to have been named a spo­kesman for the U.S. Army National Museum – no connection to profile, nature, duties – analysis of the Spokesperson’s institution²⁵. The arti­cles continue for a few more entries listed by the search engine, in which the term “Spokesperson” is used as a reference²⁶ or as an attribution within the institution²⁷.

Lee Mordecai’s article, “The Spokesperson Agency: Connecting Public Administration and the Media” (2001)²⁸ is part of the scien­tific studies on the Spokesperson institution, focusing on the category of spokespersons at the level of local state agencies or institutions. The questionnaire addressed to these spo­kespersons has the role of identifying the self-perception of the function by the communicators at the level of the local public institutions and the way in which they position themselves in the relation of the institution with the mass media. The study identified the growing role of spokespersons in local public institutions and non-elected politicians, the growing im­portance of the role being generated, according to the study’s author, by the growing importance of the media in recent decades.

The study “Spokesperson Fame and Vividness Effects in the Context of Issue-Relevant Thinking: The Moderating Role of Competitive Setting” in the Journal of Consumer Research (1994)²⁹ is an experimental study of the impact of “product spo­kespersons” on certain categories of public in conditions of competi­tiveness and non-competitiveness at the level of experimental groups, it has nothing to do with the institution of the Spokesman himself.

Other entries listed by the JSTOR search engine on the item “Spokes­person” are either bibliographic notes from various research reports, or references to statements and articles, official statements of various interna­tional institutions and organizations³⁰.

Another study listed by JSTOR – “The Social Anchoring of Represen­tation: Becoming a Spokesperson at the Municipal Women’s Conference in Recife, Brazil”³¹, focuses on me­chanisms, procedures, and techniques for using participatory democracy to generate local representation through the use of social networks and non-electoral social circles, within the electoral process.

Regardless of the area of moni­toring, the result of the review of the studies on the spokesperson in the journals in the JSTOR database is the same: studies dedicated to the spo­kesperson as an institution in its historical dynamics are almost non-existent.

As we have noticed, books dedi­cated to the Spokesperson are rare, and this position of the institutional Communicator does not have large, dedicated spaces, as we might have expected in fact, in the courses and books of crisis communication or public relations, to which the insti­tution of the Spokesperson belongs.

The difficulty in finding books about the spokespersons in politico-military crises in Romanian literature is even greater. The institution has an ethics and structure of compatible spe­cializations and clearly formu­lated necessary skills, even legally regulated in Romania today. The Nomenclature for the Classification of Occupations in Romania (COR) takes over and defines the profession of spokesperson in exactly the genus-species terms with which it appears in the specialized literature:

The spokesperson is an occu­pation (code 2432), which belongs to the Basic Group “PR Specialist”, coded with the code 243201³².

More than any of this expertise, the one of the spokesperson is often presented as related to commu­nication with journalists, which often leads political leaders and institutions to opt for a journalist to speak on their behalf as a spokesperson.

The institution of the Spokesperson – a different profile in situations of politico-military crisis

The term “crisis”, as well as “emer­gency situation” seem to sug­gest the idea that we could transfer this information and recommen­dations regarding the profile of the spokesperson institution in situations of politico-military crisis – attribu­tions, characteristics, responsibilities, etc.³³ Such a hypothesis of the transfer and functioning of the insti­tution of the spokesperson specific to the situations generically called “crisis” in the particular case of a politico-military crisis is almost im­pos­sible.

34. The argument of ‘lack of transparency’. These three commu­nication and relational contexts (emer­gency situation – politico military crisis – crisis during peacetime) can­not be managed by a spokesperson institution operating under the same profile. The fundamental argument of the impossibility of institutional transfer to which we refer, as will be seen in the case studies we propose, is related to the general context of public communication for the cases mentioned. In reality, the institution of the spokesperson has in the si­tuations of politico-military crisis a radically different regime of func­tioning, the attribute of the transpa­rency of the communication being, perhaps, the fundamental factor that prevents such an institutional transfer. If, for example, in the event of a natural disaster or earthquake, a pandemic (elements of the emer­gency) an effective public relations system recommends transparency to journalists so as not to create un­necessary concerns and questions that may have incomplete and inade­quate answers from journalists without official information, in the case of the politico-military crisis those who communicate on behalf of the state (one of the actors of the crisis) will accuse the media’s desire to know more than they are able to communicate. The specific argument invoked by politico-military leaders for the lack of transparency in situations of politico-military crisis is that a transparent communication would jeopardize the operations, tactics, strategy and life of the soldiers in the theater of operations. We refer here to the memoirs of two generals who participated in the politico-military crisis in the Gulf (1991) – General Schwartzkopf, com­mander of the theater of operations and General Colin Powell, coordi­nator of the political strategy of military intervention of the same international crisis. This argument of the lack of transparency cannot be invoked in any of the crisis or emergency situations in which the spokesperson’s institution operates. The general argument of the “need for lack of transparency” is accom­panied by two other situations speci­fic to situations of politico-military crisis³⁴.

1. The argument of the insti­tution of the spokesperson as part of the information war. The institu­tion of the Spokesperson operates in a totally different regime within a politico-military crisis. It sometimes becomes a component of information warfare, participating, whether the spokesperson is aware of its role when communicating a message, in actions of misinformation, manipu­lation, intoxication, diversion, which have a plausible justification for violating the ethics of communi­cation and public relations: protec­tion of military life in the theater of war or operational secrecy. The spokesperson is sometimes himself intentionally misinformed by the politico-military crisis management structures, precisely in order to present “with conviction” the false data that would justify a strategic decision of political or military type. Exemplary for this situation of the spokesperson dependent on intelli­gence structures and interests or strategic goals of which he is not announced (he is not aware of) we consider that this is the case of one of the best known American military spo­kespersons, General Colin Powell, who later became a spokesperson as a diplomat for American foreign policy. The former Chief of the Inter-Arms Staff (1989-1993) and the former US Secretary of State (2001-2005) speaks to us in memoirs and interviews about the regret of not having verified the information provided by the intelligence services before being communicated on behalf of the United States to the UN Security Council on the need for intervention in Iraq. In February 2003, according to the information provided to him by the American state, Colin Powell presented with the utmost conviction, evidence that he considered real and concrete, claiming that they were the result of fieldwork combined with information received from other specialized ser­vices, according to whom Saddam Hussein produces biological weapons of mass murder:

“What you will see is an accu­mulation of disturbing facts and patterns of behavior. (…) Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort to disarm, as demanded by the international commu­nity. Indeed, the facts and behavior of Iraq show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are hiding their facts to produce more weapons of mass destruction³⁵.”

Just over a decade after this speech, the American diplomat will call the incident “one of the greatest strategic disasters in the United States” and one of the greatest regrets of his career, which he assumes:

“We were part of probably the biggest strategic disaster the United States has caused during this generation. (…) It is also one of the greatest regrets³⁶.”

On the basis of the information considered by the United States spokesperson to be true, he strongly supported before the United Nations Security Council on 5 February 2003 the evidence of the existence of biological weapons on the territory of the Iraqi state, the Spokesperson assuming without knowing the ridi­culousness (later appearing explicitly after the UN inspection in Iraq) of showing members of the Council a bottle of liquid as clear evidence of the existence of biological weapons in Iraq. However, based on this speech of proven misinformation, the second US intervention in the Gulf was triggered, which allowed the UN inspection, which concluded that Iraq does not have biological weapons.

It is clear from diplomat Colin Powell’s speech to the UN Security Council³⁷ that he feels comfortable as a diplomat confident of the truth of his words – based on an ethic of truth, sincerity, transparency and honesty unquestionably assumed in front of the Security Council. In his speech, he repeatedly wanted to justify and argue about the real sources of evidence which he pre­sented to the members of the UN Security Council. The character who presents evidence of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons is so convinced of the truth that he pre­cisely communicates, because he pro­bably does not know that he is transmitting a lie provided by the secret services as verified evidence in the field. The attitude and procedure of presenting the repeated invocation of the veracity of its sources shows that the US Spokesman does not take into account for a moment the fact that he is a possible victim of a stra­tegically planned information war, or of an intelligence error, which is to be the effective cause of military inter­vention in Iraq. Regardless of the real situation of February 2003 (which we will never know), which is presented to the US Congress in September 2004 by diplomat Colin Powell as “misinformation” from the secret services, such a situation in which the spokesman whether it is planned to be misinformed, to participate in a disinformation plan or to report mis­information that would lead to deci­sions with consequences as serious as military intervention is unimaginable in the case of today’s Civil Spokesman institution – regardless of the public or private regime in which it operates.

Another illustrative case for the status of political spokesperson – diplomat of the USSR representative on the United Nations Security Council during the 1962 missile crisis is that the US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson was scheduled to present on October 25, 1962, ten days after the outbreak of the missile crisis, the position of the United States force and dismantle the view of the Soviet Union, which was represented at the meeting of the UN Security Council by Ambassador Valerian Zorin. The two ambassadors of the states about to go to war, assured each other of the lack of credibility of the evidence on whose behalf it supported the state’s posi­tion, according to the type of language, public attitude and mes­sage content we’re dealing with two political figures who were in a position to communicate certainties. In the afternoon of October 25, the Soviet ambassador presented the message of the Soviet state, in full session, informing the ambassadors of the Security Council:

“The evidence that the United States claims to have (in terms of Soviet missiles placed in Cuba) is false,” by which the United States will generate “catastrophic conse­quen­ces for the whole world³⁸.”

The American ambassador’s reply was direct, harsh, without respecting the usual protocols of diplomatic speech:

“Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range missiles in Cuba? Yes or no – don’t wait for the translation – yes or no?”

Ambassador Zorin’s refusal to respond directly, having the attitude of a person in obvious discomfort, along with his gestural behavior generated a general state of hilarity among the members of the Security Council, being obvious that the direct approach from the American ambas­sador just brought out highlights of the lack of credibility of the Soviet message. After another short episode of general hilarity, Adlai Stevenson presents to all participants in the meeting room a series of 3 photos – images taken from the plane around the San Cristobal area, showing the Soviet bases in Cuba where medium and intermediate range missiles had been placed. The CIA Director, John McCone, will inform the President of the United States on the evening of October 25, 1962, that some of them were ready for launch.

The previous episode illustrates another hypostasis of the messenger – diplomat, a communication authority delegated by the political leader of the USSR to communicate a lie to the UN Security Council. We do not know whether the obvious embarras­sment of the Soviet ambassador at the Security Council meeting was the result of intentional misinformation, as is the case with diplomat Colin Powell in 2003, or whether the Soviet ambassador knew in October 1962 the location of the missiles in Cuba. What the incident invoked by us illustrates, is the fact that the spo­kesman, a diplomat of politico-mili­tary crisis situations, may be in special communication situations that radically differ from any commu­ni­cation situation specific to the insti­tution of the Spokesperson outside a politico-military crisis. As in the case of diplomat Colin Powell, a spo­kesperson for the American state, Soviet diplomat Valerian Zorin is either not informed that he is telling a lie or is informed and assumes the transmission of false information in the name of the “state interest”. In both cases we are dealing with a misinformation assumed by neither of the two states, but which served their interests in both cases.

Conclusions

We bring back into discussion the idea of the lack of transparency of communication in situations of po­litico-military crisis, characteristic of public communication that any mi­nimal ethic of communication and public relations associated with the institution of the Spokesperson can­not admit. On the contrary, transpa­rency is a fundamental rule of public communication and public relations.

Along with the issue of transpa­rency and the status of a state insti­tution that is engaged in disinfor­mation in wartime, with or without the knowledge of the communicator, the consequences and magnitude of events that can generate a message launched by the institution of the Spokesman in situations of political crisis -military is another aspect of the difference between this and the institution of the Spokesperson in peacetime, regardless of the crisis or peacetime emergency situation in which communication with jour­nalists and the general public occurs. As the case studies have shown, in situations of politico-military crisis the institution of the spokesperson often suspends three of the funda­mental attributes of its peacetime functioning in both democratic and totalitarian political regimes: transpa­rency of communication, honesty and fact-based information. Any of these three attributes of the spokesperson’s institution would be missing in a non-military crisis situation or a natural or man-made disaster (with or without intent) would cause serious harm to the institution or organi­zation that violates these ethical rules and fundamental aspects of commu­nication and public relations mana­gement. The fact that in situations of politico-military crisis states can misinform, communicate untruths, or refuse to communicate with the press or the general public through the institution of the spokesperson, seems to suspend the very purpose of this institution in peacetime. The fact that politico-military leaders have a “supreme” argument to justify this violation of the ethics of commu­nication and public relations can be, with some limitations, accepted, this does not prevent us, however, from wondering whether we can use the same name for the institution of the spokesperson in both cases.

Returning to our hypothesis, ac­cording to which politico-military crisis situations operate with a deri­vative of the spokesperson’s institu­tion – as defined by its fundamental attributes in peacetime (transparency, fact-based information, honesty) – we consider that we have – to do with a validation of the hypothesis at least for the cases in which the transpa­rency, the honesty, the infor­mation based on facts, endanger the life of soldiers in the war theater or the state interest. This is the argument of political and military leaders.

An argument which, of course, is itself unfalsifiable for the large public: who can know if and when the argument itself is not an act of misinformation?

Notes

1. The first work published in 1952 was authored only by Scott M. Cutlip, Allen H. Center, Effective Public Relations, Prentice Hall, NJ, 1952.
2. Here we refer to the 1994 edition, Chapter 2, whose topic is that of Public Relations Practitioners: Scott Cutlip, Allen H. Center, Glen M. Broom, Effective Public Relations, Simon & Schuster, Singapore, 1994. The paper is translated and pu­blished by Editura Comunicare.ro in 2010, of which we quote: Scott M. Cutlip, Allen H. Center, Glen M. Broom, Relații publice eficiente, Editura Comunicare.ro, București, 2010, pp. 33-59.
3. Scott et al., Relații publice eficiente.., op. cit., pp. 45-47.
4. Idem, p. 46.
5. See the analysis of the dynamics of the Public Relations field and the configuration of the integrated model of public relations in Remus Pricopie, Relații Publice. Evoluție și perspective, Editura Tritonic, București, 2011.
6. Dumitru Iacob, Diana-Maria Cismaru, Remus Pricopie, Relații Publice. Coeziune și eficiență prin comunicare, Ediția a 3-a, Editura Comunicare.ro, București, 2011, pp. 150-151.
7. Ion Chiciudean, George David, Managementul comunicării în si­tuații de criză, Editura Comunicare.ro, 2011, București, 132-136. Details on responsi­bilities, respon­si­bilities, but espe­cially profile elements of the expert can be found in: George David, Tehnici de relații publice. Comuni­carea cu media, Editura Polirom, București, 2008, pp. 201-208.
8. Andrei Ion Vocilă, Curs: Manage­men­tul și comunicarea de criză pentru purtătorii de cuvânt, Ministerul Ad­mi­nistrației și Internelor, Bucuresti, 2010.
9. Antonio Sandu, Relații Publice – Suport de curs, Facultatea de Drept și Administrație Publică, Universitatea „Ștefan cel Mare” din Suceava, 2014, pp. 56-58: The institution of the spokesperson has a share of less than 3% of the volume of the public relations course.
10. The institution that offers qualifi­ca­tion in the profession “Spokesperson” under the heading of the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Education is „Școala Superioară de Comunicare și Televiziune/Higher School of Communication and Television” (SSCTv) – a private project, whose courses are formally accredited on the market of professions and occupations. SSCTv offers specialized training certified by CNFPA accredited diplomas; see Description. ANC specializations (CNFPA): https://www.ssctv.ro/descriere/
11. See Ministerul Afacerilor Interne, Departamentul pentru Situații de Urgență, Legislația ROF; http://www.dsu.mai.gov.ro/legislatie/
12. Adopted by Government Decision 548/2008, Annex.
13. The National Strategy for Commu­nication and Public Information for Emergency Situations from 2008, H.G. 548/2008, Annex, art. 4.3.2; The communication guide esta­blished by the Strategy is activated not only at national level, but also at county level, when the County Committee for Emergency Situ­ations meets; see for example the definition at county level of the Guide in: The Inspectorate for Emergency Situations “Matei Basarab” of Olt County, the Guide for communication and public information in emergency situations for Olt County.
14. The order of the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Internal Affairs, for the approval of the Regulation on the organization and functioning of the Information and Public Relations Directorate operates changes regarding the description of the Spokesperson’s position and the conditions, qualifications of candidates for this position – Job description within the Directorate; http://www.cdep.ro/pls/ legis/legis_pck.lista_mof?idp=24465
15. Cosmin Vasile Irimieş, Instituția pur­tătorului de cuvânt – Curs, Facultatea de Științe Politice și Administrative, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, 2017; see also Cosmin Vasile Irimieş, Principiile comunicării și manage­mentul relațiilor publice, Editura Accent, Cluj-Napoca, 2012.
16. Adriana Săftoiu, Vocile puterii. De vorbă cu purtătorii de cuvânt, Editura TREI, București,
17. The search was performed on the item “spokesperson” on December 16, 2020, category “Only show content I have full access to”.
18. Olga Krasnyak,Foreign ministry’s spokesperson in public diplomacy: a case of Russia”, Russian Journal of Communication, 2020, doi: 10.1080/19409419.2020.1780630
19. Jamie Shea, former NATO spokesman in the 1999 military intervention in Kosovo, makes a fundamental observation in the interview he gave me in September 2020 on the profile of the institution of the Spokesperson in authori­tarian/totalitarian regimes, offering a complementary perspective on the one used by our analysis, by em­phasizing a new context of analysis – that of the perception and beha­vior of the public represented by journalists from the entire inter­national press towards the message of the Spokesperson’s institution. According to him, an authoritarian “state” spokesman is not credible in the context of an international press conference, the journalists being constantly under the specter of a suspicion of truncation of the truth by the Spokesperson or launching a message of”directing” and, finally, manipulating the attention of jour­nalists. For this reason, Jamie Shea believes, journalists are always obliged to look for sources to confirm or refute the message, the institution of the spokesperson of the authoritarian /totalitarian state thus having serious problems of credibility at the level of the public. The interview in English given by Dr. Jamie Shea on September 20, 2020 is entitled “Spokespersons during a politico-military crisis, Written interview with Dr. Jamie Shea, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, ex-Spokes­person of NATO during Kosovo politico-military crises 1999. The interview is currently used and will be published in a larger analysis as an empirical and practical expe­rience perspective related to the theory of the domain in a historical approach of the Spokesperson insti­tution during politico-military crises after the Cold War.
20. Olga Krasnyak,”Foreign ministry’s spokesperson in public diplomacy: a case of Russia”, Russian Journal of Communication, 2020, DOI: 10.1080/19409419.2020.1780630
21. Ni Chen, “Beijing’s Political Crisis Communication: an analysis of Chinese government communi­cation in the 2009 Xinjiang riot”, Journal of Contemporary China, 21:75, 461-479, DOI: 10.1080/106-70564.2011.647434
22. The search was performed on the item “spokesperson” on December 19, 2020, category “Journals” of the JSTOR database.
23. See “On the election boycott tactics of the Maoists,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 38 (SEPTEMBER 19-25, 2009), pp. 73-77.
24. Jeffrey Burroughs, Richard A. Feinberg, “Using Response Latency to Assess Spokesperson Effective­ness”, Journal of Consumer Re­search, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Sep., 1987), pp. 295-299.
25. Joe Mantegna, “National Spokes­person for Museum”, On Point, 18, No. 1 (Summer 2012), p. 30.
26. Michelle M. Stein, McAuliffe Spokesperson: Reforms Likely Before VA Medicaid Expansion, Inside CMS, Vol. 16, No. 46 (November 14, 2013), pp. 1, 14-1
27. Peter J. Schertz, “The Curator as Scholar and Public Spokesperson”, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies , Vol. 3, No. 3 (2015), pp. 277-282; Joseph H. Lackner, Bishop Ignatius F. Horstmann, Spokesperson for German-American Catholics?, U.S. Catholic Historian, Vol. 12, No. 3, German-Catholic Identities in Ame­rican Culture (Summer, 1994), pp. 17-40.
28. Lee, Mordecai, “The Agency Spokesperson: Connecting Public Administration and the Media”, Public Administration Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 1, 2001, pp. 101–130. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/408-61830. Accessed 22 July 2020.
29. Timothy B. Heath, Michael S. McCarthy and David L. Mothersbaugh, “Spokesperson Fame and Vividness Effects in the Context of Issue-Relevant Thinking: The Moderating Role of Competitive Setting”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Mar., 1994), pp. 520-534.
30. See “Statement by the Spokes­person concerning human rights defenders and lawyers in China” in Fergus Ryan, Weibo diplomacy and censorship in China, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2018; the content of this study refers to a number of 9 articles and press state­ments of the communication depart­ments of the various institutions of the European Union in the field of human rights; http://www.jstor.com/ stable/resrep2308
31. Marie-Helene Sa Vilas Boas, “The Social Anchoring of Representation: Becoming a Spokesperson in Municipal Women S Conference in Recife, Brazil”, Revue française de science politique (English Edition), Vol. 66, No. 1, Making Represen­tative Claims (2016), pp. 63-80.
32. COR 2019 – Classification of occu­pations in Romania – establishes the following inclusion relation­ship: “Spokesperson Profession, no. catalog 243206 – Basic group 2432 – Public relations specialists; https://www.rubinian.com/cor_6_ocupatia_detalii.php?id=243206; Retrieved August 06, 2020.
33. See Ministry of Internal Affairs, Department for Emergency Si­tuations, ROF Legislation; Com­muni­ca­tion Guide of the National Strategy for Communication and Public Information for Emergency Situations from 2008; National Strategy for Communication and Public Information for Emergency Situations from 2008, adopted by Government Decision 548/2008, Annex. http://www.dsu.mai.gov.ro/ legislatie/; Retrieved June 18, 2020. See also the Order of the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Internal Affairs, for the approval of the Regulation on the organization and functioning of the Directorate of Information and Public Relations operates changes regarding the de­scription of the position of Spokes­person and conditions, qualifica­tions of candidates Directorate (O. no. 15/18-02-2015, M.Af.I.); http://www.cdep.ro/pls/legis/legis_pck.lista_mof?idp=24465; Retrieved June 18, 2020.
34. Norman H.Schwarzkopf, The Autobiography – It Doesn’t Take a Hero, Bantam Books, 1992, p. 101. Colin Powell, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership, Harper, New York, 2012. See also, the reluctance and arguments used by the military commander, General Colin Powell, regarding the transparency of communication with journalists in war situations in: “Colin Powell Remembers Desert Storm 25 years later”, December 2016, Military Officers Association of America, https://www.moaa.org/Content/ Pu-blications-and-Media/Features-and-Columns/MOAA-Features/Colin-Powell-Remembers-Desert-Storm-25-years-later; Accessed 21.05. 2020.
35. We quote from the transcript of the statement made by Colin Powell in the plenary session of the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, as she was prepared for media launch at the White House: “U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council”, Transcript, For Imme­diate Release, February 5, 2003; see the database at: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.ar-chives.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html; Accessed on 21.04.2020. See the speech on Iraqi factories that produce biological weapons of mass destruction, with arguments they consider far from any doubt. in Colin Powell at the United Nations (February 5, 2003): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9JM_uSG5Aw; Accessed on 21.04.2020.
36. See Collin Powell’s speech to stu­dents at Penn State School of Inter­na­tional Affairs, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff talks candidly about strategic intelligence, March 26, 2015; https://sia.psu.edu/news/for-mer-secretary-state-colin-powell%E2-%80%99s-chief-staff-talks-can-didly-about-strategic-intelligence; Accessed on 21.04.2020. See also Steven R. Weisman, “Powell Calls His U.N. Speech a Lasting Blot on His Record”, New-York Times, Sept. 9, 2005.
37. See Powell’s Memoirs: (1) Colin Powell, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership, Harper, New York, 2012; (2) Christopher D. O’Sullivan, Colin Powell: American Power and Intervention from Vietnam to Iraq, Rowman and Littlefield, New York, 2009; (3) Colin Powell, Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey: An Autobiography, Penguin Random House, New York, 2009 that are con­verging with those of Ari Fleischer, George Bush’s press se­cre­tary in 2003, who watched to­gether with the American president the February 5, 2003 speech of the American diplomat, of which the president was very proud, as Fleischer remembers: see Ari Fleischer, Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House, HarperCollins, New -York, 2005, p. 309. He notes that for more than an hour Powell captivated the audience, explaining and illustrating with empirical facts and evidence his claims about Iraq’s possession of biological weapons. Significant to our analysis is that Fleischer’s biography shows that George Bush also seemed convinced of the truth of what Powell transmitted. Which also requires the conclusion that the message bearer was the victim of a strategic error, and not of a strategic plan. The fact that this was not an intentional misinformation of the message bearer – Colin Powell – does not invalidate the case in question of the institution of the Spokesman in politico-military crisis situations we are talking about here, according to which, in such mo­ments, the institution no longer res­pects the ethics of the commu­nicator profession, which presup­poses honesty, transparency, correct­ness in the message towards the public.
38. We quote from the following sources: a) Critical Past – archive of unedited historical images, video pre­senting the United States Resolution requesting UN assistance regarding the location of Soviet missiles in Cuba: “Adlai Stevenson appeals to the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962”, see, especially min. 1: 17: 57; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dpPwDq5wDqE; Accessed on 21.10.2020. b) unedited video, “Cuba – Rocket Photo’s Shown to United Nations”: the video cuts from the meeting exactly the section in which the US ambassador addresses the question of the Soviet ambas­sador, the general hilarity and the moment when the 3 photos from the San Cristobal area are presented, proving the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba – min. 1: 03-3: 04. c) See also the unprocessed ima­ges, with the text written at the meeting, with comments to: b) Adlai Stevenson, UN Security Council Address on Soviet Missiles in Cuba delivered 25 October 1962; https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/adlaistevensonunitednationscuba.html; Accessed on 21.10. 2020. d) See also James M. Lindsay, “TWE Remembers: Adlai Stevenson Dresses Down the Soviet Ambassador to the UN (Cuban Missile Crisis, Day Ten)”, Post: October 25, 2012; https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-adlai-stevenson-dresses-down-soviet-ambassador-un-cuban-missile-crisis-day-ten; Accessed on 21.10.2020.

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