Mobil Playing Hard Ball With The Press and Then-Pres. Carter

[johnkarls]

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Editorial Notes:

I forgot how Mobil Corporation used to pay for provocative and very entertaining "OpEd Articles" in the New York Times during the 1970's!!! The NY Times Book Review below addresses a book written by Herb Schmertz, the Mobil Executive who wrote the Mobil "OpEd Articles", about his experiences in doing so.

(Give the New York Times credit, they permitted Mobil the same forum as their own OpEd writers with Mobil's "OpEd articles" appearing on the regular NY Times OpEd page and having the same general appearance as a regular OpEd Article though, if memory serves, they contained a discrete label "Advertisement" and identified Mobil Corporation as the author that had paid for the "Advertisement.")

Mobil's "OpEd Articles" appeared irregularly only as issues about which they felt particularly strongly arose, but probably once a month or so.

The reason why I happened to remember them while composing yesterday's "short quiz" was that because, being so well written and so persuasive they were extremely effective in influencing public opinion, President Jimmy Carter, smarting from a "wood shedding" by a paticularly well-reasoned and persuasive Mobil OpEd attack on a particularly inane proposal Carter had made on an important national issue, blurted out in frustration that Mobil was the most irresponsible corporation in America!!!

Bryce Nelson (the reviewer and head of the USC Journalism School) has re-written history in the following review by implying that Mobil was irresponsible, as charged by President Carter. I'll try to dredge up the actual Mobil "OpEd Article" so that you all can judge for yourselves whether Mobil was on firm ground and President Carter was "out to lunch."

But I was always taught in H.S. debate, college psychology courses, and virtually every course in law school that when someone resorts to "ad hominem" arguments rather than responding on the merits, the ad hominem is effectively conceding the merits of the argument and engaging in a counter-productive outburst that only serves to attract greater attention to the deficiencies of the substantive positions.

Although 183 pages of Supreme Court opinions are enough for our group to read, I'd welcome anyone to join me in reading this book as well for our March 10th meeting.

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NY Times Book Review – June 1, 1986

PLAYING HARDBALL WITH THE PRESS

Book Review by Bryce Nelson, Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California (“USC” for sports fans)

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GOOD-BYE TO THE LOW PROFILE The Art of Creative Confrontation. By Herb Schmertz with William Novak. 242 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. $16.95.
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HERB SCHMERTZ, Mobil Oil's vice president for public affairs, has written a lively and often humorous book telling businessmen how they should face - and face down - the press. As Mr. Schmertz revels in his many confrontations with the news media, he also slips in evidence to support the conclusion that he is a most ingenious and important corporate public relations man.

Mr. Schmertz was aided by William Novak, whose writing skill helped make Lee Iacocca's autobiography a blockbuster. ''Good-bye to the Low Profile'' should do very well in business and public relations circles, but it will not be another ''Iacocca.'' While Mr. Schmertz tells us that ''the real leaders in any society are not afraid of showing who they are,'' we come away knowing little about his personal motivations, except that he always seems to be looking for a good fight.

''Good-bye to the Low Profile'' will please certain readers because it says what many of us want to hear - that you can often fight the news media moguls to a draw and even batter them around the ears a bit. Mr. Schmertz writes that ''confrontation is good for you,'' and in fact ''is just about the best tool you can have at your disposal.'' When confronting the news media with a complaint, Mr. Schmertz advises businessmen to exhibit a ''cheerful feistiness'' - a tone that pervades this book.

As Mr. Schmertz tells it, he is always ready to play hardball with reporters if they drive him to it. He seems to consider Mobil as credible as the news media, but he might be happier if news organizations were wholly-owned subsidiaries of the oil company. In 1980, when all three television networks refused a Mobil commercial (the spot alleged that Mobil had, ''over the years,'' made proportionately less of a profit than the networks), the miffed company stopped sponsoring some special network programs and created its own distribution system to broadcast programs with its own uncensored commercials. Thus, Mobil now speaks its piece to the nation, while depriving the networks of considerable advertising revenues. This cheers Mr. Schmertz. He is also happy to relate the steps his employer took to counter President Carter's 1979 allegation that Mobil was ''perhaps the most irresponsible company in the country'' because it opposed his plan to decontrol oil prices.

Like many other Americans, Mr. Schmertz is ambivalent about the networks and newspapers. On the positive side, he says, ''By and large, American news organizations do a good job of reporting the news.'' And he acknowledges, ''Most reporters try to be fair.'' He is scathing, however, in his criticism of those who use unnamed sources, and of the news media's failure to examine its own performance. There is more than a little truth in what he writes. Mr. Schmertz directs his severest criticism at television news. He asserts that it ''has far more to do with television than with news'' and finds it limited by too little time, the need for pictures, the taste for conflict and the quest for ratings.

Despite his preference for print, Mr. Schmertz has taken his sharpest actions against a major newspaper - The Wall Street Journal. Partly because of a number of Journal stories critical of the company and its executives (and, in Mr. Schmertz's view, filled with inaccuracies), and partly because of what Mr. Schmertz calls the newspaper's interest in ''gossip and innuendo,'' Mobil pulled its advertising from The Journal in late 1984 and since then has refused to give its reporters interviews, data or answers to questions.

His willingness to impose a total news blackout on this respected newspaper illustrates the difference between Mr. Schmertz and those public relations professionals who emphasize getting out the full story about their organizations - even if the results may be embarrassing. Mr. Schmertz pays little attention to getting out the full story. He also pays little attention to any standard of candor for public relations spokesmen or business executives who talk to journalists. He argues that the press is a profit-making business, and that journalists are not surrogates for the public. He urges businessmen not to take journalists as seriously as journalists take themselves.

Some public relations executives think of themselves as journalists-in-residence. Mr. Schmertz, whose background is in law and politics rather than journalism (he's a former labor lawyer and a veteran of several election campaigns), describes his job by saying, ''I am, in effect, the manager of an ongoing political campaign.'' In fact, Mobil's chief politician is a maverick Democrat who did volunteer political work for all three Kennedy brothers. WHILE Mr. Schmertz sometimes stiff-arms journalists, he flamboyantly calls attention to his corporation and himself by publishing opinion pieces (the work of a number of different writers) as advertisements in The New York Times and other publications, and by sponsoring worthwhile cultural activities, including the television program ''Masterpiece Theater.'' Such sponsorship is likely to continue paying off for Mobil. But it remains to be seen whether Mr. Schmertz's abrasive tactics for dealing with the press are as effective as they once were now that the press has become less confrontational - and now that, with the price of oil declining, oil companies may need all the friends they can get.

Perhaps Mr. Schmertz should think about changing jobs. It seems a shame that a man of his imagination has spent the last 20 years defending a corporation that could have hired a lesser talent to do his work. Why couldn't Mobil or a combination of corporations give him the time and resources to tackle a major social issue like the plight of the homeless in New York? Armed with his ''cheerful feistiness'' and a strong ego, Mr. Schmertz could give such a problem the high profile it deserves.