PR NOTABLES OF AMERICAN DONALD G. PADILLA

Nixon, Watergate and Public Relations

1921–1992

Donald Gabino Padilla devoted his career to helping a range of community organizations communicate better with their audiences. He founded his agency, Padilla & Spears (now Padilla), in Minneapolis in the 1970s. Padilla was diligent in teaching his clients about best practices and the many benefits of community stewardship. He was widely recognized for his excellence in public relations. In 1986 Padilla received one of PRSA’s highest honors: the Paul M. Lund Public Service Award. His other honors included The King’s Medal from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, The Medal of St. Olav from Norway and the Minnesota Press Club’s Distinguished Service Award. PRSA’s Minnesota Chapter created the Donald G. Padilla Community Excellence Award in 1996 to recognize an individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and contributions to the profession, contributed to the PRSA mission and volunteered for their community. (Courtesy of Padilla)

1972

President Richard Nixon was famously sensitive about his image and combative with the press. To assert greater control, in 1969 he created the White House Office of Communications and limited his spontaneous press encounters in favor of organized events.

President Nixon hired former public relations executive William Safire as his speechwriter and advertising executive H.R. Haldeman as his campaign manager and presidential chief of staff.

Nixon started each day by reading news summaries, often writing angry notes in the margins. After the New York Times published the “Pentagon Papers,” a confidential U.S. Department of Defense recounting of the Vietnam War, the Nixon White House created a covert “plumbers” unit to plug information leaks. “The plumbers” orchestrated a break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. The ensuing coverup led to Nixon’s impeachment and resignation.

When President Richard M. Nixon resigned, it made instant front-page, top-of-the-fold news around the globe as he tumbled from the most visible perch in the world. The rebuilding of his reputation and character would take some time. (Shawshots / Alamy Stock Photo)

Seeking to burnish his post-presidential image, Nixon hired Hill & Knowlton and regained some stature as an expert on international affairs. Meanwhile, as Watergate contributed to a long, deep slide in public trust in government and other institutions, the public relations field placed a renewed focus on ethics and integrity.

Betsy Plank, APR, Fellow PRSA, was the Society’s president in 1973. She stated that public relations’ “primary mission is to forge responsible relationships of understanding, trust and respect among groups and individuals — even though they often disagree.”

In his memoir, President Nixon expressed regret about the way he had responded as the Watergate scandal unfolded.

“I felt sure that it was just a public relations problem that only needed a public relations solution,” he wrote, adding, “I worried about the wrong problem . . . I did not see it then, but in the end, it would make less difference that I was not as involved as [White House counsel John] Dean had alleged than that I was not as uninvolved as I had claimed.”

Enabling the March of Truth

1998

A new era of smoking prevention emerged in 1998 from a $206 billion-dollar landmark legal settlement between the nation’s major tobacco companies and 46 state attorneys general. Florida became the first state to launch an anti-smoking campaign targeting young people. Teens shaped the campaign, called “truth,” through a summit and advisory board. Communications professionals patterned the messaging after the branding of teen fashion.

SWAT (Students Working Against Tobacco) teams formed to visit schools and teen events and joined a tour dubbed the “truth train.” Ads offered “truths” to counter claims of tobacco companies. The goal was to make it cool not to smoke.

In 1999, “truth” went national with the launch of the American Legacy Foundation (now called Truth Initiative) as a direct offshoot of the settlement agreement. The Porter Novelli agency was hired to handle media relations and assist with building grassroots youth activism.

An “Outbreak Tour” in 2001 featured orange vans and Lincoln Navigators crisscrossing the country, carrying “ambassadors” who were rappers, graffiti artists, skateboarders and other teen influencers. The vans were outfitted with turntables, video monitors, Sega video games, internet access and lounge chairs. The tour ambassadors gave out “truth” swag, such as T-shirts and bandanas. Edgy TV spots highlighted the dangers of tobacco.

Settlement funding ended in 2003, but Truth Initiative continues its campaign to prevent smoking, vaping and other nicotine use among young people. In 2017, Truth Initiative won a PRSA Silver Anvil award for CATmaggedon, a montage of cat videos with a message: “Fact: Cats are twice as likely to get cancer if their owner smokes . . . Be the generation that ends smoking. Because smoking kills pets too.”

The “truth” campaigns have helped to greatly reduce youth smoking; about 23 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 smoked in 2000 compared to less than 5 percent in 2021.

The national Truth Initiative campaign won a PRSA Silver Anvil award in 2017 after helping to greatly reduce youth smoking.

1921–2014

Yuri Kochiyama was an activist dedicated to social change through social justice and human rights movements. In 1943, the detainment of her family at an Arkansas internment camp forged Kochiyama’s awareness of governmental abuses. In the early 1960s, she participated in the Asian American, Black and Third World movements for civil and human rights, and against the Vietnam War. Kochiyama was a fixture in support movements involving organizations such as the Harlem Community for Self Defense and was founder of Asian Americans for Action, through which she sought to build a morepolitical Asian American movement linked to the struggle for Black liberation. An ally of Malcom X, she joined the Organization for Afro- American Unity and was present the day Malcolm X was killed, with photos depicting her cradling his head. (Courtesy of the Asian American Journalist Association.

The Public Affairs Response to 9/11

2001

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was just a couple of blocks away from the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center in a makeshift police command center, waiting for a phone call from Vice President Dick Cheney, when the building began to shake and the phones cut out. The first tower had collapsed.

Giuliani emerged onto the street, a surreal scene of billowing ash, devastation and dazed New Yorkers. He walked two miles north to a deserted fire station in Greenwich Village where he phoned a television station to urge calm. Three hours later, Giuliani and New York Gov. George Pataki held a news conference.

The public affairs response understandably gets less attention than other aspects of that day. But providing information to the media and directly to the public was critical.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) set up a Joint Information Center at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, about three miles north of Ground Zero.

To let New Yorkers know how to get help, FEMA posted its 1-800 number for disaster assistance in huge print on the NASDAQ building in Times Square. Later, posters in subway cars advertised FEMA services.

There were communications lapses. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency’s initial press releases reassured New Yorkers it was safe to breathe the air in Lower Manhattan, even though analysis of possible toxins was still underway, the EPA Office of Inspector General later found.

Sharing the 9/11 story became an important legacy of the day. “I know I speak for all responders to this first attack of the war on terrorism when I say that a passion grew in all of us to contribute to the greater good by telling the stories of the real heroes so that the American public could understand the catastrophe that enveloped Manhattan and the U.S.,” Larry Rosenberg, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, later recalled of the 9/11 response.

The advent of COVID-19 was a challenge to public information officers who strived to communicate accurate information about the pandemic in its early days in 2020. Two years later, federal and local health officials were still battling a relentless disinformation campaign, though enormous strides had been made by many entities, including PRSA, which developed the Voices4Everyone initiative with support from recognized authorities around the world. (Daniel danielfela / Alamy Stock Photo)