Chester Burger
Amelia Island, Florida
September 20, 1992

"Phony Communication is Worse Than None at All"

To download a printable version of this speech, click here.

My friends and colleagues,
Thank you for the great honor you have extended to me.

Arthur W. Page had retired from AT&T nine years before I became involved as a consultant to the company. So I never met him. But I surely saw everywhere in the company the lasting impact of his judgment and wisdom. Most particularly, I saw it in the character of the people he and his successors had selected to conduct public relations activities. Perhaps tonight, it is not inappropriate for me to tell you something about my early life to explain the impact of Mr. Page's philosophy on me.

I had grown up poor during the Depression. The word "poor" is a relative term, so let me say simply that going hungry, living in an unheated house during the winter, and finally being evicted into the street because my father couldn't meet the mortgage payments -- those are some of my memories. At that point, age 19, I dropped out of college and went to work. A year later, I got another job -- as a page boy in uniform at CBS. This introduced me to the corporate world. At CBS, it was the "Paley-olithic Period." They gave me opportunity and I took it. I learned. I moved up. Before I left almost 14 years later, I had organized the CBS Television News operation and had become its first National Manager.

Those 14 years at CBS shaped my first impressions of corporate America -- both good and bad. My own advancement told me unexpectedly that opportunity really did exist, even for people like me. But some of my impressions were not so favorable. To cite one: racism -- not uncommon on the American scene before World War II -- was out in the open at CBS, seemingly accepted by everyone. Out of a total of 1,000 CBS employees at that time, only 11 were those whom we would now call African-Americans. Everyone of those 11 was a college graduate holding a B.A. degree. And everyone of those 11 was employed only as a porter, sweeping the floors and emptying the waste baskets. No promotion opportunities existed for them. When I saw that, as a 20-year old youngster, I concluded that management wanted it that way, or they could and would have stopped it. That, among other things I observed, didn't give me a favorable impression of the values of CBS, or by extension, of corporate America, since such practices then were universal.

When hundreds of CBS employees entered the military service in World War II, CBS established a good -- no, a superb communications program to keep in touch with us. Letters to "the boys in uniform," reached us regularly with news of what was happening back in the company. Hopes of a new and better world -- and better jobs -- after victory were held out to us.

But our hopes crashed against the rocks of corporate reality. Before I entered the service, my job had been Assistant Manager of International Operations --- at a salary of $25 a week. When I returned three and a half years later, my old job didn't exist anymore. Congress had established The Voice of America to take over the function. The GI Bill of Rights entitled me to a job at equal pay, and the only one open was Mimeograph Operator at $27.50 a week.

My personal experience typified that of the returning veterans. As a result, we ex-GI's got together and organized a union. In the early post-war period, the only unions that would bother with white collar workers (as we were called) were left-wing unions. So we organized a left-wing union. I was elected president and the voting delegate to the New York CIO Council. We fought CBS management; we picketed; and finally we won a good contract. Management had to live with this white collar union contract for years.

Those early CBS experiences that led me to become a union organizer and activist influenced me in later years. I had observed that good communications aren't always the answer to employee dissatisfaction. Over a lifetime, I have concluded that wages are about at the bottom of the list of the issues that breed employee anger. Human relations -- the way management treats people -- is at the top of the list. In later years as a consultant, I would examine not only employee communications programs, but, more importantly, the underlying management policies that they were communicating, or alternatively were obscuring or avoiding. I urged management to conduct honest opinion studies to find out how the workers in the shops and offices really felt. This gave us hard facts, instead of emotions and guesses. Research enabled management to re-examine personnel policies and also the programs that were communicating them.

My CBS experience taught me also that so-called cheerful, upbeat, positive employee communications programs would backfire if they didn't correspond to the reality of what employees actually were experiencing on the job. It would have been far better if the CBS management had warned us servicemen there might be problems in getting us resettled, but they would do the best they could. Instead, they extended promises they were unable to keep. Insensitive employee communications programs jeopardize credibility, and thus harm the corporation's most valuable asset. Phony communication is worse than none at all.

Let me contrast my youthful experience with a story in the tradition of Arthur W. Page. It is a tradition of the best of corporate America, the best of corporate communications, the kind of thing I observed hundreds of times over a period of 33 years. Such observations of the Page tradition profoundly changed my perceptions of and my attitude toward corporate America.

One example I particularly remember happened in the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia. A vice-president there was absolutely dedicated to honest communication with employees. Occasionally, an employee would write a nice letter to MOUNTAIN LINES, the company paper, saying how proud he or she was to be working for the C&P Company. The vice president would promptly send the employee a personal letter of thanks. But if an employee complained about something, he saw to it that it was printed in MOUNTAIN LINES. Once an employee wrote, "Thank you for having the president of the company come and visit us here in our little office in Beckley, West Virginia. Before his visit, you painted our office; you gave us a new rug on the floor; you fixed up the front lawn. Please have him come more often."

The vice president wrote the response: "You're right. We did those things, because the president is an important man to us. I'm sure that if you expect an important visitor to your home, you straighten up the living room; you throw out the junk. You try to make a good impression. That's just what we did." It was an honest answer in the Arthur W. Page tradition. That's good employee communication. It builds trust, unlike most of the glossy nonsense that many companies waste their money on these days. This exemplified Arthur Page's first credo of corporate communications: tell the truth.

There is another lesson I learned from the philosophy of Arthur W. Page: to be open and forthright. In my youthful wisdom and arrogance, I didn't expect forthrightness from the biggest of corporate America. While I was still at CBS News, I had made the acquaintance and then the friendship of an AT&T public relations man named Jess Bell. After awhile, I began letting out to Jess some of my anti-business sentiments. Why were telephone company profits so high? Why did the telephone company do so-and-so? Most of the time, Jess would give me detailed, factual and persuasive answers. To some of my questions, Jess would respond, "I don't know. Never been asked that before. But I'll find out for you." And he always did.

It astonished me that his company had nothing to hide, and felt a responsibility to respond to public concerns. Such an attitude was not widespread in corporate America. I was profoundly impressed. CBS News editors were accustomed to corporate refusals to answer our sometimes probing questions.

To this day, the benefits of forthrightness have not been learned by many corporations. Some enjoy favorable publicity, but will not disclose facts that may cast them or their managements in an unfavorable light. A senior public relations professional needs to persuade management that credibility is the most valuable corporate asset, that preserving credibility is more important to corporate survival than concealing any unpleasant truth, however damaging it may appear at the moment. People, including investors, don't expect CEO's to be perfect and God-like. They do expect them to be honest. And often they are willing to overlook honest errors of judgment.

It is important that the heads of corporate communication should not ask, "How well are we communicating?" But rather, "What are we communicating?" Are we responding honestly and forthrightly to employee concerns, even though we know that sometimes, our answers may not be well received? Are we presenting ourselves as a genuinely caring employer, or as a management that simply seeks to impose its own agenda?

Abraham Lincoln understood what we needed to do:

"If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one.

"On the contrary," Lincoln continued, "assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retire within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made; and though you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision; you shall no more be able to pierce him than to penetrate the shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.

"Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his best interest."

That was Abraham Lincoln's philosophy. It was also the communications philosophy Arthur Page practiced at AT&T. To this day, it is not widely practiced.

This Society emphasizes "sound" corporate policy and strategy. I define "sound" as serving the public interest -- even above corporate self-interest. Again and again, in my own lifetime, I have seen brilliantly-executed corporate communications programs fail, not because they weren't well executed or adequately funded, but because they were based on policies that did not serve the public interest.

Look at the experience of AT&T itself, that most honorable of companies. In 1982, (the last year for which I saw the figures), its total public relations budget was $171 million. It employed more than 1,500 of the best public relations professionals in the country. It ran a thorough, carefully planned, brilliant public relations campaign to try to defeat the government's anti-trust charges. Well, you know the outcome. Many lessons for all of us emerge from this experience. Although that campaign now is ten years in the past, it justifies our reconsideration with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, because it was probably the largest, most costly and best-run campaign in the history of public relations.

AT&T's fundamental strategy, formulated back in the days of the great Theodore Vail, was "Universal Service." The term meant underpricing home telephone service; pricing it so low -- in fact, below cost -- that everyone could afford it. And overpricing long-distance service to make up the loss, because long-distance was then a luxury service used mostly by corporations, not individuals. In those early years, "Universal Service" was a sound strategy. It surely was honorably conceived in the public interest. It worked. By the 1970's, in every state, between 96 and 98 of every 100 American homes had telephone service. So Mr. Vail's goal of universal service had been achieved.

But the policy dated from the early years of the telephone. It long since had outlived its usefulness. Long-distance rates remained high because they had to make up the huge losses on residential telephone service. So competitors came along, without having to carry the burden of subsiding local service. They could and did undercut AT&T. In AT&T's self-interest, the policy should have been dropped. Incidently, monopoly economics is bad economics.

But a century of tradition dies hard. We thought AT&T's corporate self-interest in continuing as a monopoly was also in the public's best interest. The public thought otherwise. The public was right and perhaps we were wrong. Eight years after the Bell System breakup, in retrospect, can we honestly say that the "Universal Service" policy, aged almost 100 years, was still serving the public interest? But we failed to see this at that time.

With the benefit of inspired hindsight, it also now seems apparent that no one sufficiently estimated the all-powerful, underlying, fundamental current of public opinion in the late 1970's -- distrust of big government, big corporations, big unions, big institutions, or even big AT&T. The combination of the Vietnam War and Watergate had severely damaged public trust in the integrity of major institutions in our society. In the climate of pervasive distrust, it really didn't matter what A&T did or didn't say, or whether AT&T did or didn't continue as a monopoly. Surely, if any segment of public opinion had believed the company's argument, some politician would have come to the company's defense simply to win votes. Public distrust of corporations is a bad climate in which to operate. The public distrust of the 1970's remains the public distrust of the 1990's -- perhaps even intensified.

The AT&T experience also suggests that more money spent on public relations won't make much difference. In that case, if an $171 million annual budget didn't succeed, what on earth could have made the difference? Only the right policy can make the difference. In this sophisticated era, the general public just might turn out to be a better judge than we of what's in the public interest. Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the greatest persuader ever to occupy the Presidential Mansion, expressed his viewpoint this way on the eve of Fort Sumter:

"In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people."

This leads me to another lesson. My memory goes back to sometime in the late 1960's when the consortium of oil companies called the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, headquartered in Anchorage, sought permission to go ahead with the construction of the Alaska Pipeline, bringing the riches of the Prudhoe Bay discovery to the West Coast. In the middle of the authorization process, the environmentalists had halted the pipeline construction by court order. Two billion dollars of pipe and equipment were lying on the frozen wastes while the issue of environmental protection was resolved.

Jay Rockey of Seattle, who was public relations counsel to Alyeska, had suggested that my office be brought into the picture. I asked Ed Patton, the President of Alyeska, what efforts had been made to communicate with, and to listen to the environmental critics. "You can't talk with them," he said. "They're fanatics. They're utterly unreasonable."

As I remember the conversation all these years later, I said, "Well, Ed, that may be true. But on the other hand, isn't it also true that the Federal Government cleared you to go ahead only after you had completed the most thorough environmental-impact studies ever done for any civil engineering project in the United States? What ever happened to those environmental studies? Did the environmentalists ever see them?"

"No, they hadn't. You can't reason with them." "Well," I suggested, "Why don't we try it first?" And Alyeska went and reproduced a five-foot shelf of scientific environmental studies that had been approved by the government, but seen by hardly anyone else. In every branch of relevant science, they showed that the pipeline was safe and would not seriously endanger the magnificent environment. Alyeska began to visit the press and the leading critics and present them with copies of the Five-Foot Shelf. Some of the critics weren't at all impressed. But many were. And eventually the situation changed; the ban was lifted, and construction was begun and then completed.

The problem hadn't been made by the press or the environmentalists. The problem was created by hostility toward the press. It was -- shall we say? -- naive. If a company chooses not to tell its story quickly and fully, perhaps it deserves the damage that surely will ensue.

The press, by which I mean newspapers, magazines and broadcasting, -- I won't use Nixon's favorite pejorative, "the media" -- is often unfair, unreasonable and simply wrong. But even if it isn't often our friend, it is the best friend the nation has, and we should be thankful for it. My colleague Jim Arnold and I, when we were dealing with difficult problems of corporations under attack by the press, wrestled regularly with this. But we invariably ended up with a pretty good respect for the press, at least for the best of the press. Like Thomas Jefferson, I would rather live with its unfairness than live in a country where corporate power or government power or union power or power of any kind remains unchecked by the glaring light of exposure. I believe that sound corporate policy recognizes the essential value of a free and independent press, and guides management to accept this simply as an unavoidable fact of life.

So you see very specifically how the Page Principles in action changed my life: the need to tell the truth; the need to be forthright; the need to communicate fully and freely; the need above all to serve the public interest. These Page Principles sound self-evident. But every professional knows they are not.

In the Page tradition, you are practicing corporate public relations at its very best professional level. For that, I congratulate you, thank you, and thank you also for associating my name in this way with the man who gave so much to our nation. And I challenge you to examine your own company's public relations practices against the standards set by Arthur W. Page.