PIO Peck: Informing or Forming the Public?

We all know we have a new public information officer in Niagara County. Mr. Christian Peck, former Client Strategy Manager for Zogby International, landed the nearly $40, 000 position.

As I began to think about this new addition to the tax bill, I couldn’t really decide what the most important question was. Is it, “Do we really need this function here and why?” Or, is it, “What motivated this hiring at this particular time?”

Is this a progressive evolution from some prior state of lack of information, disinformation or misinformation? Is this partisan strategy? Institutional strategy? County Manager strategy, good will, inevitable bureaucratic fission? Or did someone just decide, “Hell, let’s spend some tax money for no good reason at all.”

As my title for this piece suggests, possibly we need to first ask the question whether the intent or effect of the PIO was or will be to “inform” the public or “form” the public? That is, are we now going to be privy to some information that we weren’t B.C., before Christian? Or, are we just going to now have a Legislature whose milieu now looks a little more like Washington, D.C.? Are we going to be given access to conversations, transcripts, events, phenomena that we didn’t have before? I've always been kind of intrigued to watch the publicist types dispense 'information' that becomes an 'explanation' which really explains aways the information that we need to understand.

That is, most importantly, is the public realm as a result now going to look something more like “the public sphere?” Are we going to be moving in a direction opposite to the de-politicization, disenfranchisement and disparaging degradation that we have been moving in this county for some considerable time? Is Mr. Peck going to provide, possibly miraculously, the value free, neutral, objective “facts” that we all love and cherish so very much (even though such a thing doesn’t exist, at least in the mythic sense we revere and worship). Is the public sphere now going to be restored to the domain of citizenship and participatory democracy?

What does Mr. Peck know, what skills does he possess or what exactly is he going to be doing such that we are now all going to be informed in a way that we weren’t before the $40,000 investment in the bureaucracy?

OR, is the consequence, if not the intent, of this newly created “position” to not ‘inform’ the public in some knowledge-producing, self-determination inducing way, but to in fact “form” the public that the Legislature wants and is conducive to the smooth, normalized functioning of the putative government? That is, are we about to enter into a media structure in which we will be given the “information” that they want us to hear? We all know what happens at the White House when well domesticated “journalists” throw pre-digested softball questions to a robotized “information officer” who handles all questions such that we leave believing that all is as well as it can be. Or, the best of all possible worlds. Of course we also leave with the feeling, if not conviction, that we really don’t know anything and never will. Probably Mr. Peck will avoid such a format. But let’s wait and see. If he does actually create such a media monster I just hope he is a few IQ points brighter than Dana “What’s the Bay of Pigs?” Perrino, and a little less ingratiating and sophistically slimy than Tony Snow. And if he does find some incriminating information as to the inside operations of the Legislature hopefully he’ll let us know a little sooner than Scott McClellan did.

Mr. Peck could be the new guard at the Iron Curtain of whitewashed “facts,” “problems,” “questions,” and “events.” Hopefully his position is not about shaping and conditioning an even more passive, indifferent and demoralized public. This could happen however even if it is not Mr. Peck’s conscious, evil intention to manufacture an Orwellian mass of zogby’s, oops, I mean zombies. The training and conditioning of a “publicist” as opposed to, let us say, a journalist, may have a way of conveying “information” after of course he has more of less consciously or unconsciously pre-selected facts, information, interview data, etc., that caters to the interest of a County Manager who thinks in terms of policy management, systems analysis, etc., a Legislature populated by possibly too many lawyers or businessmen/women who can’t imagine how government should be conceived and run as anything other than a business.

If Mr. Peck conceives of his first obligation to be to and in the interest of the public, a public which in fact empirically and functionally virtually does not exist, then his job becomes something much more than that of a publicist or client strategy manager. Is Mr. Peck going to “manage” information or access and interpret information in the interest of the people? Is he going to move and operate in the ethos of a dialogue, inquiry and discourse? Or is he going to arbitrarily, thoughtlessly and uncritically transmit whatever pap is thrown his way? Is he going to ask himself the question, “How shall I understand and interpret and present to the public "information" which will count as authentically political information?”

I hope, in short, that Mr. Peck is conscious of the fact that “facts” are created by prejudices, paradigms of knowledge, political interests, personal interests, professional self-understanding, situational pressures, etc. He cannot be neutral and he will have an effect in shaping the public consciousness if not the public sphere whether he tries to or knows it or not. Facts and information do not show up, ready made, prêt a porte, to be served up a la carte or possibly even as smorgasbord. Facts and information are not fashion. And, in fact, information is created over time in a sustained discourse, dialogue and inquiry. It involves history and, yes, even theory.

But at a less theoretical level, if the Legislature/County Manager want us to be more or better informed, why was their such a concerted effort to rid the county of one of the best sources of information we have had for the past 10 years, namely, The Tom Christy show, Legislative Journal on LCTV? Or why was there so little effort on the part of the Republicans to save the show even though their "commander and chief," Mr. Maziarz, always calls for public scrutiny and even participation of sorts? If we really want a diversity of sources of information, thus, assuring a fairness of perspective and interest-consideration, why would one of the most important sources of such “information,” (at least to some 70 people who gathered to protest Christy's summary purging from LCTV at the Coffee Shop in Lockport on a Legislative Tuesday last spring), be cancelled? The Christy show was a vigorous and rigorous opening to the goings-on in Niagara County. I guess they didn't like the "information" his show was generating.

Will Mr. Peck ask of the Legislature,their appointees and other County operatives the hard questions that Christy and his audience frequently asked? And if he does will he find himself again looking for work? Let’s hope, but stay vigilant, to see just how this plays out. But let’s not allow a new kind of local ‘spin doctor’ to set up practice in Niagara County. We have enough of that on the blogs and the new LCTV media mouthpiece for the Republican party and local town marketeers, namely, Access to Government (if its even still on the air. I don’t watch it anymore).

We need a populist publicist, or PIO for the people if you like, not a brainwashed or brain dead “professional” who believes he can smooth-talk the locals into believing we know all we need to know, that all is well and “in fact” it already is the best of all possible worlds. Let’s not allow Mr. Peck to smooze his way into believing that he has some talent of prestidigitation that bestows all the “news” worth knowing or the only perspective that gives a clear view on the truth.

Let’s also hope now that the Legislators don’t feel even less obligated to talk to the public than they already do, if that’s even possible.

But who knows? Maybe Mr. Peck can help the potential citizens of Niagara to actually begin to think like a community that has more in common than it realizes, a task that the Niagara County Comprehensive Plan project has failed to carry out.