Robert Brown & Mark Zaitchek

On March 17, Communications professors Robert Brown and Mark Zaitchik met at the invitation of the Salem State chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, the Communications Honor Society, to discuss the very heart of their department’s business-the business of communications. Professor Brown brings the insights of a practitioner to the classroom. He has worked for a several major companies and has been responsible for the image of at least one individual who need not be named here. Professor Zaitchik represents the other crucial and esteemed component of an intellectual education, that of the theorist. Rob can help students understand what to do; Mark can help them understand why that works (or does not). In the best tradition of academia, they do not always see eye to eye.

Thinking that in some sense we are all about communication here at Salem State College, ASpect is grateful that professors Brown and Zaitchik have agreed to let us reproduce their conversation on these pages. Or sort of to do that. As you will see below, Rob is a man who prepares thorough notes, Mark a man who prepares thorough talking points. We have taken the raw materials they each offered us and produced a point-counterpoint version of Horizons that captures something of the substance of their conversation and, arguably, nothing of the tenor of that debate.

If you want to see what the original event looked like, you can watch the exchange on the SOAS podcast.

Robert E. Brown: What is this event about? Why are we all here? My colleague, Professor Zaitchik, may tell you that this event is about philosophy-his versus mine. He may make the case that you are here because of philosophy-literally, the love of learning. He may tell you that he, and only he, is a true philosopher. He may tell you that this event is actually about so-called “world views,” his versus mine. And that he believes you came here today to hear a detailed account of his worldview and of mine.

But I disagree. I don’t believe we are here today to scrutinize the worldviews and philosophies of two of your professors. Many of you already know that Professor Zaitchik and I have our disagreements. You have actually watched us disagreeing in front of you, in class after class. And if you have seen us do that, then I trust that you have seen with your own eyes that we actually seem to enjoy those arguments, and that we can disagree and debate openly and civilly and have no need to get down and dirty and personal. I don’t think this conversation is about philosophy – at least, not in the standard, academic catalog way that Professor Zaitchik might intend. So what do I think this conversation should be about? I think it should be about belief-not only about what we believe, but about how our beliefs come to be embedded in what we say to you, our students, and to other audiences, and in what we write and publish to the world at large.

Let me tell you what I believe-and why I believe it. And then I may attempt to contrast that with what my colleague believes and why he may believe it. That much, of course, he will tell you himself. I was hired 13 years ago to teach public relations. My colleague tells me that he was among my strongest supporters. I can only be grateful for that support. These years at Salem State have been the best, the happiest, the most productive years of my professional life. So what do I believe? I believe in the freedom of choice. I believe that students should be able to choose so-called “career-oriented concentrations” such as public relations and advertising and journalism. Collectively over the years, this choice has made our department one of the five largest and perhaps the fastest-growing in the entire college. To denigrate a “practical” department’s offerings as “trade school,” as some of our critics do, is hardly more than intellectual snobbery.

I believe in rhetoric and persuasion. I believe, with Aristotle in the Art of Rhetoric, which has been called the single most important book on persuasion ever written, that rhetoric is an ethical way of knowing and being. And we know that public relations and advertising, and the editorial opinion part of journalism, are forms of persuasive communication. I believe in persuasive communication, particularly when it is civil and public. I continue to believe in advocacy and argument, notwithstanding recent studies that tell us that the generation of students entering colleges these days rejects persuasion, believing that we can all somehow be governed by consensus.

I believe in real-world, experiential learning. I believe in the abiding values of the four fundamental communication skills: Writing, speaking, reading and listening. I am a writer, and I believe in the liberating power of the written word, which is why I write and why I publish my writing, and why I have been teaching writing for more than three decades. Writing is the most important of all the skills required of the entry-level public relations practitioner. It can be taught. So can persuasion. Persuasive competency is fundamental to each of us, not only in the classroom but in our daily lives. Through rhetoric, we negotiate our lives and define who we are. Finally, let me say that public relations and advertising-that is, persuasive communication as opposed to censorship and repression-thrive in democratic societies, not totalitarian regimes.

Mark Zaitchek

Mark Zaitchik: Persuasion is an attempt to change the minds of others or to induce them to act in a particular way. It is a technique. To an ethicist, one concerned with whether an action is right or wrong, it is morally neutral; virtue depends on the content of what is being argued. Persuasion takes place as heated debate, in calm logical argumentation, in marketing, in politics, and in any conversation, written publication, or mass media technology which seeks to win your agreement and your approval. And it takes place in many forms.

Philosophy, at least most of it, seeks to encourage self-examination, the exploration of the truth about the world. Public relations, advertising, mainstream American journalism and mass media programming are driven to persuade you of someone else’s truth. Or rather, should we say “interest”?

And their interests, generally speaking, are money, power, fame, winning, and allegiance to their cause.

At the heart of mass communications in America is something far more subtle than “coercion” which is the subject of today’s discussion. As I understand coercion, it is a club over your head, a knife pressed against your belly, a Gestapo agent in the hallway. Coercion evokes fear and fear inspires resistance.

Manipulation need not assault the conscious mind. Often, as in the case of advertising, we are unaware of how it affects our humanity; usually, as in the case of effective public relations, we are unaware of the very existence of the illusions it creates. Manipulation can affect us in two distinct ways: If it is not exposed, we end up buying the goods, both material and intellectual. And if we see through it, the danger is that we become a generation of Seinfelds, cynics (who believe in nothing) and nihilists (who value nothing). Let me offer some cold, unvarnished facts:

1. At graduation from high school, the average American teenager will have seen almost 400,000 commercials.
2. The average adult sees about 25,000 commercials each year.
3. More than 75 percent of these commercials are paid for by the 100 largest corporations in America.
4. Presently, we spend almost as much money on the War in Iraq as we do on Medicare; we spend more money on advertising than we do on all of secondary education.
5. You receive more than three thousand messages to buy something each day.
6. The commercial environment persists when we turn on America’s intellectual environment, the TV, and we are greeted by corporate sponsors who create a “reality” that can be bought at the mall.
7. Even public space is violated as “municipal marketing companies” spring up to help cities and towns sell naming rights. Did you know that Snapple is the official drink of N.Y.C.?

And what do we make of all this?

1. Given wide economic gaps between people, advertising creates envy and a sense of inadequacy.
2. It exaggerates the absurd conformity of fashion. (How many of you have George Foreman grills?)
3. It dumbs down programming. Why the highest ratings go to bad programming is another question.
4. It devalues products, because production money must be transferred to the advertising department.
5. It creates needs and feeds the frenzy of consumption.
6. In the process of consumption, we deplete resources, destroy life systems, and create a world which becomes increasingly artificial. You are all becoming familiar with virtual reality.
7. As we purchase commodities, we become commodities ourselves and become more and more removed from our traditions and institutions and the interior life they are capable of yielding.
8. In the world of products, wealth becomes the final measurement of success.

It may be that it is difficult for any people to resist the seductive voice of materialism-unless it has strong cultural and religious traditions to resist it- but how have we allowed ourselves to see the world so unclearly?

Rob Brown responds to Mark Zaitchek.

Rob Brown: I want to tell you that I am for enlightened self-interest, the kind of self-interest I have in seeing my students succeed so that we all benefit: Students, faculty, administration, the college community, and the wider community outside our walls. “Enlightened self-interest” is the term used by Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous study Democracy in America. De Tocqueville believed that one of the great qualities that defined Americans was “how an enlightened regard for themselves prompts them to assist each other…” I’m Tocquevillean, which is to say that, at least on one level, I’m an idealist.

And there you have it. Define the “good” and you might decide upon whose side you would line up: The defender of your right to be a part of an unending quest to explain the benefits of goods, services, and ideas; or the defender of the right to be spared the clutter and barrage of claims so frequent and overwhelming as to be intrusive and corrosive of identity. Unless, of course, professors Brown and Zaitchik are equally wrong or equally right, two sides of one forever-spinning coin that will never come down either heads or tails.

This article is part of ASpect’s May 2008 issue, Values in the Classrooom.