Disinformation Techniques: A Glossary

Herb Schmertz: The Bully

[00:00:00] Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmm, hmm. Hmm. Hmm, hmm. Hmm. Hmm hmm. Hmm. Hmm hmm. Most of these theater is brought to you by mobile reading the fuel the public television around.

[00:00:18] Masterpiece Theater has been bringing British dramas and occasionally comedies to Americans via PBS for more than 50 years now. It's one of the longest running shows in American television history. The show is still basking in the glory of its most recent hit Downton Abbey, but there were plenty of others before it, like Upstairs, Downstairs, the Downton Abbey of the 70s. Also about how class works in Britain. Because, you know, as Americans, we like to pretend class isn't a thing here. At this point, Masterpiece Theater has become an institution. But by all accounts, it might never have happened at all without one publicist who saw the show's potential-- not for exposing Americans to British culture, but for polishing the image of the giant oil company he worked for. That man's name was Herb Schmitz, and he's something of a legend in the PR world, but today we're going to focus on just one of his major contributions to the world of spin. Welcome back to Rigged the Story of Disinformation, a podcast about the war for hearts and minds and television right here on U.S. soil. Today's trick? Sponsored content. SponCon!

[00:01:39] Shaw, and I think he visited at least 20 or 25 different corporations, but he finally found an entree at mobile.

[00:01:49] This is Henry Becton, a producer at WGBH in Boston. When Masterpiece Theater first got going, he's talking on the Making Masterpiece podcast here about Stanford Calderwood, the president of WGBH and one of the creators of Masterpiece Theater.

[00:02:07] So he got an interview with Herb Schmitz, and Herb liked the idea.

[00:02:13] Herb Schmertz was the VP of Public Affairs for Mobil Oil at the time, the company's top PR guy in his book Goodbye to the Low Profile. Schmitz tells the story behind Masterpiece, and you can catch a few glimpses of his personality in this story. As Schmitz tells it, Calderwood called him up one day in 1970 and asked him if he'd been watching the Foresight Saga, a BBC miniseries that had been running on PBS. And Schwartz writes in his book Now in those Days, and I suppose the same holds true today. Even those people who didn't watch serious drama on public television would say that they did so, although I had never seen a single episode. I assured Stan Calderwood that the Foresight Saga was one of my favorite shows. Calderwood was asking $10000 an hour to sponsor Masterpiece, an incredible deal for mobile. And Schwartz didn't know that Calderwood had already called up several other companies first looking for sponsorship. It probably wouldn't have mattered, because for Schmidt's masterpiece wasn't just a good deal. It would also deliver a key benefit to mobile. Here's WGBH producer Rebecca Eaton explaining why on the Making Masterpiece podcast.

[00:03:35] Herb Schmertz was a very smart guy who understood marketing instinctively, and he understood that a high class British drama series on public television was exactly what his oil company needed because his oil company needed its name to be burnished. They wanted to be the classy oil company. Not so much to sell gas at the local pump, but in Washington to impress the policymakers, the movers and shakers.

[00:04:09] Herb Schmertz might sound like the name of a beige suit wearing insurance salesman who has one line in an episode of Columbo, but Herb was anything but beige. He was a blond haired, blue eyed, clean shaven, flashy suit wearing ladies, man. Picture Mad Men, but for PR. Don Draper, but blonde. He had a toughness about him earned during a decade or so as a labor lawyer before he held court in a corner office at mobile headquarters. Herb Schmertz had actually made headlines for settling big labor disputes like the nationwide dockworkers strike in 1964. He had worked on political campaigns too and been an adviser to JFK. In fact, he was tapped by all the Kennedys to work on all of their campaigns, and he brought these experiences into his PR work for mobile. Later in his life, he would describe his work for Mobil as an ongoing political campaign, but for ideas instead of a man. Even people who hated Schmertz would begrudgingly admit he was incredible at his job, whether it was bullying the media into covering Mobil's point of view or using cultural institutions to turn Mobil into the thinking man's oil company. He would later talk about this as influencing the influencers or influencing the influential. And it was the driving force behind a lot of Mobil funded content.

[00:05:43] Masterpiece Theater is made possible by a grant from Mobil Corp., which invites you to join with them in supporting your local public television station. Coming soon from Mobil Masterpiece Theater, a very unusual television event. About a very unusual group of people in a very unusual place. Mystery introduces its latest detective a familiar face in a new role, the woman who caught the Bombay poisoner and the blackmailer Belgrave Square and modest winning combination

[00:06:18] PBS had just launched itself in 1970 and in 1971, Masterpiece Theater launched with mobile attached. The company had actually already dabbled in some public TB funding, with donations to Sesame Street, Big Oil and Big Bird the perfect pairing. But Mobil went even bigger on Masterpiece Theater, and it was just the beginning for shipments. Within a few years, he had added mystery. Another British show on PBS this time focused on, you guessed it, crime dramas. And then there were the nature documentaries. Americans who have enjoyed the dulcet tones of David Attenborough narrating the animal kingdom for decades might be surprised to learn that it was mobile oil that first brought Attenborough's nature documentaries to the states. Schmitz also launched another show called Mobile Showcase on commercial TV. Less highbrow content could play in mobile showcase and smarts later explained that it gave him a way to get mobile backed content onto commercial channels, content and ads that just weren't allowed on PBS. Things like this

[00:07:33] because I am the foreigner in another man's country. Every time I look in the mirror, I say, Who is that? Yeah, I told Vern Porter he didn't have to look over his shoulder at anybody because he's given it everything he's got every day. Verne Porter and other mobile people working around the world to find and produce oil strive to build deeper understanding between our culture and others. Watch for another mobile showcase presentation titled 10 Who Dared? Anthony Quinn is your host every week.

[00:08:06] Publicly, Schmertz and PBS always insisted that Mobile had no editorial power over what Masterpiece Theater showed. But in an interview for a book about masterpiece later in his life, Schmertz was in the mood to spill some tea. I found the notes from that conversation deep in a university archive in Baltimore, and it was eye opening. Here's how Schmertz describes bringing the show Upstairs. Downstairs masterpieces biggest hit last century to the US.

[00:08:39] "I just said that mobile is going to buy this show, and if you people don't want to run, it will find other ways to distribute it. They said. We were trying to pressure, we're trying to build booths or we're trying to dictate to them. We didn't try to dictate anything. I just said, we're going to take the decision that this is a show the American public should see and will enjoy now. They characterize that in negative terms, threats and everything else. But I merely said that I could syndicate this with public television stations around the country without PBS GBH, which I'm sure we could. That's just a practical statement of the truth.

[00:09:16] I'm not threatening you and merely reminding you that you are replaceable.

[00:09:24] When I found this interview, it was so surprising to hear him lay it all out like this that I had to call up my friend and partner in crime writer Mary Annaise Heglar, because she knows I've been fascinated by this master for a while. Mary, I'm calling you to tell you about one of my all time favorites in the PR world. I know you've heard me talk about him before. A guy named Herbert Schmertz.

[00:09:51] The Schmertzster! My boy Herb. So he sees this masterpiece theater thing is like a cool opportunity. And he was actually one of the last calls they made. Everybody thought that it was boring. Everybody was like, Why are you bringing British cinema to the U.S.? Americans don't like that stuff. And then Herb is like. This is going to make us look a little posh. Posh, which means fancy, fancy, Ray, like British slang for fancy. Yes, and so OK. Anyway, so he he does it and it starts to become more and more successful, and he starts to really fancy himself a film producer like for Real. So he starts making these regular trips to London, and he's meeting with all these different production companies. And he within like five years or so from the point where mobile from that point to like mobile stop sponsoring masterpiece, which is like another 20 years, he becomes one of the most important men in British cinema. Because if you want your show or your film to get to America, you basically have to impress Herb.

[00:10:59] It's completely wild to me that an oil company exec became one of the most important people in TV and film in the 1970s.

[00:11:08] But his influence didn't stop with Masterpiece Theater. It reached PBS 60 Minutes, Ted Koppel. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and even more more on the many tentacles of Herbert Smith's after this. We heard before the break about Herb Schwartz's multipronged propaganda parade to persuade the public that mobile oil was the classiest gas guzzler in town. Now keep in mind that around the same time, Mobil jumped on board with Masterpiece Theater. Schmitz had pioneered another form of sponsored content. The advertorial In 1970, the New York Times opened up its op ed pages to advertisers for the very first time. Schmitz saw this as a golden opportunity, and rather than run ads in those pages, he hired writers to pen mobile funded op ads. They were clearly marked as ads, but they read like all the other op ads, and they were juicy with headlines like If

[00:12:15] we tell you oil companies don't make enough profit, you'll have effect. Oil companies don't make enough profit. Sorry.

[00:12:24] Well, Herb would have loved a clickbait headline at work. Surely, the American people wouldn't be swayed by a British accent and some clickbait headlines, right? Well, yes, yes, they were. Herb Schwartz's campaign of culture washing was highly successful, about 10 years after Mobile started sponsoring Masterpiece. They surveyed upscale college grads and found that Mobile had a surprising amount of cred with this group of people. They didn't necessarily agree with Mobil's views, but as experts put it, they knew who we were. 31 percent said they bought mobile gas more often than other brands. In his book, Schmitz wrote, Our

[00:13:08] pollster was so surprised by the numbers that he wrote in the margin mobile must be the thinking man's

[00:13:15] gasoline. The thinking man's gasoline makes about as much sense as the intellectuals weedkiller or the philosophers toothpaste. But Herb Schwartz had pulled off making mobile seem kind of classy and in mobile marketing reports about the impact of those New York Times editorials. The company saw major dividends Kert Davies from the watchdog group. The Climate Investigation Center dug up one of these reports from 1982.

[00:13:43] They talk about having influence the New York Times editorial viewpoints in the document says quote. Our analysis shows that the Times has altered or significantly softened its viewpoints on conservation, moving from a total reliance on conservation to advocating increased production incentives to solve the supply shortage on offshore drilling. Moving from valuing environmental concerns at the expense of exploration and development. To urging accelerated offshore drilling and on gas. A haul which is another name for ethanol moving from increased subsidies for gas oil production from grain to arguing against such subsidies. So they tallying how they have affected the viewpoints of the New York Times on conservation, monopoly and divestiture, decontrol, natural gas, coal, offshore drilling and gas are all things that they had written op eds on.

[00:14:37] Sometimes the advertorials and the highbrow TV converged like the tame PBS ran a British docu drama on Saudi Arabia called The Death of a Princess. It was not flattering to Saudi who were furious about this film and the impact of that anger and Saudi's withdrawal of petrodollars was felt around the world. Mobil, of course, had a long history of business with the Saudi Arabians, and they did not want to jeopardize that relationship. So they placed an advertorial in the New York Times calling on PBS to pull the show. And then Schmitz even appeared on the show Open Mind in 1980 to attack the film himself.

[00:15:23] But my guest today is Herbert Schmitz Mobile's Public Affairs, Public Relations Government Relations vice president, who has never hesitated to raise any number of strong and strongly critical points about many aspects of the media, both public and private firm. Thanks for joining me today. Great pleasure to be here, Dick. I want to turn as quickly as possible to a new fairy tale, the mobile ad or op ed piece or editorial. Call it what you will have to call them pamphlets, pamphlets, but they appear in newspapers. Before we spoke about the accepted version was that this was an accurate portrayal of life in Saudi Arabia. I think after we spoke out, another spoke out. It was quite clear that this was a fiction. I have the feeling that this was that this had a measure of political polemic and it also well, that, of course, is what people were saying about your ad, a new fairy tale. Well, I mean, would that be fair? No, I don't think so.

[00:16:23] A new fairy tale was the title of the op ed that mobile had run in the New York Times, criticizing the film and chastising PBS for running it.

[00:16:33] Our ad was done for two purposes one to have the public know that if they did watch it, that it was a fiction and not another factual documentary. Secondly, to to try to urge that perhaps there be some other balancing type of programing which could occur in the one hour panel after the show. Now those were the kinds of things that that clearly helped to put the show in context. But at the end, your conclusion. In the end, we hope that the management of the Public Broadcasting Service will review its decision to run this film. Meaning you hope they wouldn't run it or at least review it and exercise responsible judgment in the light of what is in the best interest of the United States.

[00:17:20] And there you have it another benefit of Spon Khan control and access. Sheamus didn't just have that page in the New York Times that he paid for every week or the ability to tell PBS, which shows to run in masterpiece. Theater for a period of time, he seemed to have most of the media cowed when 60 Minutes turned its lens on itself to question whether it always did the right thing journalistically. Herb Schmitz was there to tell them where he thought they went wrong. Oh, great. A guy who's spent his life manipulating arts and culture to make oil companies look good, lecturing the country on journalistic ethics. This should be good.

[00:18:03] The real issue is, do you always exercise the maximum amount of your rights? And I think the public's perception of me is that you're more interested in exercising your rights to get somebody than you are and exercising the rights to inform.

[00:18:17] Ah yes, Herb Schmitz, VP of Mobile, but also a stand in for the public and really the guy who knows what sort of information the people really want from journalists. It wasn't just 60 Minutes, either. When Ted Koppel wanted to talk about whether a batch of libel suits corporations had brought against journalists constituted an attack on the First Amendment. Her experts was there to say No, not at all.

[00:18:44] Is it an effort at intimidation or just an attempt to keep an increasingly powerful news media accountable? We'll talk with a leading media critic, Mobil Oil Vice President Herbert Schwartz, and with New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis.

[00:18:59] This was a nightly news show positioning Herb Schmitz, VP of Mobile Oil, as an equally valid cultural critic as a New York Times columnist. That's the sort of position that Schmitz had carved out for himself as much as a lot of the media complained about his treatment of them. Something about it worked. It struck a nerve, and it had the effect of getting journalists to overcorrect and buy into what Herb was selling that his and Mobil's opinions were just as valuable to the public as any public intellectuals. Herb even went up against The Wall Street Journal, hardly a hotbed of Trotsky ism. Even back then, in its press, Rupert Murdoch days when the paper refused to bend to his will. Schmitz went on TV to blast him for

[00:19:48] its mobile oil, the nation's third largest industrial corporation. Against The Wall Street Journal, the world's most influential business newspaper this week, the tension that normally exists between an aggressive newspaper and a hard nosed corporation erupted into open warfare. The catalyst was an article in The Wall Street Journal about a mobile real estate project in Chicago. The Journal said this woman's husband will get part of the profits. He's Percy Pine. The fourth, and his father in law is Raleigh Warner Jr., who is chairman of the board of Mobil Oil. This week, Mobile canceled its advertising, with the Journal worth more than half a million dollars a year and imposed a news boycott. No press releases and no interviews. Herb Shimmered says the Journal has been attacking mobile unfairly for years. They have received documents that have been stolen from the company. They are the most widespread user of unnamed sources. They seem to be interested mostly in gossip and innuendo, derogatory comments from unnamed sources and it's been a five year history of this is accusations are false and very self-serving. What he sees is a cheerleading kind of news coverage that presents a picture of mobile that he would like to present to the world. So it's a stalemate.

[00:21:06] After that, he wouldn't give them earnings reports. Press releases, nothing. Herb Schmitz was nothing, if not Petty. Schwartz was a scourge of journalists in the 80s. But in 1988, he left mobile and returned to his first love. TV and film My favorite little personal tidbit about smarts is that when he left mobile, his big plan was to create his own film and TV production company because by this point, she was so convinced that the reason that all these producers wanted to talk to him was that he's actually good at it and that they appreciated his creative input like he really got involved. What shows they would run? He was in charge of the casting. He picked a lot of the shows he signed off on like artwork for the posters now. So he was like a little mogul. Yeah, yeah, a mobile mogul. So shot in his mind, he thought, Well, I've been a producer for like the last 10, 15 years, so I'm going to go off and do this job, you know? And then it's like, you totally see. As soon as mobile stops paying for anything, he has like no more production credits. It's like, no, dude, they really were just after the oil money. It was not your creative. I'm sorry.

[00:22:25] So he went from masterpiece to two-piece.

[00:22:27] Yes, that's right. That's right. Oh, so Herb Schwartz did not have a life in the public eye after mobile. But the trick he pioneered. Sponsored content. It sure did. Today, the New York Times doesn't just let companies write op ads. They have a whole internal brand studio that creates campaigns and writes pieces for companies. ExxonMobil hired them a couple of years back to create a comprehensive campaign around the company's investments in algae fuels. These vibrant green dots microscopic living organisms are algae. Look closely. Algae grows almost everywhere from murky pond. In other episodes, we've talked about how to spot various techniques. Sponsored content is a little different. It's relatively easy to spot, although it can sometimes blend in. But most publications clearly market. What a lot of people miss, though, is how and why it's effective. Because on the face of it, it seems harmless. Clearly marked and people aren't that easy to influence, surely. But in general, companies don't tend to spend millions of dollars on stuff that isn't effective. They don't buy into communication strategies that don't work. So let's take a look at why this one is still going strong. First, it wraps your messages and the credibility of another brand. When Exxon goes to the New York Times tea brand studio, for example, it's not because the Tea Brand Studio has hired the best creatives in the business. Sorry to break it to you. It's because of exactly what they market on the brand studio's website. Their connection to The New York Times, no matter how well it's marked when a story about Exxon's amazing algae program turns up on the New York Times homepage, that lends a certain amount of credibility. And that's what companies are buying. It furthers the idea that companies are people and that their ideas are worth listening to, that their opinions should be part of the mix. Public discussion. Companies don't give to art museums and music festivals or sponsor shows on public media to be good corporate citizens. They do it, as experts put it, in more than one talk about Mobile's philanthropic efforts for the bottom line payout and to maintain what's called a social license to operate this invisible permission slip that the public gives to industries and companies to let them keep doing what they're doing. Are you really going to support policies that harm the company that sponsors your favorite TV show or the music festival you go to every summer? Maybe. But it's going to take a lot to get you to turn against the company that brought Lizzo to Jazz Fest. Yeah, that's a real thing. Shell's sponsors Jazz Fest now and Lizzo's come in in 2020 to. That's it for this time next week. We're going to dig into astroturfing, the creation of fake grassroots groups to push business friendly messaging with a look at one of the most hilarious examples of it. Maybe ever come back for that. Thank you for joining us backstage for a behind the scenes look at the history of public relations. Remember to subscribe or ever to get your podcast, take this ride all the way to the end. Rigged is an original Critical Frequency production, lots of documents, photos, videos and other fun facts about the wild world of PR are on our website at Rigged Dot Media. Our producer is Martin Alz Bostwick. He also scored this season. Artwork is by Matthew Fleming. Our fact checker is Ashley Braun. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment project. Big thanks to Mary and a heckler who you'll hear throughout this series. If you want to hear more of me and Mary joking around. Check out Hot Take. The show we do about climate change archival tape in this episode is courtesy of C-SPAN, Vanderbilt University, the University of Maryland and the Library of Congress. The show is reported by me. Amy Westervelt, thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

S1, Ep4 Transcription

The legendary Herb Schmertz, VP of Mobil Oil, worked with PBS and The New York Times to invent sponsored content—sponcon—back in the 1960s.

Schmertz Documents

S1, Ep5 | Fun With Front Groups