Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: davidb@caen.engin.umich.edu (David Bonnell)
Subject: The Story That TIME couldn't Tell-3
Message-ID: <v3f_h5-@engin.umich.edu>
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 91 18:23:46 EST
Organization: The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

ENTER THE MEDIA.  WPP's Sorrel found himself wedged between JWT's losses of
major client accounts and Lilly's demands that Hill and Knowlton abandon its
account. Sorrel, who according to the New York Times, "learned how to
manipulate the press" as be built WPP's advertising and public relations
empire, was not without options.
  A study of TIME magazine's total advertising volume shows that perhaps 15%
of it - an estimated $57 million - originates with WPP-controlled advertising
and marketing companies.  A $57 millon account is significant by anyone's
estimation, but it is especially noteworthy to a magazine - TIME - whose
executives, according to an April 27, 1991 Washington Post report, are "worried
about shrinking as revenues."
  Michael Parenti, author of Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media
1986, wrote, "The notion that the media are manipulated by those with money
is mismessed by media apologists as a 'conspiracy theory,' but there is nothing
conspiratorial about it.  Being ht epeople who pay the bills, advertisers openly
 regard their inflence over the media content as something of a 'right.'"
  Prozac had alredt received favorable reviews in the major weekly news
magazines.  One such item, a march 1990 cover story in Newsweek, promoted
Prozac as a miracle drug.  A similar laudatory article appeared several months
later in TIME.  While Lilly reeeled from the accumulating decline in its stock
value and while Sorrel was confronted with Lilly's dissatisfaction with JWT's
sister company, Hill and Knowlton's relationship with the Church of
Scientology, Richard Behar was working on the story that would eventually
adorn the cover and eight inside pages of TIME's May 6th, 1991 edition.
  Despite the fact that TIME was in a possession of ample documentation that
Behar's story was riddled with false statements and presented a completely
unreal portrait of Scientology, the article found its way into print, released
only two days after the Washington Post had reported TIME's consternation with
"shrinking revenues."
  The article also critized the Church's realationship with Hill and Knowlton
("Hill and Knowlton must feel that these guys are not totally off the wall...
unless it's just for the money.") and attacked CCHR's Prozac exposes as being
based on "scant evidence."

PINCERS MOVEMENT. In the period immediately preceding the publication of the
TIME acticle, Martin Sorrel, whose WPP owned not only Lilly's advertising firm,
JWT, but also the Church's public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton, began
pressing Hill and Knowlton to resign from the Scientology account.
  The Church had a long-standing working relationship with the Washington, D.C.
based firm, which has assisted in promoting the Church's numerous community
betterment, drug education and rehabilitation and social reform campaigns.
  In late 1990, Sorrel told hill and Knowlton CEO Robert Gray that he wanted
the Scientology account terminated.  Gray, who had come to respect the
Scientologists, refused.  So did Hill and Knowlton President Robert
Dilenschneider, who wrote to Sorrel in the fall of 1990 that the Church was
involved in positive programs and that Hill and Knowlton was honored to have
it as a client.
  For Hill and Knowlton, the Church was a client with a purpose, and it was a
refreshing change.
  While the TIME acticle on Scientology was still on the stand, Sorrel
personally issued Robert Gray an order that Hill and Knowlton drop the
Scientology account.  The next day, Hill and Knowlton did so.
  Advertising Age, the leading publication of the advertising industry,
reported on May 13 that "pharmaceutical industry clients of Hill and Knowlton
and sister agency J. Walter Thompson USA were upset over the Church's attacks
on drug makers.  Singled out by the Church was Eli Lilly and Company, a major
JWT healthcare client that makes the anti-depressant Prozac."
  Public relations trade journals criticized Hill and Knowlton's retreat in the
face of attack on their client.  Pr News, the international weekly for the
public relations and communications executives, commented that the bad timing
of the move would present even more widespread repercussions.  PR News stated,
"Our guess is that it will be highly unflattering to the PR firm (Hill and
Knowlton) and potentially injurious to the entire PR profession."
  Ironically, Hill and Knowlton had not been involved in the campaign regarding
Prozac, which in fact was initiated by the CCHR without any guidance from the
PR firm.