Trump’s Lies, PR’s Deceptions, and the Absurdity of False Equivalency
According to Dictionary.com, the definition of false equivalency is “a logical fallacy in which one assumes or asserts that two things are the same or equal when, while alike in some ways, they are not sufficiently similar to be considered equivalent.”
In everyday English, it’s like comparing apples to oranges or an ice cream cone to pie a la mode or Donald Trump to Pinocchio, both famous liars, but Pinocchio is made of wood; President Trump is made of a variety of chemicals, consisting mainly of water and organic compounds, including lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids.
The website Effectiviology says false equivalence is “a logical fallacy where someone incorrectly asserts that two (or more) things are equivalent simply because they share some characteristics, despite there also being substantial differences between them.” An example would be comparing President Trump to the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz.” Both are similar because they have no heart, but the comparison ends there.
Defenders of President Trump have been resorting to false equivalency ever since he pardoned the 1600 felons, who were convicted by a jury of their peers, that attempted a coup d’etat on January 6, 2021, by ransacking the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden. Ever since President Trump pardoned the felons for their participation in the attack on the Capitol, some GOP spokespersons have been comparing Mr. Trump’s pardons to the ones that former President Biden issued during his final days as president.
Of course, all but the Trump-can-do-no wrong partisans know that the comparison is ridiculous, because the pro-Trump felon’s attacks resulted in the deaths of five police officers and injured more than 100 others, who were attempting to keep members of Congress safe. None of the people pardoned by Mr. Biden committed any rebel attacks and the Congressional police never had to protect members of Congress because of Biden supporter’s actions.
While some people think it’s fair (not me) to criticize Mr. Biden for pardoning his son and for his pre-emptive pardons of people on President Trump’s vindictive enemies list, any comparison to what Mr. Trump did in pardoning the convicted unlawful, felons who assaulted the Capitol police to what Mr. Biden did makes about as much sense as the "anti-vaxxers" refusing to accept medical data showing that vaccines have eliminated certain diseases, and that an overwhelming majority of people who have been sickened with measles in Texas, Georgia and New Mexico were not vaccinated.
Comparing Mr. Trump’s pardons to Mr. Biden's is not only false equivalency, but stupid reasoning. Maybe that’s why President Trump himself doesn’t use false equivalency. He just lies.
Unfortunately, false equivalency is also prevalent in our business, especially when agencies attempt to convince clients about the efficacy of PR campaigns.
There is no scientific way to measure the effectiveness of a PR campaign, but agencies have developed convoluted methods trying to convince clients that their monies were well spent.
This is done by agencies developing “measurement tools” that supposedly prove the effectiveness of an earned media campaign relative to paid advertising, which I have always thought was as ridiculous as Trumpites saying that his pardons are similar to Mr. Biden’s.
Some PR agencies measurement tools are monitoring online mentions of a client on news, blogs and other social media outlets.
Multiplying the number of impressions of earned media placements by the average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for your target audience on the platform where the mention appeared.
Factoring in engagement rate and adjusting the CPM based on the quality of the publication or influencer.
Comparing earned media versus the cost of achieving similar reach through paid advertising campaigns on the same platforms.
Estimating the value of earned media to paid advertising. This is probably the most absurd of all measurement tools, because paid advertising contains all the talking points that a client wants, and earned media, often using a celebrity, usually doesn’t even include one talking point; stories that emerge are 99.9% about the celebrity, with the other one tenth identifying the spokesperson as being “a spokesperson by The XYZ Company.”
Of course, no matter how many rabbits PR people pull out of their hats to try convince clients that their earned media hits were more effective then paid advertising, measuring earned media results against paid advertising is as ridiculous as the shameless Trump advocates who equate the president’s pardon of the thugs that stormed the Capitol to Mr. Biden’s pardon list, which did not include anyone who participated in harming others. Doing so is not only false equivalency, but stupid equivalency.
Clients are not stupid and PR people are not as smart as they think they are. PR budgets are a small fraction of advertising budgets.
I’ve never attempted to convice a client that earned media is as effective as paid advertising. That’s because comparing a placement, which might or might not successfully tell the clients story and comparing it to a paid ad which has all the talking points that the client wants is false equivalency.
Instead, I’ve always told clients that a PR campaign, combined with advertising and social media efforts, will cover all the bases and emphasize that successful PR campaigns are a fraction of the budget of a client’s overall marketing campaign.
Being honest with a client convinced them that I was always acting in their best interest and not always attempting to get an increased budget. That’s why when presenting the budget for the following year, clients always approved the increases I asked for.
Thus, when after almost a quarter of a century at Burson-Marsteller, I decided to form by own consultancy, my initial clients came from two sources – former clients and people who reported to me, because I always treated them well and would roll up my sleeves to help them, unlike the vast majority of supervisors I knew who managed by fear and were unable to help because they often were promoted because of office politics instead of being proficient at their jobs.
