While the election is over, the media is still just as noisy and chaotic as at the peak of campaign season, and that’s because presidential cabinet positions are now in the spotlight.
On the surface, everything appears to be “business as usual” for our post-election media environment, including a predictable tsunami of PR political hit pieces targeting the president’s nominees. But this time around, the outcome has been dramatically different than in previous years. These attacks, fueled by salacious stories from anonymous sources, have been a part of the standard political campaign for decades. Even the younger generations, who are generally less politically aware, have noticed the pattern because it happens at such alarming frequency today. A candidate for a particular role is announced, and within days, people come out of the woodwork with accusations of crimes that supposedly occurred years or even decades ago but were never reported.
Historically speaking, this has been an effective strategy because it preys on people’s good nature. Most want to reward good behavior and punish bad, so lobbing a few accusations at someone has, for quite a while now, been a powerful tool in quickly derailing someone’s career. Public relations professionals in the political arena have leveraged that to make opponents seem undesirable. Rather than highlighting the merits of their candidate, they instead chose to tear their opponent down by spreading false claims. They do this because it works.
Let’s be clear—while this has been incredibly effective, it’s also incredibly immoral, and to make matters worse, it’s been weaponized at an increasingly frequent pace, particularly over the last decade.
But there is a silver lining here, and it’s that the perpetrators of this strategy finally seem to have pushed too far, and we’re seeing evidence of that in the public’s backlash to these type of hit pieces. The most prominent one in the news cycle right now is that of army veteran, Fox News host, and nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Immediately following the announcement of Hegseth’s nomination, the media pushed out a barrage of stories of all sorts of inappropriate, and in some cases, even criminal behavior—with essentially all of these accusations coming from "anonymous" sources. Dozens of media outlets ran with these unsubstantiated claims, collectively publishing hundreds of hit pieces that were completely devoid of any evidence to support their claims. The New York Times even dedicated an entire article to misrepresenting a private email between Hegseth and his mother.
Evidence contradicting the claims stacked up quickly though.
Hegseth’s mother called the publication out for the misrepresentation by its journalists. Many who worked with Hegseth came out publicly to say they have never seen any of the behavior he was accused of. In fact, several even publicly commented on his integrity and character, including a recent story in Twitchy about Phillip Stutts’s experience with him over the span of a decade. Despite all of this, some journalists still continued to spread these false accusations from anonymous sources.
In the past, a nominee in the crosshairs of this type of attack would have been met with an almost universal condemnation. The damage was often so swift and severe that it was almost impossible to recover from, so typically they would have to be replaced with a new nominee.
But this time, the public response to accusations against Hegseth have been a complete departure from what we’ve seen in the past.
Today, instead of the instant and often complete destruction of a nominee’s reputation, we now see people thinking critically, demanding evidence, and where applicable, calling out the journalists and media outlets participating in this behavior.
An analysis of public sentiment on social media shows that people now see through these attacks because they’ve seen them weaponized time and time again by political operatives, and frankly, they are sick of it. You can see it for yourself by scrolling through the comments on posts about this topic on social media.
The tide is turning and I say it’s about damn time, because this immoral political hit piece strategy needs to end, both for the good of the PR industry and for the good of our country.
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Jeremy Knauff is a nationally recognized PR expert, best-selling author, and USMC veteran, and is regularly cited in the media for his advice and analysis on public relations.
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