A crowd on the scene, rallying for a cause or defending an embattled individual, raising placards (SALN? So what!) with a designated spokesperson ready to be interviewed on camera, naturally draws media attention. Do people just get together to express indignation on a hot weekday morning? Or are they hired to be vexed about something?
If there is fake news, are there also fake crowds?
Like a bad toupee that sits too thickly and not too snugly on a hairless nape and moves independently of the wearer, a rented crowd is easy to spot. It too is planted in an unlikely venue where it looks out of place. The placards tend to be uniform in their message and typography, and use the same color paint — the effort to economize on production value gives the game away.
Organizing a crowd to express indignation now seems passé when many TV talk shows offer a much cooler venue where arguments can be aired and sides are clearly delineated. Why pay for a crowd, when it is clearly perceived to be rented, complete with meal packs and buses in the background?
If there are event planners that specialize in weddings, are there specialists for instant rallies where the venue is rent-free?
A typical organization, “Crowd 9” complains of hard times. Drifters are demanding more money up front. It’s strictly a political media practice — pay before broadcast. They’re talents too and they understand that their value drops when the TV cameras leave.
Spokesmen, interviewed by field reporters need to be coached and given talking points (repeat after me — fascistic). They charge per spoken word. The computation is based on what they say, not on the edited sound bite that comes out in the evening news. Even rants that may be bleeped need to be compensated — Hogwash, this is clearly a political vendetta. (What’s the last word again, please?)
As a business, crowd rental has its upside. The event planner does not pay taxes. Neither does he submit receipts for liquidation. This is a simple cash transaction and funders will deny any involvement if asked — These are true believers, NGOs, and assorted advocates, who are unrelated to our client. (She doesn’t know any of them.)
TV news reporters find rallies too predictable. They no longer automatically put the microphone in front of the designated spokesman with a prepared script to articulate the cause for the day. Hardball reporters refuse to play along. They pick out the most undernourished in the crowd and with the fewest natural teeth, and press their questions — Nanay, why are you here? This grandma is sure to giggle her way out of the interview and point to the spokesperson to do this job. If the reporter refuses to move away she just adlibs — I just wanted a free lunch.
Our crowd planner observes that clients now are more demanding. They want a good optic mix of the great unwashed with a generous dose of decently clad middle-class types with eyeglasses, so that the crowd doesn’t look like it’s headed to a relocation site. How much will suburban housewives and professorial types cost? The running priest is free though maybe he has already retired from the scene.
Can fake crowds sway public opinion?
It’s doubtful if stationary mobs with placards help a cause. And for the money it costs to mount, the uncertain result is hardly worth the trouble. Besides, crowd analysts now understand that if one side can hire a crowd, so can the other. So, applying crowd economics to the possible symmetry of efforts, the net propaganda effect is a wash.
Rented crowds do not applaud at the proper time and they disperse right after the TV cameras leave. Spokespersons need to be rotated, unless it’s the once familiar fat lawyer who used to declaim on every human rights issue. But that one has gone to the other side with his very tight barong and a more urbane delivery.
The reaction of breathlessness, excessive sweating, nausea, dry mouth, and hand-shaking can be triggered off by crowds, what psychiatrists call ochlophobia. True, history has been changed by moving crowds, but these are very large in number, spanning many streets and moving slowly towards the center of power. These types are hard to rent… and even harder to disperse.
A. R. Samson is Chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda.
ar.samson@yahoo.com
