Molly Ivins August 23

AUSTIN, Texas — For a fascinating look at public relations then and now, I recommend comparison of two apparently disparate but superb pieces of work.

The first is an astonishing book about a long-past and almost-forgotten agony, "King Leopold's Ghost" by Adam Hochschild, concerning the Holocaust-like destruction of the natives of the Congo between 1890 and 1910 by a hideous system of slave labor. Best estimates are that between 5 million and 10 million people died — murdered, starved or worked to death — when the entire Congo River basin was the solely owned plantation of one man, King Leopold II of Belgium.

The second piece, in the current issue of Brill's Content, is "Making Bill," an examination of the public relations machine that made Bill Gates the head of an entirely different kind of empire. Not that I am in any way comparing Gates to the ruthless and unscrupulous Leopold — the connection lies in the use of public relations. Not only did Leopold use PR in an astonishingly modern way, but the man who almost single-handedly brought an end to the horror in the Congo also used public relations to undermine the king. It's an amazing story.

Most of us who read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" remember Mr. Kurtz's last words: "The horror, the horror." The book is now taught as a symbolic work about evil. Actually, it's more like journalism — the horror was just as real as the policy of chopping off the hands of natives who did not meet their ivory or rubber quotas. With no exaggeration, Conrad called it "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." Conrad was a friend and ally of E.D. Morel, the British journalist and reformer who crusaded against Leopold for 20 years. Morel's other great ally was Sir Roger Casement, the Irish patriot who was later hanged as a traitor by the British who had knighted him. A most extraordinary tale.

Leopold went about first stealing an enormous chunk of an entire continent and then exploiting its people — in a way so inhumane that it makes one gasp — by some eerily familiar methods. Posing as an anti-slavery crusader (!), he carefully planted and nurtured the notion that enlightened Europeans must step in to help (!) the Congolese, who were being enslaved by Arab traders. He then hired lobbyists and paid off journalists to get first the United States and then Britain and Germany to recognize his claim to the Congo River and all the "unoccupied" lands thereof.

Leopold was shrewd enough to put the explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley, of "Dr.

Livingstone, I presume" fame, on his payroll. He bought influence on three continents, not only through the tried-and-true method of cutting government officials in on his obscene profits but also by controlling the press.

There really is a comical similarity between Leopold's careful wooing of journalists — he often brought parties of them to his palace and was a master at flattering and steering them — and Bill Gates' methods. According to Content, Gates likewise annually invites a dozen or so journalists who cover him regularly to stay with him for a few days at his vacation home in Washington, flying them in by seaplane. "The off-the-record retreat offers the favored reporters intimate, prolonged exposure to Gates and his ideas," Content reports.

The parallels continue: Gates and Microsoft have an estimated 500 public relations people working for them, and Gates, too, has put journalists on his payroll. And like Leopold, as coverage of his empire has become more critical, Gates has fought back, although Content regards his counteroffensive as counterproductive.

In the bloody and tragic tale of the Congo, at least there is a hero: Morel, who used public relations for a noble purpose, running what Hochschild says was the first international campaign for human rights. (Obligatory disclaimer: I have known Hochschild slightly for many years.) Morel's greatest weapon was the truth; he not only documented the system of holding the women of a village as hostages until the men filled their rubber quota, but he also kept careful track of the billions of dollars that Leopold took out of the Congo, sending back only more guns with which to kill the people.

Morel also worked by influencing what we now call "the elites." Mark Twain, himself a brilliant campaigner for human rights in the United States, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in England worked with him.

Morel organized local branches of his Congo Reform Association in Europe and America, persuaded bishops and members of Parliament to appear at his mass rallies (what we would call "using celebrities" for a cause), and tailored his message for different audiences. In another move now used by Gates, Morel used slides at his public lectures; those of maimed natives, sent by missionaries, were particularly effective. Leopold in turn posed as a Roman Catholic victim of the prejudice of Baptist missionaries, brought his own bishops into play and cultivated rich industrialists in all nations. Oh, it was a doozy of a PR battle.

If a moral we must find in this odd twinning of PR campaigns, I suppose it is that PR can be used for good or ill — and journalists now, as then, need to be very careful who they are being used by and for what ends.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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