“The public relations firm of hill and knowlton has received severe criticism for the methods it used on behalf of its client, citizens for a free kuwait, to persuade the us congress and the american people to wage war on iraq. in particular, a widely circulated story about iraqis removing 312 babies from incubators and leaving them to die on the floor fuelled anger against the iraqis. the story was later discredited, though other atrocities have been documented. a major factor in public acceptance of the story was endorsement by amnesty international and emotional testimony by a girl identified only as nayirah’. the incident underscores the importance of the most central ethical concern expressed by the highly successful early practitioner and theorist of public relations, ivy lee; namely, that the source of persuasive materials presented to the public should never be disguised. the factual record of the incubator story and lee’s ethical writings are both examined with a view to exploring the ethics of the case.”

“The article stresses that for each new generation of news people the lessons of history, and of journalism’s obligation to report, not to cheerlead at the expense of veracity, seem to need relearning. it illustrates the case of the 5-year-old nayirah who had described the iraqi infanticide in testimony before the congressional human rights caucus in october of 1990 but at that time the media had not done anything to probe nayirah’s identity or her whereabouts during the alleged acts of atrocity in kuwait city. it shows that the press, having been fed a sensational story, committed the unreporterly blunder of failing to check it out.”