Our own culpability in the Blake Lively smear campaign
Are we to blame for falling for yet another misinformation campaign?
This past week on the Internet has been: smiling families in PJs, a mess of Christmas toys and wrapping paper, advertisements for fitness gear for the New Year, and hot takes on the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni story. If you’ve been offline this week (high five!), the one-line synopsis is this — Lively is suing Baldoni, her director and co-star in It Ends With Us, for sexual harassment and Baldoni waged a PR-smear campaign against Lively during the press of the film.
There have been essays on the allegations revealed in the lawsuit, an outlining of the PR campaign against Lively, articles on the role of misogyny, and an outpouring of support from Lively’s friends and castmates.
One thing has nagged at me throughout the coverage though — what is our own culpability in this mess?
As I read through the NYT article detailing the PR “smear campaign,” all I could think is “This must happen every single day. This is the norm in celebrity and political public relations.”
Public relations communications are literally intended to position facts in a way that influence the consumer’s opinion. Are we so naive to think that this is an isolated incident? It appears that it only came to light after there was drama between the publicists involved. We have to ask how often we are being fed (and gobbling up) stories like these.
The real story here is how a social media campaign single-handedly swayed the public’s opinion in one fell swoop — how we, the consumers, played our own role in a smear campaign – as pawns.
I don’t read a lot of celebrity news, I often feel like I live under a rock and I can’t keep track of who’s who anymore. But I did see the negative Blake Lively articles during the It Ends with Us press tour. There’s no denying that it had its effect on me.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Colleen Hoover’s books (I know I’m in the minority here), so when the film came out, I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t go see the movie. A friend of mine texted me after watching it, and she told me I should give it a chance. I responded, “Well, I do love Blake Lively so maybe I will.”
Not even a month later, my opinion had completely soured on her. I understood there was some animosity on set, but it wasn’t until I saw the articles about her promoting her haircare line and alcohol brand during the press of a film about domestic violence, that I started to feel icky. I saw the video of her interview titled “The Interview that made me want to quit my job”, and I read about the rewrite and alleged breaking of picket lines by Reynolds. It all sort of piled up, and I stopped considering myself a fan of hers.
I unwittingly fell for it.
What else have I fallen for? Are any of my opinions truly mine?
Justin Baldoni is certainly not the most powerful man in Hollywood, and the publicist he used is likely not the most influential. More importantly, this story really doesn’t matter. Sure, it’s eye-opening, but the lawsuit and the smear campaign don’t actually affect me in any tangible way.
But what about politics? What about the news cycle? PR firms do not only exist in Hollywood. There are much more powerful forces in industries that affect our daily lives. We have to understand that these same forces are at work in all of the content we consume. Our opinion is always being swayed.
The bombshell here is how susceptible we all are, how easy we are to convince.
How on earth can we truly know what is true and real anymore?
I know these concepts aren’t new. It’s a symptom of group think, it’s misinformation, it’s propaganda. What I find the most insulting is when the solution we are given is to become better “critical thinkers.”
What does that even mean? Should we apply the scientific method to every article we read? Should we assume nothing is real and hope to be proven wrong? Do we all need a course in investigative journalism to be able to responsibly read the news?
I hate to say it, but it reeks of cruel optimism. It’s an oversimplification. We can’t possibly be to blame here.
It’s yet another symptom of our reliance on social media. A shocking 54% of American adults say they sometimes get their news from social media - platforms that we know use algorithms to prioritize negative content.
My friend who recommended the Blake Lively movie to me? She didn’t see any of these articles. They didn’t reach her. We quite simply have to stop spending so much time in these spaces. We have to prioritize reputable sources of information. Not Instagram, not Reddit, not TikTok.
Let’s stop being public relations’ pawns and open our eyes to the reality that social media should not be our new source. We have to get offline and into the real world.