ABSTRACT
In September of 1982, Ferdinand Marcos, at the time president of the Philippines, was scheduled to make his second official visit to the United States. During the months leading up to the president’s visit, the embassy was refurbished and refurnished, and a steady stream of American military, congressional, and media opinion leaders was wined and dined. The embassy’s media relations group talked with fully 170 American reporters in advance of the visit, and shortly before Marcos’s arrival, hundreds of journalists were presented with press kits in the form of expensive bamboo briefcases filled with promotional materials. Altogether, this public relations blitz is estimated to have cost the Philippine government at least five million dollars. Its objective, as stated at the time by an embassy spokesman in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, was to counter the “bad image” of Marcos and the Philippines in the American press.
