Wichita turns to deception to boost its image, with paid influencer propaganda posts | Opinion

The city of Wichita has been dishonest with you.

I know that’s a shock.

For the past three years, the city’s been quietly paying local influencers to spread the city’s message that everything’s swell with municipal government here in good old Doo-Dah, despite what casual observation and common sense might suggest.

Make no mistake about it, the intent of this program from the outset was to deceive you into thinking you were getting unbiased information on city services and issues from fellow citizens, while City Hall pulled the strings behind the scenes.

Don’t take my word for it.

Tyler Schiffelbein, a manager in the city’s “Strategic Communications Department” — motto, Strategy before Communication — bragged about using influencers to trick the public during a March 19 City Council meeting.

“The public might see that — (and) not see that (as) the city communicating with them, but somebody else,” Schiffelbein said. “But that message is originally coming from us.”

Manipulating public opinion

Schiffelbein outlined a case in which the city had worked through a local restaurant review page on Facebook, Wichita by EB, to gather opinions on how Wichitans get their information about city government.

It was part of the setup for some City Council members to try to declare the city’s own website as the “official newspaper” of Wichita and relieve themselves of their responsibility under Kansas law to publish legal notice of ordinances and development plans in an actual newspaper, in this case, The Wichita Eagle.

The post by EB — in real life Edward Brotemarkle — was a Facebook gem:

“I’d like to have a real discussion for a moment (that’s still possible, right?). These days, there seem to be a million ways to get information. What I’m curious about is how do you get informed about Wichita happenings? What mediums, sources, specific places/pages? And to take it to another level, information as it pertains to what’s going on with the city government as it can significantly impact our daily lives.”

Predictably, a significant percentage of Wichita by EB’s Facebook followers largely get their news about the city from him and others like him, some of whom are on the city’s payroll, some not.

In comments under his post, Brotemarkle added this: “For the city government stuff, I’m always curious but also sometimes apprehensive if only part of the story is told for one reason or the other if that makes sense.”

Similar complaints have been voiced by city Strategic Communications, which has a hard time discerning the relative news value of short-story terminals being installed at the library, versus a water-main break leaving the city without drinkable water for days.

Illusion of transparency

A survey done by the city last year found that only 27% of Wichitans think the city government is open and transparent with the public.

So in lieu of actual openness and transparency, City Hall gives us paid influencers delivering city-sponsored propaganda.

Which raises the question: How lame do you have to be to need to hire people to say positive things about the job you’re doing?

It’s like having paid mourners at your funeral. It looks nice and helps fill out the crowd, but you have to question their sincerity.

So I filed a Kansas Open Records Act request with the city trying to answer three basic questions: how much is the city spending on this deceptive online marketing, who gets the money and what are the citizens getting in return?

Clickbait video

I filed my request on March 28. On April 4, the city sent me part of what I asked for and a bill for $104 if I wanted the rest. I paid the $104 on April 5 and started waiting for the rest of the documents to show up in my email, which didn’t happen until April 16.

So, imagine my surprise when, on April 10, KWCH-TV, the station that employed Mayor Lily Wu until she quit to run for office, ran two stories about paid influencers carrying the city’s messages to the public.

The first story brought us the interesting factoid that a video about pothole repair by one of the city’s paid influencers had gone viral and generated nearly 2 million views on TikTok. Woo hoo!

The video by Landon Huslig, who runs various social media pages under the general heading “Wichita Life,” shows him reporting a neighborhood pothole, ostensibly to see if the city is keeping its promise to repair them within 24 hours of receiving a complaint.

That wasn’t the only pothole video the city paid for.

Brotemarkle did one too, with this caption: “I spent part of the morning with the City of Wichita - learning about potholes and even putting a hard hat on to fix some myself. The city fixes roughly 200 a day and 70,000 a year. I now account for five of them but retired due to back pain. Shout out to the city employees for all their hard work and thanks for letting me tag along.”

It’s hard to express my sense of civic pride knowing I live in a city that can stage clickbait videos with the best of clickbait-video stagers.

KWCH’s other story was a “Fact Finder 12” report asking the question “Is the cost worth it?”

It featured the mayor and a couple of men on the street defending paying influencers, and it ultimately reached this conclusion: “According to Shopify, influencers with about the same following as the two being paid by the City of Wichita (at $1,000 a month) are comparable to current market value.”

From the documents I’ve received, it’s at least five influencers who’ve been paid by the city. More about that in a minute.

If I were the suspicious type, I might suspect that City Hall tipped off the mayor’s former employer to what I was working on. So it sure is a good thing I’m not the suspicious type.

Last week, KMUW public radio did a fantastic news report on how the city’s influencers are going to have to start disclosing when their posts are being paid for by City Hall, or both can get fined under Federal Trade Commission rules against deceptive advertising.

Cost remains unclear

Despite the information I asked for — and paid for — from City Hall, I still can’t tell you how much they’ve actually spent on influencers, because the records are scattershot and sketchy.

I’ve got documents the city labeled as contracts that are unsigned pitch letters from the influencers, and spreadsheets showing money being spent, but not what for. Some influencers were paid through the city’s normal process, while others were paid from an employee’s city credit card.

About the only thing I can tell you about the total spending is it appears to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

But I did get more information on who’s been getting paid, in addition to the previously mentioned Brotemarkle and Huslig.

Other recipients include:

▪ “Wichita on the Cheap,” a website and social media concern run by Kathy Spillman, the former director of special events at the city-owned Botanica gardens.

▪ DL Media LLC, (One Delightful Life) a system of social media pages and websites owned by Vanessa Whiteside of Wichita, according to the city’s records.

▪ “Wichita Mom,” owned by Angela Green, a social media and web operation which has a group of about 35 moms writing for it.

Wichita Mom and One Delightful Life did disclosing their paid partnerships with the city up front, so props to them for that.

We may be only scratching the surface. There are indications of more payments to influencers by other public institutions, including the city-owned Botanica and Wichita Art Museum and the county-owned Exploration Place and Sedgwick County Zoo.

So I guess I’ve got some more public records requests to file.

Sigh.

Note to Wichita City Hall: If you want people to trust you, be trustworthy | Opinion