Clearly, public relations is seen as a war within the war by Muammar el-Qaddafi, the citizens rebelling against his rule and the coalition of nations intervening with a no-fly zone and other measures.
Losing the battle for public opinion could be a crucial defeat for Qaddafi, the rebels or the allies.
Qaddafi clearly sees this. His public relations machine was working overtime. He granted interviews to foreign TV stations. His spokesmen held frequent press conferences, and minders took journalists on field trips.
He also made several deadly PR blunders along the way.
His government announced a cease fire that his forces in the field were obviously ignoring. Then the Qaddafi government repeated this gambit until it became a joke.
Officials took reporters on drives to view collateral damage to civilian dwellings that only got drivers lost and didn't show any clear damage.
The final straw may have been a female attorney and student, Iman al-Obeidi, came into a hotel full of foreign reporters during a press conference, claiming she'd been detained and raped by Qaddafi soldiers.
She was grabbed and hustled away into a waiting car and held for days, with a whisper campaign by Qaddafi's people that she was a thief and a prostitute. Her mother told reporters that a government official called to say her would be released and the family would receive money and a house if she dropped the allegations.
Then officials from Qaddafi's administration said Iman al-Obeidi was being charged with slander for making such accusations against the soldiers.
The press and public simply didn't swallow any of this. Qaddafi's credibility had already been shot with the repeated cease-fires and previous history of strange behavior, including the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and a wardrobe that seemed partially inspired by Michael Jackson.
Civilian casualties of the allied bombing campaign would be the best public relations weapon that Qaddafi could use to put pressure on the alliance enforcing the no-fly zone.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates went on Sunday news talk shows and cut Qaddafi's chances at ever getting anyone to believe supposed proof of civilian casualties from careless allied bombing.
Gates said he hadn't seen any evidence of unintended deaths -- but that the U.S. did have indications that Qaddafi's forces were putting the bodies of people they had killed at the sites of anti-aircraft batteries and other targets.
Qaddafi and his state-owned PR machine forgot a crucial lesson of public relation and rhetoric: credibility matters most.
It doesn't matter how many interview you give, TV stations you own or press conferences you hold if nobody believes you.