Now More than Ever, Question Everything – The inexorable rise of the PR men

With firms like Bell Pottinger working for foreign governments, we must now question everything more, not less.

The inexorable rise of the PR men
By Alan White – 17 September, 2012 – New Statesman

Bahraini protestors clash with riot police in Manema. The Government of Bahrain is said to have spent $32.5m on PR firms since pro-democracy protests began. Photograph: Getty Images

In December 2010, a street vendor in Tunisia called Mohamed Bouazizi burned himself alive, thereby commencing the Arab Spring. The definitive history is still to be written, but it seems clear Bouazizi’s actions struck a nerve with a population that was tired of unemployment, inflation, corruption, lack of political freedom and poor living conditions.

Hardly anyone noticed, but seven months before Bouazizi took such drastic action, an American company put out a press release about the country, which is still viewable online. The company was called Washington Media Group, and it was celebrating the fact that it had been hired to work with the Tunisian government.

John Leary, the company’s vice president, is quoted: “Tunisia is also a stable democracy where American and European businesses can thrive. This is an important message for the international community and WMG has developed a number of innovative strategies to help ensure that message resonates with the appropriate audiences.” The country is described as “An international business success story”.

As the Arab Spring developed, and various leaderships reacted with increasing brutality, so the links between them and Washington PR firms were exposed. In March 2011, it was reported that more than a third of partners at another company – Qorvis – had jumped ship. One anonymous ex-employee was quoted: “People don’t want to be seen representing all these countries – you take a look at the State Department’s list of human rights violators and some of our clients were on there.”

It was only a matter of time before the link to the UK was made. Former staffers claimed that much of Qorvis’s work was coming to the firm because of its partnership with Bell Pottinger, the UK’s largest PR firm, set up by Lord Bell, who had previously worked as a media advisor for Margaret Thatcher. And who, according to his biographer, was once convicted for standing at his bathroom window and wanking in full view of passers-by, but that’s another story.

The sting came late in 2011, when reporters from the Bureau for Investigative Journalism posed as clients for Uzbekistan – which has expelled Human Rights Watch, allegedly boiled a religious prisoner to death, and is accused of torturing people to obtain confessions. They approached Bell Pottinger. We’d do well to remember what happened next.

According to the Bureau, the firm prepared a presentation entitled “Changing Perceptions of the Republic of Uzbekistan” outlining a “communications and media strategy” and a “public affairs programme focusing on key members of the government and influential opinion formers”.

One staffer, Tim Collins, boasted about how he’d worked for the Conservatives with David Cameron and George Osborne: “Edward Llewellyn, who’s the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, was my deputy in Central Office for a long time. Steve Hilton was my deputy in a different capacity. I know all these people. There is not a problem in getting the messages through to them.”

Then he talked about Search Engine Optimisation: “And where we want to get to […] is you get to the point where even if they type in ‘Uzbek child labour’ or ‘Uzbek human rights violation’, some of the first results that come up are sites talking about what you guys are doing to address and improve that, not just the critical voices saying how terrible this all is.” According to the report in the Independent, Bell Pottinger did make it clear that the Uzbek government would need to put genuine reforms in place if it were to improve its image, before going on to talk about other “dark arts” that could be deployed. …more

…for more on Bahrain’s PR Campaign SEE Bahrain Watch HERE