Ramping Up for the F1 in Bahrain, Public Relations on the Prowl

Bahrain’s PR Campaign Is Doomed to Fail
By John Lubbock – Vice – 21 February, 2013

Hey, do you happen to be the proprietor of a family-run dictatorship in the Middle East? Tired of seeing stories about your country that are all “Bahrain Princess Accused of Torture” and “Teenager Killed in Bahrain Anniversary Protests” and “The US Sold a Bunch of Weapons to Bahrain During Its Brutal Crackdown” and even “King of Bahrain Beats Up Arab Pop Star on a Yacht”? That sure is some bad “optics,” as they say in the business, and you probably can’t repair your reputation solely through articles titled “Bahrain a Land of tolerance…” in government-run media outlets, especially when that ellipsis might be an indication that even the “journalists” on your payroll can barely believe the shit they’re writing.

One way to solve your image problem would be to welcome reform and stop committing gross human rights violations—haha, just kidding! Clearly that’s not on the table, so you need to spend millions on PR and invite journalists to your brand new Formula 1 racetrack to see how lovely it is. According to Bahrain Watch, that’s what the country’s regime has been doing: it’s spent at least $32 million on image management since the start of the Arab Spring. I’m familiar with this because one of these companies threatened to sue the Guardian for libel after I wrote an article with Nabeel Rajab which accused the Bahraini security forces of torturing employees at the F1 track. The PR firm did not question that torture had taken place, just that it had not happened on the premises of the F1 track. The libel threat was eventually withdrawn after a footnote was added to the article, but the point was made: we have money, and we will bully and threaten you if you criticize us.

I was at an interesting meeting the other day at a London-based think tank, where a Bahrain-regime spokesperson earnestly told me that there was no point spending money on PR to make Bahrain look good anymore, as everybody knows about the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report confirming that torture was widespread and systematic in Bahrain during the uprising. Funny then, that the regime seems to continue to employ a bunch of firms to do PR work for them. In fact, a number of individuals and groups giving evidence to the UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry on the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are known affiliates of the Bahraini regime—including retired general Sir Graeme Lamb, who is employed by G3, one of the biggest firms currently working to boost Bahrain’s reputation, but failed to mention that association in the evidence he presented to the committee. …more