Is “dirty PR” on the upswing? This piece from the New York Times in relation to Facebook’s attempt to fight its own corner over recent difficulties, suggests that it is.
How Facebook’s PR Firm Bought Political Trickery To Tech, is the headline.
The flaks encouraged reporters to write about the financial links between anti-Facebook folk and George Soros, is the gist of the story.
“Big companies have become a lot more authoritarian in their approach to the media,” is the stand-out quote.
The PR firm in question got exposed and fired, so maybe it’s not as good at this black-ops stuff as it reckons, since it managed to become the story.
I think there’s more and more of this stuff going on, though I’m open to suggestions as to why.
Certainly, there is a certain type of PR agency that likes to hire spooks, dig up dirt and then buy a load of brown paper envelopes. Hacks are suckers for brown paper envelopes. Send a press release and it gets ignored. Say you need to meet in person and slide over the same story in a brown envelope…ba doom, Splash!
It doesn’t say much for us hacks that we are so willing to be conduits.
Though there is no denying some of the stories are awfully juicy….
