You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

letsdothis1 ago

http://archive.is/usHtL#selection-2663.1-2691.49

To bring things full circle, Bell Pottinger was revealed to work for Michael Hintze - the hedge fund manager who was Atlantic Bridge’s major backer.

The likes of Lord Bell, in perhaps the quickest route to Godwin’s Law yet devised, will tell you that everyone deserves representation. It’s an argument that goes back to Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who in the early twentieth century pioneered the use of psychology in PR to help market the likes of Procter & Gamble, Cartier and Best Foods. For Bernays, democracy required the manipulation of the mass mind by media and advertising.

And when you wonder why so few are asking questions about all this, consider the fact that a sizeable minority of Tory and Labour MPs come from lobbying, among them Priti Patel, who was at Weber Shandwick; Tracey Crouch, who worked for Westminster Strategy; and George Eustice and Charlotte Leslie - both of whom were at Portland – not to mention, of course, our prime minister. Consider also the fact that the Evening Standard is a Brown Lloyd James contract, as is the Telegraph Media Group.

The PR men might have their own reputations to worry about now – but from what we’ve seen, they’ll manage them – either through influence, or darker arts.

Defence against Bell Pottinger's dark arts https://www.fin24.com/Opinion/defence-against-the-dark-arts-20170707

It’s not the first time Bell Pottinger has been outed for skewing events in a distant land for its paymasters: “…the US government paid a British public relations company linked to right-wing politics and repressive regimes more than $500m from American taxpayers to spearhead a top-secret propaganda campaign in Iraq.

“Bell Pottinger, a London-based PR firm, created fake videos that appeared to be the work of al-Qaida, the Islamist extremist group formerly headed by Osama bin Laden. It also created news stories that looked as though they were produced by Arab media outlets, and distributed them through Middle Eastern news networks.”

Is there a Defence Against the Dark Arts course to help you counter the impact of concerted propaganda campaigns like these?

urbanmoving ago

LOL its a MI-6 front they helped sabotage aka infiltrate Pinochet, AND Syria so much for "repressive "regimes" lie...meanwhile in South Africa they were stiring up racial hatred against THE WHITES in support of marxoid ANC apostle Zuma....lol

letsdothis1 ago

'Reputation laundering' is lucrative business for London PR firms

The Portland agency, founded by Tony Blair’s former adviser Tim Allan, has previously advised Vladimir Putin and worked with Kazakhstan, Jordan and Morocco. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/09/pr-execs-behaving-badly-what-else-would-you-expect-bell-pottinger

Thanks to Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark, when she interviewed Tim Bell about the disgracing of his former PR agency, we have enjoyed a glimpse of the charms that still captivate politicians and celebrities, long after he nurtured the reputations of, among many others, Mrs Thatcher, Ernest Saunders, David Mellor, Rolf Harris and Neil and Christine Hamilton. Mr Hamilton, who now identifies as Ukip, took envelopes of cash from Mohamed Al Fayed, in exchange for covert lobbying duties, then lied about it.

Maybe Bell was right, given the number of rivals who would have happily taken on his clients, to complain of tall poppy martyrdom. “It’s much more fun to attack me,” he has said, “or the Saatchi brothers, or Matthew Freud, or Max Clifford.” Obviously that was before Clifford was sentenced to eight years for indecent assaults and Charles Saatchi was photographed with his then wife, “holding her head by the neck to make her focus”.