
Countries with poor human rights records spend millions on public image (2015) - doener
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/12/17/19051/us-lobbying-pr-firms-give-human-rights-abusers-friendly-face
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buyx
PR firms seem to do a lot more than foreign lobbying and propaganda, and seem
to be engaged in active manipulation of clients' populations.

In South Africa, UK PR firm Bell Pottinger was engaged by the Gupta family to
promote their (widely reported to be corrupt) interests. Direct protests
against the PR firm, including by South African expats in the UK, and SA-owned
clients led to Bell Pottinger dropping the Guptas. Nonetheless its been widely
reported that Bell Pottinger's strategy included fomenting racial division in
order to divert attention from President Jacob Zuma and the Guptas. By many
accounts, they have succeeded.

I'm sure that this sort of thing has been going on for decades, but it is
notable that the victims of a PR firm (the South African public) were able to
turn the tables and force a first-world PR firm into damage control mode.

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skummetmaelk
Things like this make me wonder if we need a morality police now that poor
morals have no social consequences anymore.

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rhizome
This exists in the form of the foreign and trade (and occasionally military)
policies of other countries toward yours.

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djcjr
US spends millions on public image too, no?

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MereInterest
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

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ldp01
I _think_ the point he's trying to make is that countries spend millions on
public image regardless of their human rights records. There isn't a
meaningful correlation until we have examples of countries with good human
rights records which aren't spending millions on their public image.

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djcjr
Yes.

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gonmf
And Israel is notoriously omitted.

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doener
This article is from 2015.

The mentioned Qorvis/MSLGroup now runs e.g.
[http://www.arabianow.org/](http://www.arabianow.org/) (also in German:
[http://www.arabianow.de/](http://www.arabianow.de/)) which promotes the
brutal regime of Saudi Arabia:

"This content is distributed by Qorvis MSLGROUP on behalf of the Royal Embassy
of Saudi Arabia. Additional information is available at the U.S. Department of
Justice."

