Update: PR agency confirms Facebook behind Google campaign

[steve2470]

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/05/report-facebook-launched-smear-campaign-against-google/1

Update by Brett Molina, USA TODAY at 12:22 p.m. ET: The PR firm behind a negative campaign against Google's Social Circle feature has confirmed it was working on behalf of social networking giant Facebook.

In a statement released Thursday, Burson-Marsteller backed away from the campaign, saying it went against the firm's policies and "should have been declined."

Here's the complete statement from Burson:

"Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client.

*more at link above*

[Bunny]

1. Jeez Facebook, at what point will you have enough?

Aren't you big enough already?

[AlabamaLibrul]

2. Nothing will ever be enough for the creepy, narcissistic Zuckerberg

(and I say that having purposely avoided everything about "The Social Network", so that hasn't influenced me)

[TheManInTheMac]

3. They're trying to crush small internet businesses

like Google.

[nilram]

4. What? A PR agency accepting an unethical assignment? I'm shocked, shocked!

[starroute]

5. So Burson-Marsteller has standards? Who knew?

http://bursonmarstellerwatch.com/

Burson-Marsteller is the company that governments with poor human rights records and corporations in trouble with environmentalists have turned to when in crisis.

The world’s biggest PR company was employed by the Nigerian government to discredit reports of genocide during the Biafran war, the Argentinian junta after the disappearance of 35,000 civilians, and the Indonesian government after the massacres in East Timor. It also worked to improve the image of the late Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and the Saudi royal family.

Its corporate clients have included the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, Union Carbide after the Bhopal gas leak killed up to 15,000 people in India, BP after the sinking of the Torrey Canyon oil tanker in 1967 and the British government after BSE emerged. . . .

“When Evil needs public relations, Evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed-dial.”
— Rachel Maddow, “The Rachel Maddow Show”


http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/swallowing-puke/

It’s pretty rare for a story to be one part sad, one part fascinating, and twenty parts sleazy. Luckily, Facebook and Burson-Marsteller have just handed exactly that to us on a silver platter.

As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, last night The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons’ broke the story wide open about how the social network hired the PR firm to plant negative stories about rival Google in the press. As Mike wrote last night, it’s “not just offensive, dishonest and cowardly. It’s also really, really dumb.” And it keeps getting better.

Now one of the sleazy companies in this sordid affair, Burson-Marsteller, is throwing the other sleazy company, Facebook, under the bus.

In an email sent to PRNewser this morning, the PR firm is confirming their involvement (as if that was still in question), defending themselves and their actions, and blaming Facebook for bringing the work to them in the first place.

In other words, they took the job, fucked it up, then blamed the client. Brilliant.