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Soviet Style, Facebook Plants Negative Stories about Google

Pinnochio2 By Selwyn Duke

Sometimes you just wish that both sides in a contest could lose. Such is the case with respect to the latest revelation about Facebook: that it hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google. Writes Dan Lyons at The Daily Beast:

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like the Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

After learning that the unnamed client was Facebook, The Daily Beast subsequently received confirmation from a company spokesman that it had, in fact, hired Burson. And the company is well-suited to the task it was assigned. Lyons also tells us, “Mark Penn, Burson’s CEO, has been a political consultant for Bill Clinton, and is best known as the chief strategist in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.” In other words, Burson could probably disgorge a 25-page analysis on the definition of the word “is.”

Read the rest here.

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One response to “Soviet Style, Facebook Plants Negative Stories about Google”

  1. A Cynic Avatar
    A Cynic

    Great article, Selwyn. I can’t help thinking if experts, journalists, politicians, etc, continue distorting reality or outright lying to gain an advantage, the more naive among us will end up turning whichever way the wind blows while the more sophisticated will mostly be paranoid about the sincerity and reliability of anyone they meet.
    Due to a bizarre convergence of circumstance and events, I’ve ended up being the target of much wild speculation myself; which, on at least one occasion, left me baffled at just why a person I barely knew was so certain the wrong details about me were the right ones.
    I have become very aware that it’s not only the human need to rationalize (when the facts are inconvenient) responsible for the reality relativism apparent in society today but some very deliberate use of political strategies by those who seem to know exactly how many times telling a lie will get it taken as the truth.
    Fortunately, it may not be too difficult to keep someone grounded morally with some strict instruction on how to respond to what may be nothing more than rumors. I must admit, however, I haven’t always demonstrated the right response upon becoming aware of reality distortion affecting my life. Though it’s so easy to see in hindsight how the situation I experienced would’ve been greatly ameliorated by my using a more appropriate strategy despite hurt feelings and frustration.
    The distortion of research in science or in the surveys that we rely on experts to provide us is another matter. The sky might just be falling but, since the disaster we’ve been told is coming was manufactured to inspire fear rather than valid information, I’ve begun to wonder if we could all end up starving or dying for a completely unsuspected reason. This being because there was no value in real research/observation because it wasn’t tied to a political agenda.

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