Hard life of regime lobbyist

• 7.04.2012, 16:37

Lord Bell is still criticized for "laundering" Lukashenko.

At the IPRA Public Relations World Congress in Dubai, Lord Bell said that the PR industry is a “lightning rod for mistrust”, during a speech that considered the reputation of the PR business.

The Bell Pottinger supremo added that he saw no solution to this issue, after reiterating his view that “everybody has the right to representation.”

Dave Semple on his blog criticizing the speech of Lord Bell.

“The fact remains that, taking on a client good or bad, it is our reputation at stake,” said Bell. “There is a lack of understanding, and we do not do enough to dispel that lack of understanding.”

“We become the lightning rod for that mistrust,” he continued. “It is something we have to learn to live with. That makes us an easy target for the media. By working with one side we will always be construed as being against the other.”

Bell pointed to the firm’s work for Belarus in 2008, which at the time faced numerous sanctions and scrutiny of its human rights record. “Good PR needs substance,” he said, noting that Bell Pottinger only accepted the contract after being satisfied that Belarus was committed to positive change.

During Bell Pottinger’s work for Belarus, said Bell, three top political prisoners were released from prison, parliamentary elections were “slightly better”, and the EU dropped travel sanctions. “Was it a success for the reputation of Bell Pottinger?” asked Bell. “Bell Pottinger was vilified in the press. I was personally abused. No attempt was made to understand what we were doing. The result was we were branded as toxic and immoral.”

Eventually, the firm terminated the contract, said Bell, because “Belarus reneged on its promises”, and sanctions were reinstated.

“The fact remains that, taking on a client good or bad, it is our reputation at stake,” says Bell, and “everybody has the right to representation”. Defending Bell Pottinger’s PR work for the repressive dictatorship of Belarus, Bell says that “Good PR needs substance”, intimating that his firm only held up real good things that were happening there.

Let’s deconstruct this a bit. Not everybody has the right to representation; only those who can pay have the right to representation. Hence it’s the dictatorship of Belarus and not its starved, oppressed people who hired Bell Pottinger. Likewise, it’s capitalist firms and not their workers who hire PR firms, political “leaders” and not activists and so on.

The essence of paid political lobbying is the elevation of those who exist at points where money is concentrated – i.e. the already institutionally powerful and wealthy. So the whole edifice is biased from the beginning. More than that, whilst lobbyists don’t have to lie, the nature of their job is to distort the truth, holding up the good things and explaining away the bad things. Amusingly, Lord Bell actually gets indignant over Belarus, “No attempt was made to understand what we were doing”. Quite the opposite; surely the problem was that everyone knew precisely what Bell Pottinger were doing?