From a direct quote within an Edelman (the nation’s largest independent PR firm) session, training our entire senior management team:

“Sometimes, you just have to stand up there and lie. Make the audience or the reporter believe that everything is ok. How many times have you heard a CEO stand up and say “No, I’m not leaving the company” and then – days later – he’s gone. Reporters understand that you “had” to do it and they won’t hold it against you in your next job when you deal with them again.”

And of course Edelman was the outfit that gave Walmart such great advice on sock puppet blogging. The SourceWatch listing for Daniel Edelman
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Daniel_J._Edelman,_Inc.
tells you more than you want to know about the compromised ethics of the firm. Jay Rosen’s questions about whether or not Edelman PR will blacken it’s already tarry reputation by working with the media oligarch are redundant at best. Is Jay really that naive or is it in his interest to portray himself as that naive or what?

Whatever happens, I hope Murdoch is somehow stripped of his US news properties and that they are also revealed to be the propaganda engines we know them to be.

The PR People in the Lost Chapter on Iran / Contra:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/2008/07/7517/pr-people-lost-chapter-iran-contra

“The chapter details how a “public / private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt — to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.” The chapter describes a 1983 meeting between CIA director William Casey and PR professionals, including Philip Morris’ Bill Greener. The topic was how “to sell a ‘new product’ — Central America — by generating interest across-the-spectrum.” Edelman is also mentioned as being paid $92,000 to organize “press conferences and speaking tours by persons supporting the Contras.” Another PR firm, International Business Communications, was “awarded a secret contract for $276,186,” from the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Robert Parry, June 2008: Iran-Contra’s ‘Lost Chapter’:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/062908.html

Snippet:

The American people thus were spared the chapter’s troubling finding: that the Reagan administration had built a domestic covert propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist working out of the National Security Council.

“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.

“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt – to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.”

However, with the chapter’s key findings deleted, the right-wing domestic propaganda operation not only survived the Iran-Contra fallout but thrived.

So did some of the administration’s collaborators, such as South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon and Australian press mogul Rupert Murdoch, two far-right media barons who poured billions of dollars into pro-Republican news outlets that continue to influence Washington’s political debates to this day.