Pakistanis are finding ways to break through the info-crackdown by General Musharraf and his gang by getting
satellite dishes and becoming info warriors. They are connecting to the Internet and outside news sources and they are blogging from inside the country and aggregating reports from other bloggers. As we have seen from crackdowns in other countries, information has a way of getting out because people are determined to be free. Lest we forget, this is most powerful and long-lasting pupose of the Internet and it is the obligation of all bloggers to support freedom of expression throughout the world.
Pakistanis Join World Blog Resistance
PR/Media Week in Review 11-04-07

BorAss Reamed in Bronx
The BorAss and A-Rod show was the top news this week, as greed and PR converge to take any joy left out of baseball. In this instance at least all baseball owners should collude to lock out A-Rod as a means of shutting down the BorAss hype and greed machine that is ruining the game. Of course, baseball owners can not cry poverty, nor are they. $28 – $30 million a year is not chump change. Yankee management, and Yankee fans, are only asking for some respect and honor in a game that is fast losing both.
In the 2006 season I sat a few rows back of third base at Yankee Stadium and booed A-Rod so relentlessly that my throat was hoarse for several days afterwards. He made three baaad errors that game, struck out twice and was hitless for the game. It was one of his his worst days in a long, torturous season that inevitably spiraled down when the playoffs came and the pressure was on. Then A-Rod came alive in 2007 and won over fans, me included, by banging home runs, driving in runs, and playing like he finally “got” New York – despite fizzling again the playoffs. Now he heads
out of town with a big middle finger extended, salivating over the $300 million he hopes to extort. You don’t need a $150 an hour New York shrink to tell you about abandonment and betrayal in that scenario. I guarantee that Yankee Stadium will literally shake with fury if A-Rod comes to the Bronx on an opposing team.
PR Week in Review 10.14.07
Amanda won’t die. When do we cross to the other side?
Since there are no rules here, and I would break them if there were, I am hijacking the Week in Review from the apparently defunct Strumpette. It has been nearly a week since Amanda Chapel called it quits and set off fireworks from the blogerati, both fans and enemies. She seems to have a lot of both.
The venting, confessions, and accusations are focused mostly on the falsity of anonymity of the character and the off-blog attacks by said character. Apparently, Amanda has a temper. Amanda can be bitchy and damning and accusatory and inflexible, unreasonable and some would say, inappropriate. If there is a line Amanda strolls right up and maybe spits over.
I understand being upset by calls to superiors and colleagues, voicemail messages that don’t exactly tweet Happy Birthday. I would recoil and defend myself if I were so victimized.
PR Week in Review 10-07-07
Burson Digs Itself Deeper.
In the 80’s, 90’s and the earlier part of this century Burson-Marsteller had a stellar reputation. It was the gold standard, the McKinsey of PR. Burson execs were built of special stock, seemingly smarter, richer, working on cool, high-level stuff with big budgets. Burson was the perennial top-dog in billings, its prestige, even when attacked, unquestioned. If you had deep pockets and you wanted the best and the brightest, you hired Burson. What happened?
In the 9-30-07 Week in Review I commented on Burson’s flagrant Astroturfing for Microsoft. Not disclosing the client you are working for or its agenda or intentions is obviously unethical. Refusing to acknowledge, discuss or correct your misdeeds is bad, reputation-damaging PR and indicative of the sort of defensive arrogance that big PR agencies suffer from today. Sadly, Burson fits neatly in that category.
Harold Burson told the following to The Australian in 1998: “I’m totally opposed to front organizations that do not disclose where their funding comes from and to my knowledge – we’re a big company – we have never started or organized a group where the funding sponsorship was unknown.”Harold Burson has a blog that supposedly “discusses issues related to communications and reputation.” So, I left a comment on Mr. Burson’s blog last week politely asking if he could offer perspective on the news about Microsoft and Burson. I guess he has no perspective since my comment never appeared. So much for the new “transparency” or the conversation we are supposed to be having through blogs.
The bad news keeps piling up for Burson. In a story for Salon called “Countrywide puts lipstick on the pig, Andrew Leonard takes issue with Burson’s “crisis management” work for the giant, troubled mortgage lender. It seems that the CEO of Countrywide pocketed $138 million last year while 12,000 Countrywide workers were about to be fired. Burson’s response to this is an exhortation for Countrywide employees to fight back and stand strong in the face adversity. The talking points for the “Protect Our House” crusade that Burson concocted are so bizarre that it would make for interesting fiction if it were not true.
Blackwater has hired Burson to put a positive gloss on gun-toting, outside-the-law vigilantes who siphon off hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to wage a private war in Iraq. I am sure that Burson has a ready-made defense for accepting this client – everybody deserves representation, and all that – but the reality is that Burson is part of WPP Group plc and the parent company demands constant escalation of the revenue stream. And you can bet that Blackwater has very deep pockets, thanks to our tax money. The equation has a perverse elegance when you think about it: We pay Blackwater over $800 million to shoot first and ask questions later, and they pay Burson a few million to tell us what we should really think about it. Isn’t PR beautiful?
Burson’s refusal to take responsibility for its actions or engage the public threatens to overshadow some of its good work. Erin Byrne, Chief Digital Strategist for Burson, is a regular contributor to the Digital Perspective blog In a recent post, she noted the firms’ work on behalf of the new $5 bill.The website and flash demo expertly demonstrates how the web can be used to convey messages and images where words alone, and traditional media relations outreach, might fail. Burson should win an award for this work and the rest of us, if we’re smart, can learn a few things from the intelligent, web-based presentation of this news. Can’t somebody in the Burson digital group impress upon the rest of the firm that we are living in the digital age, the age of involvement and dialogue, the age of transparency? Or haven’t they heard?
PR Week in Review 09.10.07
bin Looney & beheadings – titanic PR flare-ups in high chatter week
Although the New York Post dismissed him as “bin Looney,” Osama bin Laden managed to hijack the global political agenda last week with a rant against America that was calculated and effective PR. Republicans were ecstatic dissecting bin Looney’s psycho-political analysis and rambling exhortations because it sounded like he was spouting the Democratic Party agenda, warning about taxes and the evils of sub prime mortgages, encouraging us to embrace Islam as a way to avoid the terror of a recession. All that was missing was an endorsement of Hillary Clinton. See the rest of the story on Strumpette.

James Bond may have thought “You only die once,” and my mother Shirley, god rest her soul, used to say “Why die twice?” when I worried excessively. But apparently the Social Media Club believes that its mission is to repeatedly die like a poor fish flopping on a deck, gasping for air. Won’t some kind fisherman put the Social Media Club out of its misery and club it to death so we don’t have to witness its pathetic spasms?