Let’s first define what we mean by reputation laundering. The term has pejorative overtones. Countries have a right to promote themselves to other nations, and they do this for many reasons, including to increase international trade, to take a more influential on the world stage and so on. Just as most organisations have issues which would not play out well if known to the outside world, so some countries have issues that could be seen as negative. It does not necessarily mean we should refuse to trade with them or to allow them to promote themselves. Indeed, the UK had no problem until recently in trading with Libya despite our view of their human rights record. 

 

The US has recently had a bad press in one of our own newspapers, The Times, for its indecision on taking action regarding Libya, yet few PR consultancies would refuse the opportunity to promote the US government to the UK and the rest of Europe. However, we have to draw the line somewhere. Reputation management is different from reputation laundering. London is now one of the foremost destinations for governments seeking to improve their reputations who have a dubious record on human rights and PR agencies based in London are now earning millions from promoting these controversial regimes. It is about ethics, and just as many PR consultancies would think twice about promoting a cigarette brand, so they should refuse to promote those governments who treat their people badly. If they do, that is not reputation management, it is reputation laundering. 

 

Dear Claire, 

I agree with a lot you say and reckon our difference in views is a matter of degree. 

 

Yes, it would be wrong to represent a totalitarian dictator who committed crimes against his own people or others. In the same way it would probably be wrong for a lawyer to represent a serial murderer who had confessed his crimes to them or in some other way was known to be guilty beyond reasonable doubt. 

 

Here is the rub of it. How do we absolutely know that a ruler or government is completely beyond the pale and for whom one could not work in good conscience? Our perception is already filtered firstly by the media, possibly by novelists like the Samizdat writers in the Soviet era or first hand contact with political or other refugees. First hand understanding of all the issues that lie behind the political regimes implies vast knowledge of a country’s history and economic circumstances before its government can be condemned out of hand. 

 

So what should one think of a government that wants help with its image? If it is unpoliticised trade – Tunisian holidays before the Arab Spring for example – It’d be very hard to object even though we now know the country was ruled by an autocrat. The reason is that trade generally helps the condition of people in that country – less the greater the autocracy certainly even here trade and outside contacts are better for ordinary men and women than not. 

 

What of political image shaping? It is harder to justify but to use the legal parallel shouldn’t a government have an advocate if it is to be tried in the court of pubic opinion in the same way a defendant is represented in court? If an autocrat wants to change his image he at least cares what people think of him. 

“The factors behind any nation’s political circumstance are so complex that any rush to judgment is often naive and sometimes damaging. So in some circumstances providing assistance in communicating the message of a regime that doesn’t have the Guardian Foreign Desk’s seal of approval can be helpful”

 

It is true our view of a regime is filtered by the media. Yet we cannot be totally sceptical about everything we read and see, particularly from normally trustworthy sources. The front page story this week in another of our esteemed trade organs is about how an agency with links to the Gaddafi regime is being targeted by protestors.

 

According to this source, (which I assume to be reliable!) a certain agency was apparently hired in 2009 to promote Gaddafi as ‘a fascinating world figure’. I suspect the regime specified – or at least assumed – that a PR programme would bring out the more positive aspects of the word ‘fascinating’. That is where I’d draw the line.

 

Portraying him ‘in the round’, putting forth the real facts about him and his regime, if we were able to find those out, of course, would actually be in the public interest. That could provoke legitimate debate about whether his views and actions are for the good of mankind and his own people in particular. But selecting only those aspects that the West would generally consider to be favourable and downplaying or ignoring the rest is an example of where PR can actually be harmful, and in fact becomes not PR but rather, a form of propaganda. To say that putting forward a favourable image balances out the negative one portrayed by the media misses the point about what real PR should do. 

 

Dear Claire, 

Judging things from a Western liberal standpoint can sometimes be a fatal mistake. We probably thought it a good thing when the people of Yugoslavia threw off the yoke of communism. How many foresaw that Europe’s most vicious war in modern times would claim the lives of tens of thousands of men, women and children? 

 

Most of us, myself included, agreed Saddam Hussein was a bloodthirsty tyrant and approved of our ‘regime change’ invasion of Iraq on the information given at the time. A shame that the body count is well over 100,000 and has sown the seeds of anti-Western hatred that will take a generation, or more, to repair. 

 

But history is full of surprises. Perhaps one was how the transition to Black majority rule in South Africa was so peaceful and instead of bloody reprisals we saw a Truth Commission and search for reconciliation. 

 

My point is the factors behind any nation’s political circumstance are so complex that any rush to judgment is often naive and sometimes damaging. So in some circumstances providing assistance in communicating the message of a regime that doesn’t have the Guardian Foreign Desk’s seal of approval can be helpful. 

First, it can provide the regime – which must care a little about public opinion otherwise why hire a PR agency? – with a reality check. All political PRs know you can’t peddle damaged goods. Just as a crisis manager needs to tell clients they need to come clean about the extent of their problems before being able to rebuild reputation, a political PR can play the same sort of role. If they succeed, all the better. 

 

I’ll conclude with the second way – trying to help the people - and give you a personal example. Representing the government of Ernesto Samper of Colombia in the 1990s, my job was to persuade the world he was serious about tackling the drug cartels. Preventing the country from derecognition as co-operating with US policy was hugely important for aid and trade. But it was vital most of all for the 800,000 educated middle-class Colombians desperately struggling to prevent their country descending further into chaos. 

 

Samper ended discredited. Drug money had found its way into his campaign funds and the Clinton government pulled the plug. That was much worse for ordinary Columbians and a triumph for the cartels and para-militaries. The chaos in that country continues. 

 

Dear Adrian, 

You say should not a government have an advocate if they are to be tried in the court of public opinion? Absolutely, but in that case, just as with the law, a PR agency representing one side and a PR agency representing the other side should be appointed. This of course, would not happen. Instead, we get only a PR agency representing the dictatorship, not the people they are trying to repress. So we only see a skewed image of reality. You say that all political PRs know you cannot peddle damaged goods. In my experience, whether with our own UK government in the past or in the case of governments that many people have concerns about, it has not stopped them trying. Of course, even the most junior PR person is – or should be – taught, PR is not about whitewashing a product, service or regime that could do harm if the reality were known. But in the quest to earn a shilling it does happen. 

 

You also say that if an autocrat wants to change his image he does at least care what people think about him. It may be true that he is concerned that a negative image will hinder his ambitions but it may also be true that he thinks he can still put forward a positive image by disguising the reality, and need not actually change the things that would cause people to think negatively about him if they knew the truth. It is very likely that dictators see PR as a means of hiding the reality– in effect ‘conning’ the West that the actuality is not as bad as it is portrayed in the media. They do not want balance, they want stories and an image slanted in their favour. It would take a strong PR agency representative to stand up to these people and say, as they should to any client, that PR cannot provide a gloss on something that is fundamentally corrupt, and that unless real change is undertaken, PR cannot work and they will have no further truck with it. If they do have that courage, and they lose the account, so be it, at least the agency has then been true to its ethics. But in these hard times, do ethics go out of the window when there is money to be made? That is the question. 

 

“Selecting only those aspects that the West would generally consider to be favourable and downplaying or ignoring the rest is an example of where PR can actually be harmful, and in fact becomes not PR but rather, a form of propaganda”

 

It is difficult to imagine circumstances in which a true autocrat is going to commission the services of a PR without feeling pressured to do so – the most likely reason being effective criticism either in oversees media or political opposition at home. My example of a law case was inexact but if a government is in the dock of public opinion it is precisely because the voice of the people (for the sake of argument) has been heard. It’s when media are covering opposition that’ the legal analogy kicks in. 

If there hasn’t been any coverage of that nature then a PR company is in the same boat as the general public – believing the early Ceucescu, Mugabe, Aquino and so on are giving the strong leadership their country needs. 

 

But our debate was prompted by what is happening in the Middle East. Lots of autocrats and a domino effect of uprisings. Fine for liberal conscience if they are against anti-Western states like Libya or Syria; a problem if they are against pro-Western energy suppliers like Bahrain – but potentially a disaster if Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. What if regime change there led to Muslim fundamentalism as in the Iranian revolution? 

 

Unfortunately democratic aspirations are sometimes crushed by usurping regimes worse than those they replace. We all need to be aware of political reality.