If you have tears to shed, prepare yourself; if not, get out an onion now. The PR firm Bell Pottinger has been suspended from its trade association and will probably collapse as a result. Bell Pottinger has previously represented despots all around the world, from Chile’s Pinochet to Belarus’s Lukaschenko; it has burnished the image of Asma Assad, the wife of the Syrian dictator, and of BAE, the British arms company that became embroiled in a scandal for its dealings with Saudi Arabia (among other places). Its client list practically defined a global elite of the very rich and unsavoury – and all this only increased its allure to potential clients, until it was finally tripped up on a rotten little South African operation, working for a family who don’t even murder and torture their opponents. It really is the most awfully bad luck.
In a global perspective, the punishment of Bell Pottinger does look almost unfair. For all its boasts of being prepared to represent almost anyone but Robert Mugabe, it was not, by the standards of international lobbying companies, egregiously loathsome. Other big firms will work for the same clients and will no doubt now be scrabbling to pick up what’s left of Bell Pottinger’s business. The ethical standard of the PR industry appears to be that it is all right to defend corrupt or wicked regimes providing that you do so while using only arguments that appear respectable. Alternately, you can fight dirty on behalf of a relatively clean cause – Bell Pottinger was paid nearly half a billion dollars for its work on behalf of the US army occupying Iraq, which could have been presented as a help in the struggle against Isis. Just don’t get caught using dirty tactics for a dodgy client.
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