In the annals of shady public relations stunts, Facebook's attempt to surreptitiously plant negative -- and highly misleading -- stories about Google into leading media outlets will surely go down as one of the most ham-handed in recent memory.
Everyone is running for cover: Facebook has owned up to the campaign — but denies it was a "smear" — and the powerful PR firm it hired to plant the stories (and which protected its client's identity) says it regrets ever taking the job, and is parting ways with the social networking giant.
Facebook, you see, had employed a public relations firm called Burson-Marsteller, one of the most powerful PR firms in the country, to orchestrate a campaign designed to get stories published in the mainstream media portraying an obscure Google Gmail feature called Social Circle as a violation of "the personal privacy rights of millions of Americans."
This was a strategy with at least two goals:
- Weaken Google, which has social media ambitions. The two companies are in a huge battle for control of your online ID, and Google has skewered Facebook for not allowing Facebook users to export their contacts, and not letting the search giant index its content, and;
- Deflect attention from the biggest criticism of Facebook: that it plays fast and loose with the privacy of its members, always veering to the side of less.
As several reports have detailed this week, two former journalists now employed by Burson -- John Mercurio, late of Roll Call, CNN, and National Journal; and CNBC's erstwhile Silicon Valley correspondent Jim Goldman -- were making the rounds pitching this hooey to various outlets in an attempt to capitalize on Google's increasing tangles with the feds, and intense public interest in online privacy.
Among those contacted was Christopher Soghoian, a well-known internet-privacy researcher and blogger, who promptly posted the e-mail he received from Burson's Mercurio asking if he was interested in "authoring an op-ed this week for a top-tier media outlet" about "Google’s sweeping violations of user privacy." Mercurio refused to disclose his client to Soghoian.
“The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day — without their permission," Mercurio inveighed.
But Soghoian, who's been extremely tough on Google over privacy and data retention, wasn't buying what Burson was selling and turned the tables on Mercurio by posting the e-mail.
"I get pitches on a daily basis, but it’s usually a company talking how great their product, so this one made me immediately suspicious, even more so when they wouldn’t reveal who they were working for," Soghoian told BetaBeat on Thursday. "It seemed pretty clear what they wanted was my name and I could get away with as little work as possible, they would place it and ghost-write, they would just use my name."
"I really think this was an attempt by one large company to stab a dagger in the back of a competitor," Soghoian added.
We now know, thanks the The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons, (who knows a thing or two about keeping a secret), that Burson's client was none other than social networking giant Facebook. Set aside, for the moment, Facebook's hypocrisy over privacy -- remember the fiasco over Beacon, a program that showed what you bought and movies you rented to your friends automatically?
"Facebook is no better than Google on these issues, so to make these attacks they have to hide behind these PR companies," Soghoian told BetaBeat. "If they tried it in public, under their own name, people would laugh in their faces."
The way Facebook and Burson went about this charade makes Nixon's "plumbers" look like SEAL Team Six.
In a statement emailed to PRNewser, Burson confirmed that Facebook was its client, and said it never should have taken the job in the first place. (Note to prospective Burson clients: When the going gets tough, the company will throw you under the bus in a New York minute.)
"Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined," Burson said. "When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle."
It would not be surprising if someone is fired over this, because the net result of this entire episode has been a whopping hit to Facebook's image and reputation that vastly outweighs whatever PR upside the schemers hoped to achieve by making Google look bad. It's likely that this incident will be scrutinized by Elliot Schrage, Facebook's VP of global communications, marketing and public policy. It's unclear whether Schrage, an industry veteran who previously held the top communications job at Google itself -- how's that for irony? -- was aware of the plot, but he has to know something went very wrong here.
Google declined to comment beyond the original statement it gave to USA Today, which first reported the whisper campaign.
It is standard operating practice for PR professionals to push a particular story, or story line, to journalists. This occasionally even includes offers to provide "guest" writers or to ghost articles -- the better to control the message.
But no reputable publication ever takes this bait -- and an intermediary's refusal to identify the client is a door-slamming, phone-hanging-up red flag -- so neither Facebook nor Burson should be surprised Soghoian posted the e-mail exchange.
This is not the first time we've seen these kinds of antics. The truth is, this type of thing happens all the time, and one would be naive to think that Google's hands are entirely clean when it comes to these types of activities. It's just rare to see one of these campaigns blow up in such spectacular fashion.
Facebook's statement:
At least Facebook had the sense to try to face the disaster head-on once it was outed, but its statement leaves much to be desired. It's not even a non-apology apology. And given the wicked hit Facebook's image took this week, it wouldn't be surprising to see them address this issue in more detail -- the sooner the better.
See Also:
- The Plot to Kill Google
- Astroturf Spreads to Science Journals: Publishing Industry Forms Front Group to Cheat Public
- Evaporating Astroturf
- Disney Label Busted for Astroturf Artist Promotion on YouTube
- Pharma objects to empiricism, part xxx
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