‘Operators like me oil the machines that prop up authoritarian energy everywhere in the world,” writes the Washington PR man Phil Elwood in All of the Worst People. “I assist these machines operate by laundering the sins of dictators via the press.” He could also be overselling himself – he’s a publicist, in spite of everything – however not by a lot, if we’re to imagine his romping memoir of a profession spent manipulating the media on behalf of the unhealthy guys.
It’s no shock that the obscenely rich pay giant quantities of cash to PR corporations to “change the narrative” of their favour. What’s extra stunning is who these corporations will work for, and what they’re ready to do. No job, it appears, is just too large or too soiled. In 2018, the Washington agency Qorvis took $18.8m from the Saudis in what Elwood calls “PR cleanup charges” after the Washington Publish columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered within the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. As much as the Sochi Olympics, New York company Ketchum counted Vladimir Putin as one in all its largest shoppers, and took a reported $40m off the Kremlin and Gazprom. However the firm whose machinations Elwood exposes in most element is one he labored for, Brown Lloyd James, a boutique “strategic consultancy” based by Peter Brown, who as soon as managed the Beatles. It was at BLJ that Elwood carried out lots of his lowest tips.
Brown, who, we’re informed, lives by the maxim “something is feasible with the precise sum of money”, is near rock royalty. He was name-checked by John Lennon in The Ballad of John and Yoko, and attended Paul and Linda McCartney’s wedding ceremony as a witness. His Rolodex incorporates a number of the most well-known names on the planet: friends at his events have included Donald Trump, Barbara Walters and Yoko Ono. He’s additionally unafraid of deploying his contacts within the service of what Elwood describes as a bunch of “international baddies”.
Certainly one of Elwood’s early BLJ jobs, he writes, is to accompany Mutassim Gaddafi, a son of the Libyan dictator, on a drug- and alcohol-fuelled bender via Las Vegas, to attempt to maintain him out of the papers. The PR man runs across the Bellagio Resort, sourcing classic champagne, non-public jets and extra for Mutassim’s entourage, terrified that the intoxicated, armed Libyans will shoot him if something goes incorrect. Different unscrupulous or tyrannical BLJ shoppers included Ali Bongo, the chief of Gabon, and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. It was Brown himself who arrange a now notorious US Vogue interview with Bashar’s spouse Asma by choosing up the telephone to his previous pal Anna Wintour, Elwood writes. The article that subsequently appeared, headlined A Rose within the Desert, gushed that Asma was “glamorous, younger, and really stylish – the freshest and most magnetic of first girls”, and described the tyrant’s household as “wildly democratic”. BLJ couldn’t imagine their luck: “It’s uncommon you ship a journalist on a propaganda tour they usually really print the propaganda,” Elwood writes.
Whitewashing a murderous regime isn’t unlawful, however different BLJ campaigns got here nearer to that mark, based on Elwood, such because the one he ran to torpedo the US bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Employed by Qatar, BLJ deliberate to undermine the American pitch, which was fronted by Invoice Clinton, by elevating the spectre of political resistance at house. Utilizing an everyday PR “black ops” tactic, Elwood discovered an “astroturf” nonprofit to foyer in opposition to the US bid on the grounds that the cash ought to as an alternative be spent addressing childhood weight problems, a favoured situation of Michelle Obama. The Wholesome Youngsters Coalition, because the nonprofit was known as, regarded like a parental marketing campaign group, however actually was only a shell, which masked the hand of LBJ’s shopper, the Qatari royal household. To make his faux marketing campaign extra credible, Elwood drew up a supportive congressional decision, and paid $10,000 to get a lame duck legislator to suggest it – “You may get them to do something,” he writes. He then leaked all of it to a tame journalist, even inveigling Obama’s identify into the copy, though she knew nothing about it.
As soon as the story was printed, Elwood’s faux marketing campaign had “ink”, which meant it had life in the actual world, and when Fifa met 48 hours later in Zurich to select the successful bid, the Qatari delegation might current the information protection as proof that the match was controversial within the US. Consequence: Qatar received the precise to host the 2022 World Cup in what’s extensively thought to be essentially the most corrupt vote in Fifa historical past. Regardless of the controversy surrounding it, the match would show a triumph for the Qataris, since, as Elwood says, “sportwashing works”.
Elwood is vindictive about his occupation. He’s significantly scathing about the best way large gamers who’ve proved themselves working with American firms in DC and New York export their expertise and techniques to the best international bidder. The more severe a regime’s mess turns into, it appears, the more cash there may be to be made. “I contemplate each disaster a golden alternative,” he writes. “If my shopper lights their home on hearth, you will be rattling certain I’ll get the press responsible outdated hearth codes.” He calls the PR trade a “parasite” that “lives off its host, the media”.
A extra thought-about approach of taking a look at it may be because the yin to journalism’s yang: these are the interconnected forces of public data. They feed off one another, and might counterbalance one another. The problem is that because the information media has declined, PR has ballooned. For each American journalist there are roughly eight PR professionals, based on Elwood, who’re invariably paid excess of the reporters. It’s now not a good battle. When the “narrative” is more and more managed by media manipulators serving the pursuits of their shoppers, fact will get twisted.
It is a tabloid confession of a ebook, an insider’s account of working within the popularity launderette, and an apology too: it’s one in all Elwood’s “deepest regrets”, he writes, that he helped Qatar win the World Cup. It’s a taut learn, filled with hyperbole. He’s “some of the harmful individuals within the enterprise”, he tells us, who has manipulated narratives – even invented them when wanted – to repair issues for a shopper. “I’m not proud to say I’ve seen the destruction my handiwork has created,” he writes. “We reside in harmful instances, and my trade helped make them so.”
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Elwood is an egotist, that a lot is evident, a bragger who has screwed the world and now comes on the lookout for redemption within the type of this exposé. However because the final chapters reveal, he’s additionally slightly extra sophisticated than that. Maybe it’s only a mark of how good he’s at spin, however by the tip I got here spherical to fairly liking the man.
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