P.R. Firm for Putin’s Russia Now Walking a Fine Line
Public relations experts said there was a long history of American firms working for controversial foreign governments. Guy J. Golan, a professor of public relations and public diplomacy at Syracuse, compared Ketchum’s business relationship with Russia to that of public relations firms who worked for tobacco companies as the dangers of smoking were revealed.
“There are some who would argue that Russia is just as legitimate a client as Philip Morris cigarettes,” Mr. Golan said.
.. The Russian officials, he said, were initially convinced they could pay for better coverage, or intimidate journalists into it. They were eventually persuaded to take reporters to dinner instead. But after the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of the Kremlin who was assassinated in her Moscow apartment block under mysterious circumstances, they stopped engaging with the news media, because they did not want to face questions about her death.
.. In the State Department filings that detail Ketchum’s work, prominent names like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Henry Kissinger appear alongside policy analysts, politicians and United States government officials. In the filings, the company said it worked with Time magazine to have Mr. Putin named the magazine’s Person of the Year in 2007.