Damage Control

First it was Burson-Marsteller. Then it was DCI Group. The latest PR firm facing heat by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is Porter Novelli. In her show last night, Maddow dug into the director of PN's global healthcare practice, Peter Pitts. Pitts also president of The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), an interest group involved in the health-care debate that is primarily funded by large pharma companies such as Pfizer.

From the transcript:

The Center for the American Progress today documents how CMPI has been a big player in the anti-health reform movement over the past few months. They sponsored anti-Obama tea party protests...They produced a number of anti-health reform online ads and video and even anti-health reform video games

Who runs CMPI, the Center for Medicine and the Public Interest, this group? Well, its president is a man named Peter Pitts. In addition to heading up this ostensibly nonpartisan medical think tank... Mr. Pitts is also the director for Global Health Care at the giant PR firm, Porter Novelli.

Porter Novelli, of course, has a bit of a history when it comes to shilling for the health care industry, having helped that industry kill the Patients Bill of Rights way back in 1994. They said at the time that it was part of a, quote, "big government agenda." Why does that sound so familiar?

PRWeek interviewed Pitts when he first joined Porter Novelli last April, but his role at CMPI did not come up. In that interview he said his biggest goal with the practice was to "stop calling it a healthcare practice" because when people think healthcare they think "big pharma." "I prefer to think of it as the public health practice," he said.

Goldman Sachs announced a new initiative this week to invest $500 million in 10,000 U.S. small businesses. According to The New York Times, Goldman insisted that the charitable initiative, its largest in history, "was not motivated by its current public relations headache."

The company has been at the center of much of the bad press surrounding the financial industry meltdown, and also was the first major bank to return to profitability. Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, in a feature story earlier this year, called the company, "the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity."

Gene Marbach, Group Vice President at agency Makovsky + Company - which counts Citibank-Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch as clients - told PRNewser that from a PR standpoint, it is an "excellent thing."

"It serves a number of purposes. Yes it's important to foster growth of new companies, and it's a great PR move because that's where the jobs are going to come from," he said.

At a media event in New York last week, Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn said the solving the financial industry's PR problems is, "not about one article, it's going to take years to work through this." Certainly, $500 million is more than one article, and Goldman must be hoping the investment helps their image.

Goldman Sachs lists only internal contacts for U.S. PR and a number of agencies for international work, including Ogilvy PR and Manning, Selvage & Lee.

[Image: Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Golman Sachs]

Rachel Maddow has set her sights on another PR firm for creating front groups under the guise of grassroots movements to sway opinion on a given issue. Last night, she called out the DCI Group, a 160-person D.C. communications and lobbying shop for creating the Coalition to Protect Patient's Rights.

We'll see if DCI CEO Doug Goodyear accepts Maddow's invitation to come on the show the way Rick Berman did. Berman, labeled "Dr. Evil" by 60 Minutes, happily jousted with Maddow last month over his SweetScam grassroots effort against "big sugar" and other campaigns.

The law currently doesn't require non-profit advocacy groups to disclose where they get their funding.

Maddow also aired a number of spots about megafirm Burson-Marsteller last spring regarding its work with AIG.

A story from Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab was flagged by many PR professionals yesterday. The story outlined how the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council countered bad press - namely a negative story in the NY Times - which pointed to, "ominous signs of overfishing."

When people searched for related keywords, they found Google ads saying the Times had "apologized" for the story, which wasn't technically true. The Times apologized for using the trade association's photograph without permission. Either way, purchasing Google ads to counter bad press is not a new strategy.

However, the trade group did employee some other nuanced tactics to combine with the Google buy. For example, the Times linked to a page on the group's site in their story, which had a straight-forward description of the fish, the hoki. The group turned that page in to a rebuttal of the Times story.

In addition, the group purchased ads on media websites, including our own TVNewser. "It was virtually a guarantee that they and all their competitors were going to see it," Jim McCarthy of CounterPoint Strategies, the man behind the campaign, told Niemen Lab. Throwing away where one may stand on either side of the debate, the counter offensive was "a novel strategy that feels more effectual than a letter to the editor," wrote Niemen Lab's Zachary M. Seward. McCarthy still has some work to do. Two of the top six Google search results for "hoki" turn up negative stories, one of which is the aforementioned Times story.

Peter Shankman's Help A Reporter Out email list connects reporters with sources and has five simple rules. One agency, "repeatedly pitched off topic, and ignored the five rules of HARO," said Shankman today, so he banned the entire agency from the service for life.

Shankman said he would only out agencies or people who break the rules, "in extreme cases." We've already asked him if he'd reveal the offending agency, and he has not responded as of the time of this post.

That doesn't stop us from guessing. Who do you think it was?

It seems someone at Google PR thought it would be a good idea to book Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer on a local morning drive AM radio show. The first question asked in the interview: How can we find naked pictures of you on the internet? Needless to say, Mayer wasn't pleased.

Apparently, the interview was to generate interest and excitement about the new Google Audio service coming out. However, someone in the PR department clearly didn't think things through, or at least didn't prep Mayer for what the experience was going to be like.

The hosts were unapologetic. "Sorry we didn't do just a pure sunshine-y, up with people commercial for your business that you didn't pay for," one said.

PRNewser reported earlier on layoffs and other changes at Time Warner's Time Inc. division today, and mis-communications as to the number of employees laid off at the now shuttered Fortune Small Business.

When asked about their take on how things played out, a Time Inc. spokesperson told PRNewser, "Obviously, when you're operating in this new kind of immediate and constant news cycle, it is hard to get info quickly enough and to correct wrong or partially wrong info in real time before it spreads virally in a way that it wouldn't have, even three, four years ago. It presents challenges that you didn't have as a PR person before."

Rumors of layoffs at Time Inc. have been swirling for weeks, and last night and today some information was revealed. The company officially filed with the New York State Department of Labor, "to give notice that it has planned 280 layoffs in the state between Nov. 2 and Jan. 31," reports the Times' Stephanie Clifford.

The PR team at Time Inc. needless to say has their hands full, and they have already been called out by Clifford for not providing accurate information. A Time Inc. spokesperon told PRNewser that the company, "is not planning on issuing any type of written document," but of course has been fielding a variety of press requests.

FishbowlNY first reported today that the company will shutter Fortune Small Business and also reports, "a majority of the layoffs are expected to come from the news division, which includes Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated." The layoffs come on the heels of parent company Time Warner's Q3 earnings, which were better than expected, as the cable division (CNN, TBS) somewhat made up for the slump in ad revenue at Time Inc. Nonetheless, Time Warner posted a 38% decline in quarterly profit, leading some to wonder if they will be looking to "scrap" Time Inc. altogether.

The Chronicle of Higher Education released updated data today on compensation for college and university presidents. A record 23 presidents received more than $1 million in total compensation for fiscal 2008. "...colleges will have to absorb the public relations hit that comes with offering seven-figure compensation to an academic leader," wrote the Associated Press' Justin Pope.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Shirley Ann Jackson topped the list with compensation of $1.6 million. Theresa Bourgeois, Assistant to the President for Media and Public Relations at RPI told PRNewser that Jackson's salary "is a reflection of her achievements...over last ten years since she has become president she has led an extraordinary and unprecedented transformation of the institute. The value she contributes to the Institute far exceeds the amount she is paid."

Bourgeois also noted that Jackson gave back 5% of her salary to a scholarship fund, successfully led a $1.4 billion capital campaign and has seen the institute's value double after $690 million in new construction. RPI understandably seems be getting a lot of calls over the report, as they had a full statement complete with Q&A at the ready.

A contractor for public affairs and political communications agency Hawthorn Group is being looked into by Congress for an astroturfing campaign. The campaign, for Hawthorn Group's $7 million client American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, urged lawmakers to opposed climate change legislation via a letter writing campaign.

The letters were supposed be from local community groups, however they were sent from Bonner & Associates directly. Bonner did call the groups to ask for support, but those calls, "made no mention of the coal industry or of climate change," according to Talking Points Memo. They describe the process:

Phone-bankers read a quick script, then send targets pre-written letters on stationary created by using the group's logo from its website. The groups are asked to sign the letters and return them in a pre-paid FedEx envelope.

Bonner & Associates President Jack Bonner testified to Congress yesterday. "Let one thing be very clear: this improper activity was undertaken without the knowledge or permission of anyone at our firm," he said.