Cher, cocaine and blood money at the Bellagio: What it was really like doing PR for dictators

nypost.com:

Vogue. “It’s an American tactic,” writes Elwood. “The First Lady is always more popular than the president, and she makes her husband look good by association.”But then came the Arab Spring uprising.

BLJ was charged with helping the Assad regime put a positive spin on the protests, and, according to a confidential memo shared by WikiLeaks, “developing media coverage outside of Syria that points to the President’s difficult task of wanting reform, but conducted in a non-chaotic, rational way.”Elwood turned down the account “after I find out that the Syrian government is shooting its own people,” he writes.

Brown promptly fired him.Elwood, 45, continues to work in public relations today, but he still grapples with the morality of his chosen profession. “I’m proud of my work, but I’m not proud of what I’ve done,” he writes. “I’ve manipulated narratives—even invented them when needed—to fix problems for a client.

My stories didn’t occur in a vacuum. They circulated out into the world. And they changed it. Sometimes for the worse.”His biggest regret is helping Qatar win the World Cup bid, he writes, but it might very well pale in comparison to how the media is being manipulated today. “We live in dangerous times,” Elwood writes, “and my industry helped make them so.”.