Summary: Rivals of Google and probably Microsoft use PR agencies to spread propaganda through television and the Internet (shown above is a Korean leaflet bomb)

'Reporter' Jim Goldman (CNBC) has praised Microsoft for several years and got access to Microsoft's CEO for it. I wrote about this several time. Jim Goldman was a total phony who did more Microsoft promotion than actual reporting and Henry Blodget says that he has has been busted for "Spreading Lies About Google For Unnamed PR Client" (Blodget names Burson-Marsteller, which we exposed last night). This is some nuclear stuff given the smear campaign that we know Microsoft has been engaging in, not to mention Goldman's poor coverage over the years. He was a Microsoft booster. Was he paid for the bias?

USA Today reports the latest chapter in big-PR sleaze, this time involving former CNBC tech correspondent Jim Goldman, who is now a PR rep at Burson Marsteller.

According to USA Today reporters Jon Swartz and Byron Acohido, Goldman tried to pitch USA Today on a story about scandalous Google privacy violations in a Google product called "Social Circle." When Swartz and Acohido looked into the story, however, they found that many of Goldman's claims were untrue.

[...]

Goldman was apparently working this anti-Google "whisper campaign" in partnership with another Burson Marsteller executive, former political columnist John Mercurio. Last week, Mercurio wrote a long email to a blogger trying to persuade him to write an Op-Ed about the same alleged Google privacy violations. Mercurio offered to help the blogger, Chris Soghoian, place the story in the Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, Roll Call, or the Huffington Post--all read in Washington DC, where the government crackdown on Google is proceeding. (Soghoian posted Mercurio's email here.)

Blodget loves to blame Apple, but Apple has no history launching such smear campaigns against Google. Groklaw accused Blodget of trying to harm Apple using false rumours. USA Today, which is the source of the above article, probably did not point a finger that way. The party which bribed Goldman was most likely middleman for Microsoft. Microsoft habitually uses PR agencies in this way to move away liability. ⬆