Bonum Certa Men Certa

Is the EPO Pushing Prepared 'Articles' (Ghostwriting) Through Shepard Fox Communications?

Ghostwriter Reference: Ghostwriter



Summary: In an effort to artificially 'generate' hype for EIA, or in order to push puff pieces into European media, the EPO seems to be turning to external PR firms yet again (without money trail left for public audits)

It certainly looks like the EPO is now throwing away money again, giving millions of Euros to malicious PR firms that bolster/help the in-house PR team. Did the EPO sign a contract with Shepard Fox Communications? Can anyone leak the contract to us? Was there any tender at all?



"Did the EPO sign a contract with Shepard Fox Communications? Can anyone leak the contract to us? Was there any tender at all?"Jonathan Weinberg from Shepard Fox Communications (he calls himself and his occupation "communications, PR, copywriting and content consultant") keeps showing up in their press releases as a contact, last seen on the 16th of May (we mentioned him prior to that, e.g. [1, 2]). He used to be a "Freelance Journalist", so we assume that he currently just pushes fake news and prepared 'articles' for others to publish. That's just what these kinds of firms tend to practically do. The senior PR people at the EPO are not native English speaker (although one of them studied for a few years in the UK), so it makes sense for them to hire people in the UK and push nonsense into British media. We saw many puff pieces about EIA around that time (we'll omit the links as these can end up being promotional).

We already know that the EPO's PR team is actively pushing publishers to produce puff pieces and 'plant' these in the media, with journalists as stenographers paid to make it look like reporting. We know this because some actors actually told us so. Is the EPO still dependent on FTI Consulting or are there more deals being signed in secret with more PR firms? Please let us know, preferably but not necessarily with supporting evidence. The EPO is already wasting millions of Euros for Battistelli's self-aggrandising events, but how much of that money goes into private hands without even a tender?

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