Tunisia Employs PR Firm To Clean Its Image

That Tunisian regime...

Although often neglected by Western governments in their annual human rights reports, Tunisia is one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world and - in some areas - one of the worst international offenders.

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Annually named by NGOs as one of the Top 10 enemies of press and internet freedom, the state heavily censors any dissident in the domestic press (even resorting to rounding up foreign newspapers if their daily issue features some criticism of the regime), the ministry of the interior was recently discovered to have been running several seemingly independent newspapers and magazines by proxy, and any daring publications were suffer constant harassment until they are finally shut down directly or left no other choice. The internet is equally heavily censored. So much so that the Twitter accounts of dissidents are also targeted. And Tunisia, this seemingly liberal place, has locked up more journalist since 2000 than Syria, Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country despite have one of the small populations in the region.

Any dissidence, no matter how trivial, is immediately clamped down on.

But the regime is highly sensitive about its image. It desperately wants to project an image of liberalism, pluralism and modernity. In that effort, government is also gotten quite slick in its repression. Keen to maintain the facade of liberalism and pluralism, the state has ceased with the blatant practice of blocking out whole websites and networks with YouTube and Facebook. Instead the secret police now will selectively censor this or that, say, critical article on the New York Times website without blocking the rest of the site and thereby plausibly claim that the regime has not done something so awful as to block the Times’ website. This works with everything now. Twitter is legal, but if you Tweet against the state then your personal account will be blocked.

And now they, Ben Ali et al, have hired a PR firm to clean the blood:

Does Tunisia suffer from a poor image abroad? The country's communications minister, Oussama Romdhani (who is also boss of the powerful Agence Tunisienne de Communication Exterieure) signed a contract with the American lobbying and PR firm Washington Media Group on May 1. Tunisia's account will be handled by lobbyist Gregory Vistica, a former journalist, and a public relations specialist, John Leary. In return for an annual fee of USD 420,000, WMG will work to burnish Tunisia's image in the United States but also in France and elsewhere in Europe. Apart from translating certain official web pages into English, the firm will work at "modifying" Wikipedia's reports concerning Tunisia, keep an eye on social networks like Facebook and "optimize" search engines in order to focus on favourable content on Tunisia. Identifying media outlets that could provide more positive coverage will equally form part of the package.