Edelman PR drops GEO Group after employee revolt at the prospect of laundering the reputation of private US concentration camps

Edelman is one of the world's leading PR firms, and despite the fact that they're the go-to if you want to launder the reputations of the House of Saud or the Transcanada pipeline by running massive fake-grassroots campaigns on social media, they also bill themselves as an ethical firm, refusing to take engagements for coal, tobacco or gun companies (they will, however run smear campaigns against vegan mayo).

So when Edelman took on the GEO Group (previously), a titan of American private prisons that had lately branched out into running US concentration camps with lethally bad conditions, its own employees staged a revolt, which led to Edelman firing GEO Group as a client.

The Edelman employee who pitched the GEO Group was a new hire: Lisa Ross, who'd just left the Trump White House where she'd served as deputy press-secretary (GEO are bigly Trump campaign donors). The slide deck Ross used to pitch GEO warned that "activists are using controversies around immigration to drive a wedge between you and your stakeholder...your current culture and structure are not prepared for this fight." They proposed to solve this by "proactively correcting the record."

Edelman employees discovered that their employer was working for GEO when the news leaked onto Fishbowl, a corporate networking tool. Edelman's spokesperson told the NYT that they resigned the account because "Edelman takes on complex and diverse clients...We ultimately decided not to proceed with this work." But Edelman employees say that during the meeting where they were informed that the account was canceled, company management "took the opportunity to basically shame us for ruining the work for the company because they couldnt trust us not to leak it to the press."

How bad is GEO Group? Read the rest