Politics

Stimulating Burson-Marsteller

By Bob Burton

Two firms run by Mark Penn, the controversial pollster for Hillary Rodham Clinton?s 2008 presidential election campaign, received $5.97 million from the $787 billion economic stimulus program. Burson-Marsteller won a Federal Communications Commission contract "to work on a public-relations campaign to advertise the national switch from analog to digital television. Nearly $2.8 million of the contract was issued to Penn?s polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates," writes Alexander Bolton. "Federal records also show that a former adviser to President Barack Obama?s 2008 presidential campaign received nearly $70,000 from that contract to help alert viewers in difficult-to-reach communities that their televisions would soon no longer receive broadcast signals. The adviser, Alfredo J. Balsera, who heads a public-affairs firm based in Coral Gables, Fla., helped craft Obama?s Hispanic advertising message," Bolton reports.

Full post as published by PR Watch on December 09, 2009 (boomark / email).