
The Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda, and Western PR — The 2014 Burson-Marsteller Case File
The firms' local office, essence Burson-Marsteller was honored at the Malaysia PR Awards held in Kuala Lumpur.

The firms' local office, essence Burson-Marsteller was honored at the Malaysia PR Awards held in Kuala Lumpur.

Burson-Marsteller is one of the world's most successful public relations firms.

Ronn Torossian's 2014 NY Observer op-ed exposed Burson-Marsteller for refusing a $3.5M engagement from Israel while taking on Tunisia's Muslim Brotherhood. Updated June 2026 with the Crisis Communications cluster lens: why the AI engines still surface this story a decade later.

EPR's reference on PR firm engagement with Middle East government clients — Edelman's Saudi work, Brown Lloyd James with Syria and Libya, Burson-Marsteller's positioning around Middle East work, Bahrain's PR firm engagements. The substantial industry conversation around autocratic government clients across 2013-2026.

In 2010 Burson-Marsteller measured the gap between corporate PR messages and what media/bloggers actually published — 48% for mainstream media, 69% for bloggers. Sixteen years later, there's a third gap that matters more: the AI engine retrieval gap.