Edelman, world’s largest public relations company, paid millions by Saudi Arabia, UAE and other repressive regimes

Public trust in some of the world’s most repressive governments is soaring, according to Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm, whose flagship “trust barometer” has created its reputation as an authority on global trust. For years, Edelman has reported that citizens of authoritarian countries, including Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and China, tend to trust their governments more than people living in democracies do.

But Edelman has been less forthcoming about the fact that some of these same authoritarian governments have also been its clients. Edelman’s work for one such client – the government of the UAE – will be front and center when world leaders convene in Dubai later this month for the UN’s Cop28 climate summit.

The Guardian and Aria, a non-profit research organization, analyzed Edelman trust barometers, as well as Foreign Agent Registration Act (Fara) filings made public by the Department of Justice, dating back to 2001, when Edelman released its first survey of trust. (The act requires US companies to publish certain information about their lobbying and advocacy work for foreign governments.) During that time Edelman and its subsidiaries have been paid millions of dollars by autocratic governments to develop and promote their desired images and narratives.

Polling experts have found that public opinion surveys tend to overstate the favorability of authoritarian regimes because many respondents fear government reprisal. That hasn’t stopped these same governments from exploiting Edelman’s findings to burnish their reputations and legitimize their holds on power.

Edelman’s trust barometer is “quoted everywhere as if this is some credible, objective research from a thinktank, whereas there is a fairly obvious commercial background, and it’s fairly obviously a sales tool,” said Alison Taylor, a professor at New York University’s business school. “At minimum, the firm should be disclosing these financial relationships as part of the study. But they’re not doing that.”

Since the UAE’s first appearance in 2011, Edelman’s surveys have routinely reported that citizens of the country strongly trust their government – a finding that Edelman and Emirati media have been happy to endorse.

“According to Edelman, the NY-based company, the UAE’s plans and strategies contributed to the trust in performance it earned over the year,” tweeted Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the prime minister and vice-president of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, after the release of the 2014 trust barometer. “The people’s trust in the government is a result of the leadership closeness to them and attending to their needs and demands.”