Burson pitched an anonymous hit piece on Google — the journalist published the emails

In May 2011 Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest PR firms, approached reporters at USA Today and The Washington Post with a ready-made story: ghostwritten op-eds claiming Google's new Social Circle feature was 'designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users', in violation of Google's agreement with the FTC. The pitches came from two ex-journalists on the firm's staff, Jim Goldman and John Mercurio. One condition: the client's name would not be disclosed.

Security researcher Christopher Soghoian was asked to write one of the op-eds. He thought the claims were overblown, asked who the client was, was stonewalled — and published the email exchange. On 12 May The Daily Beast named the client: Facebook. Facebook insisted 'no smear campaign was authorized or intended'; it had merely wanted third parties to verify its privacy concerns, and conceded the issues 'should have been presented in a serious and transparent way'.

Burson-Marsteller's response was unusually blunt: spokesman Paul Cordasco said the assignment on those terms 'should have been declined' and was 'not at all standard operating procedure', against the firm's own transparency policies. The assignment was terminated and the firm said it was no longer working with Facebook. The case became the textbook story of ghostwritten third-party advocacy — and of what happens when the third party declines to play along.