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Confessions of a PR Operative Who Made The Worst Humans Look Good

Phil Elwood on Curious Worldview - Spotify

Phil Elwood On Curious Worldview - Apple

Phil Elwood On Curious Worldview - Youtube

Phil Elwood Book - All The Worst Humans

Phil Elwood is the author of a confessional memoir titled ‘all the worst humans’... it stories his life working as a PR operative for… some pretty dodgy guys. 

The clientele that he could legally mention includes the Gaddafi family, principally Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Mutassim. The recently fallen Assad regime of Syria, Phil playing a pivotal role in the ‘rose in the desert’ piece of propaganda that vogue famously published, the Qatari government in their bid for the 2022 world cup, Boko haram in Nigeria, the US government and plenty more here and there between the lines. 

What stood out to me so much from this book was just how untrustworthy and easily manipulated the media ecosystem is (though perhaps that misrepresents Phil’s skill). 

Phil writes in the book that there is as much as a 6-1 ratio of PR operatives to journalists. Therefore more of those whose interest lie in spinning the news rather than reporting it. And in a rotten race for breaking scoops, the quid pro quo that passes hands between these two parties cannot leave you anything else but cynical. It’s stuff like a PR operative trading a scoop on something unrelated for the right headline for their client. 

It is ‘spin’ all the way down. Changing the conversation, crafting the framing, appeals to authority (whether manufactured or real), but never until this book had I heard an explanation for how that spin is actually executed. 

You’ll hear terms like astroturfing, first ink, reputation laundering, media gatekeepers. This book is the world of media manipulation… all in the service of driving forward the interests of the client. 

But I wonder whether this is a toolkit only applicable to a much older media environment, one where very powerful and influential media names and orgnisations dominated public opinion. and whether all this PR work is still as relevant and powerful when the majority of peoples information is consumed user generated content on facebook, instagram and twitter. How far does a well spun New York Times headline get your clients now?

Phil speaks with humility and incredible clarity about what he learned from that world. The moral grey zones, the craft behind the spin, and how media manipulation really works in practice.

It’s a rare, honest window into an industry that prefers the shadows.

• How propaganda and PR actually get executed behind closed doors

• The mechanics of “first ink,” astroturfing, and reputation laundering

• The moral compromises behind Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid

• Sportswashing, Liv Golf, and the new global game of influence

• Whether the media is more easily manipulated than ever?

• Whether AI and independent creators can break the old PR machinery

00:00 — Who is Phil Elwood?
04:57 — Lockerbie bomber: how he manufactured “positive press” for Libya.
11:14 — “Opposite of a Pulitzer” treating the news like a solvable game.
12:30 — What a PR operative really does; “infect a newsroom.”
18:28 — First Ink masterclass: Antigua vs USA
27:44 — Qatar 2022: going negative on the US bid
40:15 — Is Sportswashing PR? Is it all bad?
49:57 — “Buy the printing press”: oligarch media ownership.
55:01 — News collapse, AI replacing reporters, and why that’s dangerous.
57:21 — Andrew Callaghan. Do gatekeepers still matter?
01:05:53 — “Digital fentanyl”; treat content as a public-health issue.
01:10:27 — Rebranding Zuckerberg; persona as PR product.
01:22:44 — Bots: PR firms pitching bot farms
01:34:30 — Practical playbook & media-literacy plus a nice close.

Phil Elwood on Curious Worldview - Spotify

Phil Elwood On Curious Worldview - Apple

Phil Elwood On Curious Worldview - Youtube

Consider sharing this interview with a mate, colleague, brother, sister, whoever you think might be interested in this as well.

Here is a transcript of the opening exchange from the conversation…

Ryan
I hope that introduction doesn't frame you in too negative of a light. It is my thrill to welcome you to the podcast.

Phil
You should have seen some of the reception I've gotten before. mean, that was pretty light compared to some of the reviews I've gotten for this.

Ryan
Give us a flavour, what's the worst you've gotten?

Phil
It's just sometimes the, know, and I've kind of stopped looking at reviews online, like user reviews of the book through certain platforms because it's some, you know, a lot of people are overwhelmingly positive, but some people call me, you know, the devil incarnate and irredeemable asshole is one of my favourite lines from one of them. So I mean, people can be pretty harsh on the internet and that's, you know, one of the things I'm worried about is kind of the

The social media, like the algorithm that gears people towards anger and hatred and animosity is something that people in my profession harness to accomplish pretty evil ends. when the user buys into it and gets angry and feeds that rage machine, all you're doing is helping us out. You're helping out the bad people.

You know, so people need to realize that the best revolution against the rage machine and the algorithm that's dominating so much of our political discourse is to just be nice.

Ryan
In all of that negative feedback, was there any lines of truth that maybe hit particularly hard?

Phil
Sure, sure. I had one reporter from the Times of London who wrote a really wonderful profile piece on me. At the end of our interview, she turned to me and said, Phil, level with me. How much of this was willful ignorance? And it just absolutely floored me. I I said that where I didn't like the characterization, I couldn't disagree with it.

And I think one story that really highlights that probably willfully grins is a good way to put it would be, there two of them. The first of which is the public relations work on behalf of the Qaddafi family and the Libyan government in the wake of Alma Grahi, the Lockerbie bomber being released. And a second is one I'm sure we'll get into the World Cup bid. By cut. So the first one, the Lockerbie bomber.

This was shortly after I started working for the company that represented the Qaddafi family. And I didn't interact with the family all that much. I mostly interacted with the Libyan ambassador to the United States. And one day I was beckoned to the Libyan embassy in DC, which was in the Watergate hotel. So I go over to the Watergate hotel and I'm sitting down with the ambassador and he says to me, know, Phil.

Tomorrow is going to be an amazing day. A national hero is set to be released and returned to Libya. And I didn't, I wasn't sure who he was talking about. So I was like, well, who's that? And he said the man's name was Al McGraw. And for those of your listeners who don't know, Al McGraw, he is the terrorist who blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. This guy in the most polite terms is a mass murder.…….

continue the conversation with the podcast here.

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