Submitted by Anne Landman on
Anheuser-Busch's United Kingdom division, InBev, employed a lobbying firm to edit the Wikipedia entry about its Stella Artois brand of lager to delete a negative reference to the brand. Portland Communications, a lobbying firm run by a former adviser to Tony Blair, deleted the term "wife-beater" from the Wikipedia article about Stella Artois, reportedly to "challenge any connections between the brand and domestic violence." Stella Artois, one of the biggest brands of lager in the UK, in recent years has earned the nickname "wife beater" because of its high alcohol content and apparent popularity among rowdy soccer players. The changes on Wikipedia were made by a user named Portlander10, who had an IP address traceable to Portland Communications. Portland maintains that the changes were made openly and within Wikipedia's rules. In the wake of this revelation, though, a meeting has been scheduled between the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and Wikipedia to give PR professionals guidance for working on Wikipedia, and to develop a code of conduct for PR professionals to help minimize attempts to mask the true identity of PR pros seeking to edit the site.
Printer-friendly version