Adobe PR Director says Apple’s Steve Jobs is Joseph Stalin

What initially appeared to be a mere rogue Adobe blogger has since revealed itself to be a much deeper problem for the corporate giant, as Adobe’s own PR Director referred to rival Apple as a “Stalinist regime” in an on the record exchange with Beatweek today – and may have inadvertently revealed that the Adobe blogger in question may have been hired specifically as a hatchet man for the purpose of attacking competitors and journalists by proxy and hiding behind the fact that the most egregious attacks come instead from a linked Twitter account.

John Dowdell, who blogs on Adobe.com and identifies himself as an Adobe employee, encountered an article in which Beatweek criticized Adobe’s Flash technology, and in response Mr. Dowdell publicly insinuated that Beatweek was being compensated by Apple for doing so. When we subsequently contacted Adobe’s PR department to inquire as to whether they were aware that one of their employees was committing libel against a journalist on Adobe’s behalf, Adobe’s own PR Director Russell Brady informed us that we would have to work it out with Mr. Dowdell directly, and went on to take a bizarre, random shot at Apple and Steve Jobs in the process:

“Thanks for your email. Adobe allows its employees to blog and tweet and our policy states that, when they do blog or Tweet, it is their views – not Adobe’s. It is one of the great things about our company – we are not run as a Stalinist regime.”

Mr. Brady also then went on to take a random cheap shot at another publication (not Beatweek), comparing them to Stalin’s state-run newspaper ‘Pravda.” And yes, this all came from the individual who, best we can tell from his “PR Director” title, is the top-ranking official public spokesman for Adobe.

Editor’s note from Beatweek Editor in Chief Bill Palmer: We get accused of various libelous lunatic conspiracies on a daily basis and we generally ignore them (for instance, in a week in which I had publicly asked the feds to investigate the questionable business practices of AT&T, someone still managed to accuse me of being on AT&T’s payroll after a comment I made about rival Verizon). The problem here is that the libelous accusation, however ridiculous, was made by an individual who’s been given the power to speak on Adobe’s behalf, about Adobe’s industry, using Adobe’s own official website to do so. The more I study Mr. Dowdell’s behavior, both on his blog and on his linked Twitter account (upon which he identifies himself as being an Adobe spokesman as clearly as possible), the more I’m left to wonder aloud whether the true reason that Adobe has hired him (and others in his position) is merely so that Adobe can lob public insults at competitors and journalists by proxy and seal itself off from being directly legally liable when those insults cross the legal line into libel.

If it sounds unbelievable that a sixteen billion dollar company like Adobe could be operating in that manner, keep in mind that the official head of Adobe’s public relations efforts just equated Steve Jobs to Josef Stalin in an on the record email exchange with a technology journalist. With Adobe, it’s clear that we’re dealing with a company that here in 2010 at least, simply has no concept of how to deal with the public.

For reference, Mr. Dowell’s blog on adobe.com is here; Mr. Dowdell’s Twitter account in which he identifies himself as being an Adobe spokesman is here; confirmation that Russell Brady is in fact Adobe’s PR Director is all over adobe.com; copy of his email response, with contact information redacted, below:

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.