A word in your ear about your public image, Mr Mubarak

Mubarak was unable to gag the BBC, CNN, Sky News, France 24, Al Jazeera and the rest from reporting on the fact that Egyptians couldn't access Facebook and Twitter. It was a spectacular own goal.

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president. Amr Nabil / AP Photo

The most telling moment in the week-long test of wills between Hosni Mubarak and his people was arguably the unplugging of the internet and mobile network. It was yet another example of how we Arabs simply don't understand the value of good communication between an organisation and its public.

In this case the "organisation" is Mr Mubarak's 30-year grip on Egypt's reins of power, and the public is the 80 million Egyptians who have apparently shed what the Swiss-German historian Jacob Burckhardt might have called the "veil woven of faith, illusion and childish prepossession".

Time for some crisis management, you would think. But with his organisation's back to the wall, what does Baba Hosni do? At precisely the moment he should have been talking to his public, like a parent punishing a naughty child he switches off the internet and mobile phone communication. By denying his people the right to communicate he was to an extent validating their grievances.

Denying access down the social-networking grid may have stopped the people tweeting and sending text messages about police brutality and being denied the right to peaceful protest, but what Mr Mubarak could not control was outer space (yes, I know. I was shocked to learn that too).

So he was unable to gag the BBC, CNN, Sky News, France 24, Al Jazeera and the rest from reporting on the fact that Egyptians couldn't access Facebook and Twitter. It was a spectacular own goal.

The region was becoming twitchy but only Bashar al Assad knew what he had to do. The Syrian president, whose legitimacyhas also been brought into question, gave a rare interview to The New York Times in which he sought to come across as a thoroughly modern leader.

"Real reform," Mr al Assad said, "is about how to open up society and how to start dialogue."

He went on to compare the governments of the Middle East with stagnant water: "You will have pollution and microbes, and because you have had this stagnation for decades … we were plagued with microbes."

Arab public relations has been plagued with a lot more than microbes. The private sector is beginning to get it but effective crisis management, media relations and brand building - the PR basics - are still mystifying to all but the most enlightened Middle East organisations.

Take the Arab-Israeli conflict. We Arabs are among the kindest, most generous people on earth, but get us excited or angry and the room begins to empty.

In the early 1970s, the Palestinians were the first to realise that extremism and PR were not good bedfellows. No one was going to sympathise with people who hijacked aeroplanes and killed athletes at the world's biggest sporting event, irrespective of the injustice being inflicted on them.

Even today, the now moderate Fatah still has trouble getting its message across, especially when it goes toe to toe with those smooth, European-sounding Israelis.

The Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi may be a distinguished academic and tireless campaigner for the rights of her people, but she still has the aura of a 1970s firebrand (and she is arguably the best they have).

Compare her to the suave Mark Regev, the spokesman for the prime minister of Israel and adviser on foreign press and public affairs. In his Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, talking calmly in English (he was raised in Australia) about defence and security and the international community, Mr Regev is the one who wins the viewers' sympathy on CNN, even though his is a nation that operates its own brand of apartheid.

Even competing with the dollars available to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, it is extraordinary the Palestinians have not found spokesmen or women to match this slick rhetoric and start to win back substantial chunks of public support.

In short, the Palestinians need to find analytical minds that look a million dollars (yes, looks are important) to spread the word. If they have an American, British or European accent, so much the better. People will suddenly think: "They can't be all bad. They talk and dress like us. Oh, and look, he went to Oxford."

Trust me, the world will wake up. They may not agree with everything they say but they will remember them. And that's what counts.

But then again, the Arabs have never approved of the spokesman. There is something about hierarchy and prestige. They feel the public will listen only to the top man.

And yet this week, the biggest man on the block, Barack Obama, leaves his administration's views on Egypt to Robert Gibbs, his White House press secretary. Mr Gibbs, 39, may not look like George Clooney but he is a skilled fielder of questions. An Egyptian Gibbs might not have been able to save the Mubarak regime but at least he would have had the ear of the press.

And it's not just about politics either. There is something very crude about how corporate PR is conducted in the Arab media. Good PR should not have the client's fingerprints all over it but a quick flick through most of the local glossy magazines, in which content can be directly linked to advertising, will turn up more dabs than a crime scene.

Readers aren't stupid and many will have rumbled that they are not getting genuine editorial integrity.

If the Mubaraks had appeared in Hello, things might have been different. Then again, perhaps not.

Michael Karam is a publishing and communications consultant based in Beirut