ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shore up support for his handling of an anticorruption panel inadvertently landed him in an even greater bind last week, prompting a scathing rebuke from the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

But it also shined a spotlight on a covert public relations tactic that has been used by Mr. Cuomo’s aides, who are keenly sensitive to how their boss will be portrayed in the news media.

The strategy — getting allies to send journalists laudatory statements, seemingly of their own volition — is one that, by showing no fingerprints of the governor’s aides, would seem to increase the credibility of the praise.

Reporters were bombarded in February, for example, with statements from supporters of a plan by the governor to finance college classes for prison inmates, which he later abandoned after resistance from lawmakers.