Public Relations History; Theory, Practice, and Profession [1. ed.] 2020009888, 2020009889, 9781138491410, 9781138491403, 9781351033015

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“Myers provides a fascinating look at history’s milestone events through the lens of public relations—from the missionary work of the Vatican in 1622, the American Revolution in 1776, up through the formation of the State of Israel in 1947. Indeed, the strategies of PR have been more influential in shaping history than previously presented. Myers also offers what may be an industry first: a historiography of the field that (finally) recognizes the contributions of women, African Americans and other minorities.... Of all the histories written about the PR profession, Myers’s book is certainly the most readable and relevant.” —Shelley Spector, Founder and Director of the Museum of Public Relations, New York “Finally, a book that explains the history of public relations not as an evolution or as primarily the work of a handful of individuals, but as an action and a practice that emerged organically and continues to adapt in response to changes in society— politically, economically, socially, and technologically. Myers’s work is an excellent read for professionals and students alike.” —Lisa Parcell, Associate Professor, Elliott School of Communication, Wichita State University “Writing the history of public relations is like nailing jelly to the wall. Foundational questions such as ‘what is public relations?’ and ‘when did it start?’ have no concrete answers to even allow the process to begin. Yet Dr. Cayce Myers has managed to organize what we do know about the history of public relations to date into a highly readable book ... a must read for scholars and students of public relations history alike to understand where we are today in terms of historical knowledge and where the gaps in that history remain.” —Karla Gower, Professor and Director of the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations, University of Alabama

PUBLIC RELATIONS HISTORY

This book presents a unique overview of public relations history, tracing the development of the profession and its practices in a variety of sectors, ranging from politics, education, social movements, and corporate communication to entertainment. Author Cayce Myers examines the institutional pressures, including financial, legal, and ethical considerations, that have shaped public relations and have led to the parameters in which the practice is executed today, exploring the role that underrepresented groups and sectors (both in the U.S. and internationally) played in its formation. The book presents the diversity and nuance of public relations practice while also providing a cohesive narrative that engages readers in the complex development of this influential profession. Public Relations History is an excellent resource for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses covering public relations theory, management, and administration; mass communication history; and media history. Cayce Myers is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA, where he teaches public relations and communication law. He holds a PhD in mass communication from the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, an LLM focusing on media law from the University of Georgia School of Law, and a JD from Mercer University School of Law. A member of the Public Relations Society of America, Dr. Myers earned his Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) and has served on PRSA’s Board of Ethics and Professional Standards (BEPS). He is also a member of the Arthur W. Page Society, and is the Legal Research Editor for the Institute for Public Relations. His research focuses on public relations history and laws that influence public relations practice.

PUBLIC RELATIONS HISTORY Theory, Practice, and Profession

Cayce Myers

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Cayce Myers to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Myers, Cayce, 1982- author. Title: Public relations history : theory, practice and profession / Cayce Myers. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020009888 (print) | LCCN 2020009889 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138491410 (paperback) | ISBN 9781138491403 (hardback) | ISBN 9781351033015 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Public relations--History. Classification: LCC HD59 .M94 2020 (print) | LCC HD59 (ebook) | DDC 659.209--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009888 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009889 ISBN: 978-1-138-49140-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-49141-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-03301-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

To my daughter, Cayce Anne Myers.

CONTENTS

Preface Acknowledgments 1 Definitions of Public Relations

x xiii 1

2 Theories of Public Relations Development

15

3 Political Public Relations

29

4 Propaganda, Public Relations, and Public Opinion

48

5 Public Relations, Propaganda, and Conflict

62

6 Public Relations in Non-Profits, Education, and Religion

76

7 Corporate Public Relations

91

8 Entertainment and the Creation of the PR Professional

112

9 Public Relations Ethics, Organizations, and Credentialing

123

10 The Future of the History of Public Relations

138

Bibliography Index

148 162

PREFACE

Writing a history of public relations, as I found out during this book, is a daunting task. So many questions have to be answered: when did public relations begin?, who is considered a practitioner?, is public relations a profession?, is public relations an action?, and, perhaps most importantly, what is public relations? In this book I set out to provide an overview of where public relations history is today, and, to a greater extent, provide a historiography of public relations While this book attempts to do all of that, it also serves as an overview of the origins of public relations as an action and as a practice. In doing this, I found that public relations history, like the history of any profession and practice, is multi-layered and not nearly as compartmentalized as I had previously thought. In public relations history there is an ongoing debate between several forces. One force is the early histories of the field, which privilege the corporate point of view, and the personal histories of early public relations founders, such as Edward Bernays, the American public relations practitioner who claimed to more or less invent the profession. Another force is the four models of public relations, which encourage a compartmentalized view of public relations history neatly packed away in four boxes: the press agent, the information model, the two-way asymmetrical, and the two-way symmetrical public relations. These boxes are the Whig histories of PR: as time goes on, PR becomes more professional, more ethical, and actually deserves its place at the proverbial management table. The third force is a reaction to the first two: the national history movements. Spawned by a feeling that public relations is too Americanized and too corporate, the national histories of public relations argue that public relations development is idiosyncratic to each country. For these histories, public relations emerges through a unique set of circumstances, and while PR may look similar from place to place, the way it came about is unique.

Preface xi

These three forces are compelling, and when researching this book I struggled to figure out where historical “truth” was. I began writing from a perspective that early public relations histories needed to be rethought and re-examined. I believed that periodization from the four models of public relations was too neat and illapplied to history. And, as a scholar who began writing about PR history during the twenty-first century, I believed that public relations histories were unique enough to be segmented by country in order to show their unique development of the field. After writing this book, however, my view is not so clear. While I do think periodization of public relations cannot be boiled down to four eras, and agree that countries do have their own unique PR histories, I have come to appreciate the fact that PR history is, and will probably remain, something that is difficult to get our heads around. From the works of PR scholars and historians, it is evident that the emergence of public relations coincided with the changes going on in society—politically, economically, and socially. There is a pattern of public relations development that starts with political, then corporate, and social. Public relations is neither imported nor exported, but instead builds upon an exchange between sectors and countries. There is also something very significant about politics and business in public relations history, and as technology changed so did the sophistication of public relations strategy and practice. This book presents the history of public relations by sector, and in doing so shows the history of public relations as a practice that grew in tandem and internationally over time. Moreover, this book makes certain decisions about PR history up-front. First, public relations is a practice, and even though practitioners as we know them today may not have existed, public relations did exist before industrialization and professionalization. Second, public relations history is deeply rooted in the history of individuals. Their practices and their innovations did impact the field, and their stories are part of public relations history. Third, public relations also grew organically from the work of men and women who are lost to history. Their identities may never be known, but their work endures and made a contribution to the narrative of PR history.

The Structure of the Book This book is organized into ten chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the definition of the public relations field, and addresses the issues surrounding public relations as practice and public relations as a profession. Chapter 2 addresses contemporary issues of historiography and the historicity of public relations. Because this book is a historiography of public relations, particular note is made of the divisions of the field of public relations historical scholarship. Chapter 3 examines political public relations. Specific attention is given to how politics shaped public relations, and how the awareness of public sentiment and attitude shaped PR practice. Politics is broadly defined to include government communications, political campaigning, and social movements, which, as the histories show, used similar tactics and

xii Preface

strategies to achieve political results. Chapter 4 examines the historical power of propaganda and public opinion. The field of public relations was so affected by the social scientific interest in mass audiences, that examining these intellectual roots of public relations shows how the field came about and how practitioners honed their craft. Chapter 5 examines public relations during times of conflict. For PR history, conflicts have produced innovation in the field, and also created many ethical issues that are the historical baggage of contemporary public relations. Chapter 6 examines public relations in non-profits, education, and religion. These three areas overlap in how public relations addressed certain issues and publics, and it demonstrates how fundraising was an integral force in the development of public relations practice. Chapter 7 examines corporate public relations, and the development of early public relations practitioners. Specific attention is given to how industrialization affected the growth of public relations as communication technology advanced during the nineteenth century. Chapter 8 presents an overview of the first professionalized public relations monikers, and how these professions coalesced into the modern public relations practitioner. Chapter 9 examines how public relations was affected by institutional influences, notably laws and professional ethics. The chapter shows how public relations’ identity and view of itself came to be, and how ethical considerations were the result of the growing professionalization of the field after World War II. Finally, Chapter 10 addresses the future of public relations history, and suggests how the field of PR history may develop in the coming decade. Of course, with any history, this book does not, and cannot, tell all of the stories in public relations. In fact, there are many parts of public relations history that we do not know, and may never know. Moreover, as a historiography, the book is limited to what histories have been written, which are, admittedly, very American, western European, corporate, political, and heavily focused on the last two centuries. However, what I have attempted to do is provide a historiography overview of where PR history is today, and what the proverbial 30,000-foot view of the field is. Because this book is intended for scholars and students alike, each chapter closes with discussion questions. I fully acknowledge that the questions may present no answers, and the answers may not be found in this book, or any book, for that matter. What I hope to do is present some of the challenges that public relations historians are grappling with, and will continue to grapple with as we continue to write the history of the field.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been the product of many people’s help. I want to give thanks to Routledge and its editors, specifically Grant Schatzman, Felisa Salvago-Keyes, and Laura Briskman, for their help and patience during this process. I also want to thank the staff at Virginia Tech’s Carol M. Newman Library who worked hard tracking down books, articles, microfilm, and magazines (many of which were obscure) to help complete this work. Special thanks also goes to the Museum of Public Relations and its co-founders, Shelly and Barry Spector. My conversations with Shelly had a significant impact on this work, especially in terms of including the overlooked figures of public relations’ history. The Museum also gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation of the figures in this book. This book evolved over time, and it was with the help of the reviewers that this work took on its current structure. I want to thank them for their insights and suggestions. I also want to thank those who read and provided endorsements for this book: Shelley Spector, Founder and Director of the Museum of Public Relations; Dr. Karla Gower, Professor and Director of the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations at the University of Alabama; and Dr. Lisa Parcell, Associate Professor of the Elliott School of Communication at Wichita State University. No book is completed without the help of family. I want to especially thank my wife, Anne, for her support, advice, and copy-editing of this work. She, along with my parents, Tom and Linda Myers, was instrumental in encouraging me to start and finish this project. This book began before my daughter, Cayce Anne, was born and ended after she turned 2 years old. Appropriately, this book is dedicated to her.

1 DEFINITIONS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

What is public relations? That’s a question that has as many different answers as there are practitioners in the field.1 Public relations historically depends largely on what one considers the core tenets of the field. For instance, Harold Burson, a luminary figure in twentieth-century public relations and co-founder of New York-based PR firm Burson-Marstellar, considered public relations a form of persuasion.2 If persuasion is PR, then arguably the field of public relations history goes way back to ancient times of Aristotle’s Rhetoric that said there were core foundations of persuasion: logical reasoning, understanding “human character,” and emotional appeals.3 Others view public relations as a profession that is identifiable and self-regulated with ethical demands that must be adhered to.4 Under that definition, public relations emerges in the early twentieth century when corporate structure became more solidified and industry recognition of the PR practitioner first came into being. Still others look at public relations as a practice that requires deliberate communication with specific publics that can be reached.5 This definition roots public relations as a practice that grew in tandem with human agency and the ability of individuals to discuss their opinions freely and share information. It assumes that human agency must be present, and without it public relations cannot exist.6 Scholars also point out that public relations is a practice that can only exist within the context of the PR function, with multiple elements at work beyond just mere PR tactics.7 One thing that histories have in common is they typically imply a start date. Whether it be ancient times or modern corporate structure, PR histories provide for a beginning of PR development. Also, many public relations history narratives provide (some more than others) an inherent narrative of PR history that assumes the profession has progressed in an evolutionary way.8 Sometimes referred to as the Whig History, or Whig fallacy, the idea that there is evolutionary growth of

2 Definitions of Public Relations

public relations as a field assumes some realities such as public relations practice got better with age over time, public relations can be linearly traced as a coherent field, and that public relations practice is something that changed with key watershed moments that transformed the field.9 All of these assumptions have been challenged in public relations historiography for nearly three decades. However, inherent in this critique is a certain fallacy. If public relations cannot be defined, and it cannot be linearly traced, can there be a public relations history? More importantly, can there even be a field called public relations? This chapter explores these issues of definition of public relations by examining three important definitional issues in public relations. First, the chapter examines whether PR should be defined by practice or by the act of doing public relations work. Next, the chapter examines how public relations definitions of professional practice affect the narrative of PR history. Finally, it discusses the issue surrounding the impact of individuals on the field, and how PR history coalesces around the personal narratives of the so-called great men and women of PR.

Public Relations: A Practice or Profession? One of the biggest issues about public relations’ definition is deciding what factors make something public relations. Modern-day public relations is a multifaceted communication practice that uses paid, earned, shared, and owned media to effectively communicate with publics, and has a management function within an organization.10 Public relations is also a field that is recognized as a standalone profession that has professional societies, such as the Public Relations Society of American (PRSA), the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), and the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), that provide ethical standards for practice and professionalism.11 All of these components, a recognized industry role, managerial function, professional societies, and ethical standards, are the hallmarks of a standalone, recognized profession. However, if you go back far enough in public relations history, those components did not exist. In those cases, scholars have to ask, when is something public relations and when is it something else? That challenge of deciding when something is public relations and when it is not is a matter of perspective. Specifically, it depends on whether a person defines public relations as a practice (a broader definition of PR) or as a profession (a narrower definition of PR). Viewing public relations as a practice embraces the idea that PR is not something done by specific people, but is a form of communication that has certain characteristics.12 Inherent in this view is the idea that public relations can be practiced by many people in many different contexts across history.13 One of the cornerstones of this type of belief is that public relations exists when an organization or person communicates to publics to affect attitudinal or behavioral change. That type of broad approach to public relations’ definition allows for PR history to be a much longer and more inclusive of history. Under this type of definition

Definitions of Public Relations 3

communications such as the Epistles of Paul,14 medieval saints proselytizing Christ,15 public notices recruiting settlement in the New World,16 and political writings during the American Revolution are forms of PR.17 The benefit of this type of view is that it encompasses all types of PR practice, and does not rely on the communicator’s own self-identification as a PR practitioner. Even today, many people practice public relations without identifying themselves, or their work, as PR. Using a definition of public relations as practice seems to be particularly appropriate, given that reality. Public relations as a practice is a view that public relations history can be divided roughly into two eras. The first is the era before the public relations profession began. This era, frequently referred to as public relations antecedents or proto PR, is the time in which the ancestor of public relations existed.18 These communication practices may have aspects of public relations to them, and these communications or activities may have informed professional public relations. However, advocates for the antecedent and professional PR divide argue that professions have certain hallmarks, such as professional organizations, ethical codes, workers who self-identify as the profession, and standardized practices within the industry. For public relations this did not occur until the early twentieth century, and some would argue not until after World War I. Historical literature has embraced this antecedent concept of public relations. Scott Cutlip’s two volumes on public relations history, which are one of the best-known chronicles of American PR history, are divided in this manner between public relations practice, found in his book The Unseen Power, and antecedents, found in the appropriately entitled Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th Century: The Antecedents.19 These two approaches to public relations definitions exist on two extremes of inclusivity. Public relations as practice taken to its extreme can be an overly inclusive definition in which almost everything can be categorized as public relations. Conversely, public relations as profession can be exclusive to the point where important histories of public relations are not included, or diminished, simply because the people involved did not identify as PR practitioners or because the era in which they lived did not have the hallmarks of professional practice as defined by the twentieth century. The issue with having such an expansive definition of public relations raises issues of definitional specificity and ethical issues of PR practice. If PR is a practice, then conceivably anything that is communication from one person or organization to another that has any sort of motivation to influence, persuade, or even dialogue with could potentially be public relations. Historically this means that public relations’ origins go back perhaps as far as communication itself, which presents a host of historiographic issues for periodization. In effect, this history of public relations becomes the history of communication, which some scholars would argue is too unwieldy a topic to examine. Most work in public relations is not as restrictive as saying there is a clear-cut delineation between public relations practice and antecedents. Rather, some literature in public relations acknowledges that PR is practiced in many forms and

4 Definitions of Public Relations

under many names.20 Just as with any profession, the work of the professional changes over time because the tools available change over time.21 Historical accounts of public relations professional and antecedent practice are, in fact, public relations. This does not mean that all forms of communication could (potentially) be PR. Instead public relations historians, Karen Russell and Margot Lamme argued that public relations exists when two conditions are present— “strategic intent” and “human agency.”22 First, there must be a deliberate need for communication to elicit attitudinal or behavioral change, which is the strategic intent. This strategy is motivated by a variety of things such as “profit, recruitment, legitimacy, advocacy, agitation,” and fear.23 Russell and Lamme note that strategic intent is not merely enough to define public relations, because communication practices like propaganda, have a degree of strategic intent. Because of that there is a second element: human agency. Human agency is the willingness by the public to be receptive to these messages sent on behalf of individuals and organizations. Inherent in that definition is the idea that public relations is a deliberate practice, and that public relations requires some type of communication mechanism to achieve the intended result.24 However, the receivers of messages must, in fact, receive them, and not dismiss or ignore them. For Russell and Lamme, the coupling of strategic intent with human agency is essential because no strategic intent merely identifies a PR tactic, where high strategic intent with little or nonexistent agency is propaganda.25 This definition of public relations is significant to the antecedent and proto-PR debate. In this view, public relations is not about practice or hallmarks of professionalism. It is about practice and the public, which creates an expansive, yet manageable, definition of the field.

What’s in a Name? Press Agent to PR Practitioner Another major issue in public relations history is the meaning of professional names. In public relations history the name ascribed to the PR practitioner’s role have many implications. For instance, in much of the public relations literature, the press agent is different from a publicist, who is different from a public relations practitioner.26 The name “public relations counsel” has historically significant meaning because it is frequently said to be the first standalone iteration of the modern public relations practitioner.27 A publicity agent is a public relations practitioner who worked in early corporate public relations in the twentieth century.28 And all of these professional names differ from other related communication professions such as advertising agents, management consultants, strategic communicators, public information officers, and the myriad of other titles that exist today. Learning the meaning of these professional titles within public relations history is important not only because they serve as a guide to the different types of public relations practice, but they also underscore some of the historiographic issues in public relations. It is important to note that most of the discussion of public relations nomenclature centers around the U.S. In many cases, particularly outside

Definitions of Public Relations 5

of Western Europe and the U.S., public relations practitioners, especially early practitioners, did not use titles such as public relations counsel. Despite this fact, the nomenclature of public relations practice has taken on special meaning in terms of definitions of public relations as a field, historical narrative, periodization, and professionalism. However, names do matter in PR history because they are laden with meaning. Nowhere in public relations literature is a name so reviled, criticized, misunderstood, and laden with theoretical implications as the press agent.29 Usually cast as an unethical precursor to public relations who used deception and any means necessary to garner publicity for clients, the press agent is frequently associated with entertainment. The press agent is also largely associated with the nineteenth century, and the publicity practices of circuses and side-shows that unapologetically used publicity stunts and even outright lies to gain public attention for their shows. This association of press agents and agency with nineteenth-century circuses has placed P.T. Barnum, a well-known circus owner, as the archetype of press agentry.30 Frequently Barnum is said to be one of the early forerunners, or antecedents, of modern public relations practice. Scholarship on press agents shows that the nineteenth-century press agent was a far more complex role than previously thought.31 It encompassed entertainment, business, non-profit, religious, and political organizations. The nineteenth-century press agent, like modern public relations practitioners, usually had a connection with the press. Many press agents, particularly ones who worked for businesses, had experience in journalism and came to the field of press agentry from working as a reporter. They used their journalistic skills and contacts to gain attention for their organizations and advocate for them in the press. Like any profession, press agents had exemplars and embarrassments, but taken as a whole the field was not monolithically good or bad.32 It was a profession that existed in the nineteenth century, and grew in tandem with the press of that era. An outgrowth of press agents were the publicity agents who worked for corporations in the early twentieth century.33 These publicity agents usually worked in what today’s practitioners would call media relations. Like the press agents who came before them, publicity agents frequently had press backgrounds and were working in a variety of businesses. They typically were well paid, and many publicity agents were sought out and identified as a profession in want ads during the era. Publicity agents were connected with publicity bureaus that existed in-house in businesses. These bureaus served as a type of corporate communication office that engaged mainly in external communications with the press or government officials. The term “public relations counsel” came about after World War I, and is largely associated with Edward Bernays, a U.S. PR practitioner who wrote extensively on the genesis of public relations. Bernays was engaged in publicity for entertainment figures and events in the early twentieth century, and later worked on the Committee for Public Information (CPI) during World War I. The CPI focused on communication surrounding the war effort, and was concerned

6 Definitions of Public Relations

with public attitudes to and perception of the war and the U.S. government. From these experiences Bernays began to write extensively about public opinion and the public relations profession.34 He said that he invented the idea of “public relations counsel” in the 1920s, based on his view that organizations needed professional communicators who understood the science of public attitude and opinion.35 Bernays had a complex relationship with the nomenclature of public relations. He failed to revive the term propaganda in the 1920s to mean a social scientific expertise used in targeted communication.36 Later, his claim to inventing public relations counsel morphed into inventing modern public relations; he was, and to some extent still is, referred to as “the Father of Public Relations.”37 However, while elements of Bernays’s claims are true, there are some aspects that may have been exaggerated. Despite his claims of inventing public relations counsel, there is historical evidence that a job like that existed before the 1920s. Publicity agents were a form of corporate public relations, and publicists was a profession largely associated with business and publishing, going back to the late nineteenth century. The term “public relations” also had a history going back to the eighteenth century with its meaning always having to do with a formal relationship between organizations, countries, and people. In fact, in the years preceding and during World War I, public relations was a term widely used in the utility industry. Its meaning at that time was nearly identical to that used today. It meant the formal relationship between an organization and its various publics, which included citizens, customers, government officials, and the press. By the mid-twentieth century, public relations practitioner had become a more standardized name for those who practiced public relations. Industry and the academic press largely adopted the term, and its use was reinforced with professional organizations’ publications. The identity of the public relations practitioner had significance for industry recognition, and the invention of ethical codes and professional accreditation, such as the APR. More recently, public relations practice has transformed with the growth of paid content, and social media management. Many public relations jobs merely refer to communication as an encompassing field that includes aspects of public relations, marketing, and advertising. However, the public relations practitioner is still the predominant name used for practitioners in various sectors of public relations practice.

The Role of Heroes and Founders in PR’s Definition As with all histories, the individual lives and actions of specific people frequently shape the historical narrative. Nowhere is this truer than in the history of public relations.38 Historical figures in public relations are often used as exemplars of the field, and archetypes of various types of public relations practice, but also suffer from the same issues associated with memorialization and invented historical remembrances.39 Knowing the figures of public relations history, who is included

Definitions of Public Relations 7

and who is excluded, also provides insight into the field’s definition, and how the history of public relations is affected by the vantage point of key historical figures. Public relations history has been dominated by a narrative that first appeared in Edward Bernays’s writings and autobiography40 and by the influential public relations textbook, Effective Public Relations, by Scott Cutlip and Allan Center, first published in 1952.41 Those early accounts of public relations chose key figures to discuss. Sometimes these figures were heroes of the field, and sometimes they served to illustrate some of the shortcomings of early PR practice. Despite the figures chosen, centering a narrative of history on a key set of historical figures limited the scope of public relations history to primarily focusing on high profile entertainment, political, and corporate figures. Certain figures have attributes relevant to public relations practice. For example, P.T. Barnum, who is equated with press agentry, is considered by many the ethical low point of the field.42 His deception in communication gave press agents a bad image, and it was only through the corporate use of public relations by men such as Ivy Lee that the field became more professionalized.43 Lee’s contributions to the public relations field were significant because he established the first ethical guide to public relations practice with his 1905 Declaration of Principles, which sought legitimacy for the profession.44 Bernays is credited with establishing public relations counsel, and therefore creating a standalone profession of public relations practice. Arthur Page, who did public relations for AT&T and is the namesake of the Arthur Page Society, is similarly credited with establishing the profession of corporate in-house PR counsel and defining the ethical standards of that field.45 Setting aside the accuracy of these historical claims (and there are some historicity issues with many of them), the use of figures to craft historical narratives is problematic. Who is included and who is excluded become an issue, which, in turn, allow for the critique that public relations history is too dominated by a white, male, corporate, and largely American narrative. To combat this, historians have sought to include previously excluded figures, focusing on women and ethnic minorities.46 Doris Fleischman, the wife of Edward Bernays, has received historical acknowledgment for her role in the development of early U.S. public relations.47 Similarly the women involved in the suffrage and temperance movements have been cited as an example of non-professionalized, or organic, practitioners of public relations. Even in twentieth-century corporate public relations, there are men such as Ofield Dukes, an African-American public relations practitioner who formed a PR firm that represented a variety of well-known corporate, political, and entertainment clients.48 Other practitioners have been overlooked, but are now recognized in PR history such as: Henry Lee Moon (the Director of the NAACP’s public relations), Joseph Baker (an African-American practitioner who founded a PR firm that did work for Proctor and Gamble), Moss Kendrix (an African-American practitioner who worked for Coca-Cola), and Inex Kaiser (an African American woman who founded her own PR agency).49

8 Definitions of Public Relations

Including these figures in the history of public relations is important because it provides a more complete and accurate definition of the field and how it has been practiced. However, centering the definition of a field on the practices and experiences of a select group of people, no matter how diverse, limits the definition of public relations to only well-known individuals who have left a historical record. Public relations practice in all sectors has been performed by a variety of people in varying ways. Lesser-known individuals contributed to the growth and development of public relations practice. In fact, the practice of public relations in the past century has largely been done by individuals whose historical record and lives are largely unknown. Historians have attempted to correct this by focusing on micro-histories, histories that focus on a specific event or person that challenges the larger hegemonic historical narrative of the field.50 These histories seek to provide a more robust public relations history, and to create a narrative that looks at public relations from the top-down and bottom-up to show the interplay of the types of public relations practice. Compounding this narrative is the role of non-U.S. public relations history, which faces a similar historiographic issue of deciding which people and which events are part of public relations history. As public relations history matures as a field, what will likely happen will be a narrative that illustrates the process of change in the industry with historical figures included in that narrative. However, better public relations history requires the field to move away from looking at crafting a narrative from the lives of a few individuals, and begin looking at the field more holistically at the macro and micro levels.

Evolving Industry Definitions of PR Because public relations is a professionally recognized practice, the role of industry definitions are important. These not only define what contemporary public relations is, but they influence what the concept of public relations is historically. Histories of all areas can fall victim to presentism, the act of superimposing modern-day values or insights onto historical events. Industry definitions of public relations practice can lead to presentist views of historical public relations, which can cause narrowed definitions of PR practice, ethical judgments about how public relations should work, and on the role that public relations should play within organizations. While these are legitimate contemporary debates and discussions, in a historical context, the industry definitions of public relations can cause skewed histories that privilege a certain view of PR, and attempt to place historical public relations into a contemporary discussion that sacrifices historical accuracy. However, because industry definitions play such an important role within public relations, it is essential that the evolution of their definitions of PR be explored. These evolving definitions of the field not only provide historical insight into how professional public relations has evolved, but it also shows why certain aspects of public relations history have been highlighted.51 The issue

Definitions of Public Relations 9

involving the definition of public relations represents a cross-section of issues of the field: educational preparedness, the role of persuasion, professional status of the practice, and the placement of public relations practice in the organizational structure. In 1905, Ivy Lee, an early U.S. pioneer of corporate public relations, wrote the Declaration of Principles, which outlined a set of ethical principles of public relations practice.52 These principles were seen as transformative for the professional practice of PR, and some argue are a harbinger from the transition from press agentry to modern public relations practice. These principles emphasize the media relations role of the public relations practitioner, and also highlight that transparency is key to successful communication of the profession.53 Other definitions of the public relations field occurred post World War I with Edward Bernays creating the professional moniker “public relations counsel.” In that definition, Bernays saw the public relations counsel as an advisor to management within an organization, and a person who would be aware of current public opinion and how to shape it. For Bernays, this definition of public relations counsel was rooted in a belief that the field would benefit from social scientific insights into public opinion, which would allow for public relations counsel to influence and predict public opinion for management. After World War II, multiple professional public relations organizations were founded such as: the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) in 1947, the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) in 1948, the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) in 1949, the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) in 1956, the Information Presse and Communication (IP&C, France) in 1956, the German Public Relations Association (PDRG) in 1958, the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA) in 1959, and the Public Relations and Communication Association (PRCA) in 1969. Early public relations organizations influenced the professionalized definitions of the field. In 1952, Scott Cutlip and Allen Center published their popular public relations textbook, Effective Public Relations.54 In their book, Cutlip and Center argued for a distinction between press agentry and public relations, with press agentry being a promotional activity that could be part of a larger public relations campaign. They went on to use PR News’ definition of public relations as a “management function” deeply rooted in understanding public opinion.55 Cutlip and Center distilled this definition down to three components: (1) public opinion; (2) the managerial function of advising the C-suite management level; and (3) using PR to “influence public opinion.”56 Public opinion was a major component of public relations definitions in the 1950s. Part of this may have been the consequence of the growth of social science research that proliferated in the wake of World War II. Part of it may have been the need to make public relations part of the managerial class of workers within an organization. In fact, the “management function” aspect of public relations would have great endurance within the public relations field and has been reiterated in the Excellence Theory and in professional accreditation standards given by PRSA.57

10 Definitions of Public Relations

When Cutlip and Center were writing in the 1950s, the concept of managerial functions of public relations was traced back to several decades of issues within companies dealing with the public repercussions of bad decisions. Managerial responsibilities were in the purview of the executive leadership, but the management function of public relations was rooted in the idea that PR practitioners had access to and were taken seriously by executives. This management function had larger implications for organizational structure, with PR practitioners arguing as far back as the 1930s that public relations as a department should be right under the chief executive and that all other units, including advertising, would answer to the Director of Public Relations. Definitions of public relations in the 1970s and 1980s continued to emphasize the managerial aspect of PR practice, but technological and tactical changes in the industry reflected the emergence of new definitions of the field.58 In 1982, the PRSA defined public relations as “public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”59 This definition reflects the older view of public relations as setting the communication between organizations and publics, but it also shows the influence of the view that public relations reflects a mutually beneficial relationship between organizations and publics. This mutual benefit became a large theme in public relations practice, especially in light of the Excellence Theory of public relations which gained traction in the 1980s as a major theory of public relations practice.60 By the 2000s, the PRSA had changed its definition yet again. The new definition said: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”61 This time the PRSA left out the management function language of the 1950s because it was viewed as denoting a one-way directional communication practice. The PRSA said that this more expansive definition of public relations practice did not define public relations as an exclusively corporate practice. The CPRS uses a similar definition of public relations, adopting the following definition in 2009, “Public relations is the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve understanding, realize organizational goals, and serve the public interest.”62 As the twenty-first century has continued to see communication practice become more inclusive of public relations, advertising, and marketing, the definition of public relations has continued to expand. In fact, industry sometimes uses general terms of public relations that are intentionally vague in order for them to include all aspects of communication practice. There is also a movement to recognize the diversity of practice within public relations. Corporate communication has long dominated public relations definitions while other forms of PR practice have not always been thought of as public relations. Contemporary definitions, like that of the PRSA, incorporate the more expansive view of public relations practice.

Definitions of Public Relations 11

Conclusion As public relations evolves in the twenty-first century as a practice, definitions of the field will change. However, like any profession, the nomenclature and definitions of the past influence the present-day identity of the field. Press agentry, corporate communication, public relations counsel, management function, two-way communication, and strategic communication all inform the identity of public relations practice. Because of that, it is important to understand the historical underpinnings of public relations as a field so we can examine the root causes of change. The definition of public relations also presents many questions. Because the field encompasses so many different aspects of communication, defining public relations narrowly presents certain problems of under-inclusivity. Compounding this problem is that many people who practice public relations do so without self-identifying themselves or their work with the term. The part-time volunteer at a non-profit, the nineteenth-century church organizer, the early twentieth-century business owner, or the mid-century political campaign worker all practice a form of public relations most likely without identifying with the field or using the name “public relations” to describe their work. Professional organizations’ definition of public relations provides some insight into industry trends. Looking at the world-wide PR organizations’ definitions of public relations shows that public relations as a field has a more expansive definition that embraces a multi-directional relationship between publics and organizations. It implies that public relations has a fiduciary responsibility to the public, and that while PR as a management function is still important to the field, the placement of public relations within an organization is not the primary concern of modern PR practice. Rather, modern public relations practice seems focused on using all available technological and communication resources to engage and communicate ethically and effectively with a diverse public.

Discussion Questions 

  

Are definitions time-bound? Should we discard older definitions of public relations because they reflect a historical reality that is no longer true? For instance, Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles was drafted over 100 years ago. Are they still relevant? What is the difference between the public relations of Edward Bernays and the public relations practiced today? What effect, if any, do older public relations practices have on contemporary public relations? Is press agentry inherently unethical? Can it play a role in modern public relations practice? Can you think of examples of modern press agentry? Why is the managerial function of public relations so important? What potential issues could arise if a public relations practitioner is not in a management function?

12 Definitions of Public Relations



What role does technology play in the changing definitions of the field of public relations? Can you think of how the definition of public relations may change in the next 10–20 years?

Notes 1 For an analysis of public relations research and varying approaches, see Cui Meadows and Charles Meadows, “The History of Academic Research in Public Relations: Tracking Research Trends over Nearly Four Decades,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 871–873; Lynne Sallot, Lisa Lyon, Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, and Karyn Jones, “From Aardvark to Zebra: A New Millennium Analysis of Theory Development in Public Relations Academic Journals,” Journal of Public Relations Research 15 (2003): 27–90. 2 Harold Burson, The Business of Persuasion: Harold Burson on Public Relations (New York: Rosetta Books, 2017), 108. 3 Aristotle, Rhetoric (New York: The Modern Library, 1954), 25. 4 Rex Harlow, “Public Relations Definitions Through the Years,” Public Relations Review 3 (1977): 49–63; Rex Harlow, “Building a Public Relations Definition,” Public Relations Review 2 (1976): 34–42; Robert Heath, “Onward into More Fog: Thoughts on Public Relations’ Research Directions,” Journal of Public Relations Research 18 (2006): 93–114; Marvin Olasky, “Roots of Modern Public Relations: The Bernays Doctrine,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1984): 25–27; Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 287–295; Eric Goldman, Two Way Street: The Emergence of the Public Relation Counsel (Boston: Bellman Publishing Co., 1948). 5 Karen Russell and Margot Lamme, “Theorizing Public Relations History: The Roles of Strategic Intent and Human Agency,” Public Relations Review 412 (2016): 741–747, 746. 6 Ibid., 745. 7 Oliver Raaz and Stefan Wehmeier, “Histories and Public Relations: Comparing the Historiography of British, German and US Public Relations,” Journal of Communication Management 15 (2011): 256–275, 270–271. 8 Bernays, Biography of an Idea; Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective Public Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1952). 9 Adrian Wilson and T.J. Ashplant, “Whig History and Present-Centered History,” The Historical Journal 31 (1988): 1–16, 10. 10 Tom Kelleher, Public Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 175. 11 Public Relations Society of America, “Ethics for an Evolving Profession.” Retrieved from www.prsa.org/about/ethics; International Public Relations Association, “IPRA Codes.” Retrieved from www.ipra.org/member-services/code-of-conduct/; Public Relations and Communications Association, “Ethics.” Retrieved from www.prca.org. uk/campaigns/ethics. 12 Raaz and Wehmeier, “Histories and Public Relations,” 270–271. 13 Margot Lamme, “‘A Dozen Best’ Public Relations History,” American Journalism (Winter 2008): 156–163. 14 R.E. Brown, “St. Paul as Public Relations Practitioner: A Metatheoretical Speculation on Messianic Communication and Symmetry,” Public Relations Review 29 (2003): 229–240. 15 Jordi Xifra and Maria-Rosa Collell, “Medieval Propaganda, Longue Durée and New History: Towards a Nonlinear Approach to the History of Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 715–722; Tom Watson, “Creating the Cult of a Saint: Communication Strategies in 10th Century England,” Public Relations Review 34 (2008): 19–24. 16 Scott Cutlip, Public Relations History from the 17th to the 20th Century: The Antecedents (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994).

Definitions of Public Relations 13

17 Scott M. Cutlip, “Public Relations and the American Revolution,” Public Relations Review 2 (1976): 11–24, 13. 18 Cayce Myers, “United States Antecedents and Proto-PR,” in North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Charles Marsh, “The Strange Case of the Goddess Peitho: Classical Antecedents of Public Relations’ Ambivalence Toward Persuasion,” Journal of Public Relations Research 27 (2015): 229–243. 19 Scott Cutlip, The Unseen Power: Public Relations: A History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994); Cutlip, Public Relations History from the 17th to the 20th Century. 20 Margot Lamme and Karen Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History,” Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, 11 (2010): 281–357. 21 Karen Russell and Margot Lamme, “Theorizing Public Relations History: The Roles of Strategic Intent and Human Agency,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 741–747. 22 Ibid., 744–745. 23 Ibid., 744. 24 Ibid., 744–745. 25 Ibid., 745. 26 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 287–288. 27 Ibid. 28 Cayce Myers, “Early U.S. Corporate Public Relations: Understanding the ‘Publicity Agent’ in American Corporate Communication, 1902–1918,” American Journalism 32 (2015): 412–433, 420–421. 29 Karen Russell and Cayce Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” Public Relations Review 45 (2019): 246–257. 30 Lamme and Russell, “Removing the Spin,” 328; for a good biography of Barnum that details his communication efforts, see Irving Wallace, The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum (New York: Knopf, 1959). 31 Russell and Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent.” 32 Tom Watson, “Let’s Get Dangerous—A Review of Current Scholarship in Public Relation History,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 874–877. Watson’s argument in this piece is a call to write an accurate history of public relations with the good and the bad included. Such histories were not written earlier in order to minimize the negative aspects of the field. 33 Myers, “Early U.S. Corporate Public Relations.” 34 Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923, reprinted New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1961). 35 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 287–288. 36 Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928, reprinted New York: IG Publishing, 2005). 37 Iris Mostegal, “The Great Manipulator,” History Today (January 2016): 41–45, 41. 38 Kate Fitch, “Making History: Reflections on Memory and Elite Interviews in Public Relations Research,” Public Relations Inquiry 4(2) (2015): 131–144. 39 Jacquie L’Etang, Timothy Coombs, and Jordi Xifra, “Public Relations and Memory,” Public Relations Inquiry 4(2) (2015): 127–129. 40 Bernays, Biography of an Idea. 41 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations. 42 James Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1984), 28–29. 43 Ibid., 30–34. 44 Sherman Morse, “An Awakening on Wall Street,” The American Magazine 62 (1906): 457–463; Karen Russell and Carl Bishop, “Understanding Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles: U.S. Newspaper and Magazine Coverage of Publicity and Press Agentry, 1865–1904,” Public Relations Review 35 (2009): 91–101. Lee first presented his principles in 1905 during a strike. They were later printed by Morse in 1906.

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45 Arthur W. Page, Words from a Page in History: The Arthur W. Page Speech Collection (University Park, PA: The Arthur W. Page Center, 2011). 46 Pamela Creedon, “Public Relations History Misses ‘Her Story,’” Journalism Educator 44 (1989): 26–30. 47 Margot Lamme, “Outside the Prickly Nest: Revisiting Doris Fleischman,” American Journalism 24 (2007): 85–107; Susan Henry, “‘There is Nothing in This Profession… That a Woman Cannot Do’: Doris E. Fleischman and the Beginnings of Public Relations,” American Journalism (Spring 1999): 85–111; Susan Henry, “Dissonant Notes of a Retiring Feminist: Doris E. Fleischman’s Later Years,” Journal of Public Relations Research 10 (1998): 1–33. 48 Ofield Dukes, Ofield: The Autobiography of Public Relations Man Ofield Dukes (New York: PR Museum Press, 2017). 49 Denise Hill, Alicia Thompson, and Jada Culver, “Hidden Figures in PR: Putting a Long Overdue Spotlight on African American PR Pioneers,” lecture, Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, May 4, 2017. 50 Lamme and Russell, “Removing the Spin.” 51 Rex Harlow, “Public Relations Definitions Through the Years,” Public Relations Review 3 (1977): 49–63. 52 Morse, “An Awakening on Wall Street,” 457–463. 53 Russell and Bishop, “Understanding Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles.” 54 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations. 55 Ibid., 5. 56 Ibid. 57 Public Relations Society of America, Study Guide for the Examination in Accreditation in Public Relations, 5th ed., updated 2018. Retrieved from www.praccreditation.org/ resources/documents/apr-study-guide.pdf, pp. 16–17. 58 Albert Walker, “The Public Relations Literature: A Narrative of What’s Been Published by and About the Profession, 1922–1988,” Public Relations Quarterly (Summer 1988): 27–31. 59 Public Relations Society of America, “About Public Relations.” Retrieved from www.prsa.org/about/all-about-pr 60 Note that Managing Public Relations the foundation of Excellence Theory was published in 1984, but two-way public relations traces its roots back to Edward Bernays. 61 Public Relations Society of America. “About Public Relations.” 62 Canadian Public Relations Association, “Who We Are.” Retrieved from www.cprs. ca/About.aspx.

2 THEORIES OF PUBLIC RELATIONS DEVELOPMENT

Does public relations history matter? After all, public relations is a dynamic field that has embraced the technological changes in communication, and is at the forefront of the big communication issues of the twenty-first century, including social media, big data, and psychographic research. Looking retrospectively at public relations and its historicity and historiography, it seems like one of the less glamorous (and interesting) aspects of PR. However, as Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue.”1 Nowhere is that truer than in public relations. The history of public relations has a direct impact on the field’s view of itself. Public relations’ concern for ethics, debates over definitions of PR practice, the concern over the professionalization of the field, and the profession’s focus on managerial functions are all rooted in public relations history. The perception that public relations has of itself, and its concern over its role and value in organizations and within the larger communication field can trace its origins to historical concerns the field has had for decades. Even the history of public relations and the way these histories were written had an impact on the field. They set up the issues PR had to deal with, they defined what public relations practice is, and they set out to create a narrative about public relations that defined the field’s relationship with organizations, management, the press, and the public.2 To examine the importance that history has on public relations, this chapter explores the various narratives of public relations history and definitions of the field. While this chapter does seek to present an overview of the historiography of PR, it does have an agenda. That is, public relations history has largely been incorrectly presented as an evolutionary progression in which key figures made an indelible impact of the field. While public relations certainly has changed over time, and historical figures have had an impact on the field, the true narrative of public relations history is not one of great men and women changing the practice

16 Theories of Public Relations Development

of PR to reach its most ethical, professional, and impactful apex. Rather, public relations history is messy. It is filled with figures, good and bad, who sought to use public relations practice to achieve certain ends.3 Moreover, public relations history is organic in that it has emerged over time from various sectors working in tandem (sometimes unaware of each other’s existence). Public relations is a field of professionals and non-professionals alike. Especially in the era prior to the twentieth century, public relations was a form of communication that existed in various organizations and was practiced by various people, many of whose names are lost to history and cannot be included in the great man and woman narrative of the field.

Older Narratives of Public Relations History Public relations history has largely been written from an American perspective, and early work largely centers on the individual lives of practitioners.4 Because of this, certain figures have been pushed to the forefront of the field’s history. These figures act like founding fathers of the field, and their lives serve as a type of timeline for the field’s development. Key moments in their careers seem to parallel transfiguring moments of the profession’s development. These early histories have some inaccuracies, primarily that they represent a holistic historical account of the field of public relations. Much of influence is left out: women, minorities, social movements, non-professionalized public relations practice, non-Western public relations, non-U.S. public relations, other fields’ contributions to public relations, public relations prior to the late nineteenth century, and even unethical public relations.5 In short, a lot is left out of these older histories.6 Perhaps this is because of convenience, and perhaps these early writers were unaware of the other events. What we do know is that the exclusion of other PR histories provides a mechanism for a unified, evolutionary narrative of the field. Because public relations history is frequently in dialogue with these older narratives, it is important to understand it. The older narrative of public relations history begins with the mid to late nineteenth-century press agentry epitomized by P.T. Barnum.7 In fact, Barnum is one of the so-called founders of public relations in that he understood the use of the press and publicity for his circuses.8 Barnum’s use of press agentry is characterized as a dishonest attempt to garner media attention by staging special events that attracted paying clients to his circus events. This included sensational acts such as General Tom Thumb, a dwarf who performed with the circus, and Joice Heth, the supposed 161-year-old nanny to George Washington.9 Press agentry was not limited to Barnum, but was thought to be the type of pure publicity used by the entertainment industry to attract audiences. The hallmark of press agentry was its inherent dishonesty and use of stunts to attract public attention. Part of its effectiveness was linked to the rise of newspapers and the yellow journalism of the late nineteenth century, and the celebrity of men like Barnum.10

Theories of Public Relations Development 17

At the end of the nineteenth century, the U.S. corporate PR came into being.11 Its line and column structure that gave rise to so-called middle management allowed for the formation of modern corporate power. Railroads made for faster delivery of goods, and the telegraph allowed for corporate expansion and subsidiary businesses. In this environment the corporate sector began using its own form of public relations practice. This corporate growth led to a greater interaction of corporations with the public. In the late nineteenth century, corporate titans such as Cornelius Vanderbilt held to the mantra “the public be damned,” but by the early twentieth century there was a recognition that the public was a factor that had to be considered in any business model.12 Because of that, corporations began to use PR men as corporate communicators. The best known among these was Ivy Lee, who worked for Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller.13 Lee is credited with improving the image of Rockefeller by creating his trademark gesture of giving dimes to children, and navigating Standard Oil’s crisis during the Ludlow Massacre in 1914 when children were killed in a Colorado labor strike.14 Lee’s role in public relations development is largely viewed as positive, especially because he is credited with proposing the field’s Declaration of Principles, that is viewed as the first set of ethical guidelines for the public relations profession.15 World War I was viewed as the harbinger of change in the public relations profession. During the War, the Woodrow Wilson administration became keenly aware of the importance of communication in shaping attitudes and beliefs in society. To combat potential propaganda from the Central Powers, such as Germany, the Wilson administration created the Committee of Public Information (CPI) one month after the United States entered the war.16 The Committee of Public Information, commonly referred to as the Creel Committee because it was chaired by newspaperman George Creel, was tasked with producing communication favorable to the war effort, including war posters, information supporting the draft, rationing information, victory gardens, and bond drives. The CPI also controlled information by managing the content of news stories, and producing pro-U.S. news content.17 Although the CPI employed thousands of people, many of whom where civilians, one person stands out as a major influence on public relations development—Edward Bernays.18 A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was a former entertainment press agent in New York prior to World War I. He joined the CPI in 1917, working on Latin American issues, primarily concentrating on business. He went to the Paris Peace Conference after the War ended, and later gained fame as the creator of the idea of “counsel on public relations.”19 Bernays is credited with inventing the concept of a public relations practitioner who handled communication between organizations and their publics. Bernays is credited with his understanding of psychology and consumer attitudes driving his public relations success. He wrote several books on the subject, beginning in 1923 with Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda in 1928.20 These books, along with copious other writings of Bernays throughout his long life (he lived to be 103 years old!) had an impact on public relations practice, and advocated the

18 Theories of Public Relations Development

idea that public relations would benefit from using psychographic and social science information to create communication strategies. Bernays’s work is often credited with introducing major changes in the field of public relations, such as his 1929 New York Easter Parade that broke the taboo for women smoking, his work with the United Fruit Company advocating the eating of bananas in American diets, his promotion to make bacon a staple of American breakfasts, and promotional work for women’s hair nets, among many other things.21 Later Bernays would be associated with advocating for the licensing of public relations practitioners, and differentiating between publicity, something Bernays practiced pre-World War I, and public relations practice.22 A contemporary of Edward Bernays was Arthur Page, who is credited with creating corporate public relations counsel.23 Unlike Bernays who sought to gain public notoriety as a public relations counsel, Page focused his professional skills on being a PR practitioner with AT&T from 1927 to 1947.24 In those twenty years Page refined the role of corporate public relations, especially focusing on managing public opinion regarding AT&T’s monopolistic business model. Page is often associated with the ethical practice of public relations. Named in his honor are the Arthur Page Society and the Arthur Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication, both of which focus on ethical communication in corporate communication. The Page Society, renamed simply Page in 2018, publishes “The Page Principles,” which are based on the work of Arthur Page.25 These sevenpoint principles advocate for the ethical practice of public relations and best practices for corporate public relations counsel. This received narrative of public relations history is largely based on the writings of Edward Bernays who wrote prolifically about the development of public relations practice. In his 1952 book, Public Relations, and later in his 1965 autobiography, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays, Bernays wrote about the development of public relations practice, largely focusing on how his work had influenced the modern concept of PR practice and public relations counsel.26 Another early source that influenced the saliency of this historical narrative was Scott Cutlip and Allen Center’s Effective Public Relations, a textbook that had widespread adoption and impact on the field.27 This book provided a narrative very similar, starting with press agentry and going through the 1950s’ use of public relations counsel.28 Pre-press agentry public relations was minimized, and was depicted as a precursor to modern public relations. Pamphleteers, such as Thomas Paine, and presidential advisors, such as Amos Kendall in the Andrew Jackson administration, were included in the narrative, but only as people who had an awareness of influencing public perceptions.29 These early histories of public relations followed a trajectory of the lives of great men: Barnum, Lee, Creel, Bernays, and Page, and linked the linear development of public relations history to the timeline of their contributions. Perhaps most controversially, the narrative of public relations history focused on corporate influence with only a passing, and negative, acknowledgment of the entertainment field’s contributions.

Theories of Public Relations Development 19

Identity formation has much to do with the historical past. The received history of public relations seems to impact the public relations psyche to some degree. Beginning the field with Barnum opens the narrative of public relations as an unethical, unprofessional practice devoid of ethics. From this ethical abyss the field grew, with the aid of corporate PR men, to eventually have a more professional, solidified PR practice. It is perhaps this narrative that has created a culture within public relations that focuses heavily on ethical practice and professionalism. Public relations scholarship and industry organizations, such as the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), dedicate a vast amount of attention to the ethical practice of public relations. Press agentry as a term is largely thought of as negative, and something to be avoided in practice.30 Even publicity, a term that has both positive and negative connotations, in some sectors of PR scholarship, is viewed as unethical and inherently deceptive.31

Four Models and Public Relations History This older received history of public relations has an impact theoretically on the field of public relations. Nowhere is that more evident than in the four models of public relations created by James Grunig and Todd Hunt.32 First published in their 1984 textbook, Managing Public Relations, the four models of public relations categorizes public relations into four typologies using historical evidence (Figure 2.1). The typologies not only use historical support, but each typology is organized using chronological historical events and people as exemplars, which makes the four models serve as a historical periodization of public relations development. The model is represented as such. Each of these typologies of practice not only progresses chronologically starting with press agentry and moving toward modern two-way symmetrical public relations, but each typology represents a practice of public relations that is more sophisticated, ethical, and professional than the previous one.33 Historical Eras Associated with the Four Models of Public Relations

FIGURE 2.1

Press Agentry

Public Information

1850Ð1900

1900 Ð1920s

Two Way Asymmetric

Two Way Symmetric

1920sÐ1950s

1960sÐpresent

Four models of public relations based on Grunig and Hunt (1984). Note these PR models are not limited only to these dates and can appear in modern PR practice

20 Theories of Public Relations Development

Press agentry is the first typology of PR practice.34 It is characterized as pure publicity in which the communicator has no accountability for the accuracy of his or her communications. Equated with the work of P.T. Barnum, press agentry is depicted as a crude ancestor of modern public relations, and its work focuses exclusively on the needs of the speaker’s organization. It seeks to achieve attention at all costs, and as such it attracts public mistrust. According to the four models, this type of PR practice may still be in use, but it is largely associated with late nineteenth-century U.S. public relations. The information model public relations is the type of PR practiced by Ivy Lee. It is slightly more ethical and professional than press agentry. Its purpose is to inform public of an organization’s work. It is a strictly one-way communication in which public needs and attitudes are not considered. However, what distinguishes the information model from press agentry is its honesty. Unlike press agentry, the information model public relations is not about pure publicity at all costs. It does consider accuracy in its information, but it does not engage in a dialog with publics. Because of that, public needs or beliefs are not considered or even sought.35 Two-way asymmetric communication is the type of public relations practiced after World War I. It is largely associated with Edward Bernays, and it is more sophisticated than its predecessor, the information model.36 Unlike the information model and press agentry, it does consider public attitudes, and engages in some communication with them. One of the hallmarks of two-way asymmetrical public relations is its use of psychographic information about publics. Bernays’s use of Freudian psychology is an example of two-way asymmetric communication because he looked at public needs and perceptions, e.g., women smoking is linked to increased women’s autonomy and liberation. However, the reason that this category is viewed as asymmetric is that the organization/practitioner does not engage with the public in a cyclical communication. Rather engagement is limited and focused almost exclusively on organizational needs.37 Two-way symmetrical communication is the last typology of PR practice, and is presented as the most ethical and responsible form of PR practice.38 It advocates for a total engagement between publics and public relations professionals, and it seeks to increase public trust between the organization and the public through continual engagement. Part of the reason two-way symmetric communication is presented so positively is that it moves the field away from the unethical roots of press agentry. In fact, advocacy in two-way symmetric communication is really not present. Rather the continual dialog between an organization and the public represents a conversation in which an entity becomes both the sender and the receiver.39 It represents the highest form of ethics and professionalism. It also presents a form of PR practice that is supposed to assist organizations to navigate difficult publics and resolve issues that may arise in a mutually beneficial way. It goes beyond just a typology or historical period. It is, according to Grunig and Hunt, the best way that public relations can be practiced and is a form of PR that is both aspirational and necessary for all effective PR practitioners.40

Theories of Public Relations Development 21

The four models of public relations have had a major impact on the field of scholarly public relations work beyond history. They serve as the cornerstone of the Excellence Theory of public relations, which provides a practical theoretical guide to how best to practice public relations.41 Rooted in that theory is the role of two-way symmetrical public relations, and over time the theory has been used to examine organizations and public relations practice to see if Excellence Theory is being practiced. In public relations scholarship, this theory is widely known and widely written about, and its appearance in public relations textbooks and other writings has made it extensively studied and critiqued in the field of PR.42 The four models of public relations, however, have had a historical impact beyond Excellence Theory. Even though the typology of the four models was developed to categorize PR practice, not history per se, the model provides a compartmentalization of PR development. Its linear timeline and historical underpinnings have made it accepted as a historical theory of public relation’s development. Its power also lies in its familiarity with other narratives of PR practice. Going back to the 1958 second edition of Effective Public Relations and Bernays’s own accounts of PR history, the four models of public relations seem to reiterate the same story of PR.43 Additionally, the narrative of the four models provides historians with a neat periodization of development that naturally presents eras and seminal figures in the field to historians. However, the problem with the four models of public relations is that it is not an accurate historical representation of the history of PR. The history highlighted in the four models of PR development focuses almost exclusively on corporate and entertainment PR and provides only a small portion of PR history.44 These historical examples ignore non-corporate public relations contributions, minimize or exclude contributions of women and minorities, and place public relations development as an American invention that is exported to the rest of the world. All of these issues serve as the basis for the critiques of public relations historiography, which has challenged the older assumptions of public relations history, and call for a new and more inclusive history of the field.

Current Critiques of Public Relations History Public relations history began to be a topic of scholarly activity in the 1970s with Richard Tedlow’s work on public relations history.45 Expanding upon the literature of business historian Alfred Chandler, Tedlow looked at press agentry in relation to corporate communication and looked at the relationship between early public relations work and the press agentry of the late nineteenth century.46 In the 1980s, Marvin Olasky began to challenge some of the narratives of corporate public relations development. Namely, he argued that corporate public relations was not an improvement on public relations, nor did it provide the type of legitimacy public relations sought as a field.47 Using a libertarian viewpoint, Olasky argued that corporations used public relations frequently to enact

22 Theories of Public Relations Development

restrictive regulations that only large companies could comply with, which promoted a public-private partnership that fostered the growth of government power.48 His critique extended to Bernays, whom Olasky viewed as supporting a statist public-private partnership with business while promoting a globalist view of world politics in the post-World War I and II eras.49 In the 1990s, there were more studies that sought to examine specific aspects of public relations history.50 Perhaps the best-known are the two works of Scott Cutlip, the original co-author of Effective Public Relations.51 Cutlip, an early public relations educator, wrote two histories of public relations. The first, The Unseen Power, published in 1994, was a large work on early public relations firms in the twentieth century.52 It focused primarily on the development of public relations work in large cities, and provided some of the first work on an early U.S. public relations firm, The Publicity Bureau, started in Boston in 1900. The second work, published in 1995, was Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th Century: The Antecedents.53 As the title suggests, Cutlip’s work focused on early public relations practice going back to American colonial days with specific focus on nineteenth-century public relations work. In some respects, Cutlip’s work is a type of historic preservation of histories that he knew personally and as a scholar of PR. Because of that, both books lack citations throughout, causing the accounts to lack a historical sourcing that most histories provide. Despite this methodological issue, Cutlip’s history of American public relations development provided a historical account of American public relations development that was outside of the four models and Bernays’s historical paradigm. 23During the late 1990s, there was increased interest in the development of public relations that cast a critical eye over the historicity of earlier PR narratives. The basis of PR history until that time had largely focused on corporate PR, partially because it was a well-researched area and because corporate identity of public relations rooted it in a professionalized field that garnered more respect. However, historians began pointing out that U.S. corporate development had many historical blemishes, like any other area of history. Speculation, stock manipulation, and boom and bust businesses were the hallmark of late nineteenth-century corporations, and, as such, corporate PR first developed in an environment that was anything but the calm, highly professionalized narrative that many writers of PR history wanted it to be.54 Additionally, scholarship began to recognize and openly criticize the impact of Bernays’s narratives on history. In addition, historians took to task the inherent periodization of the four models of public relations history, and dismantled the historical justification for using them as a basis for public relations development.55 Much like modern-day public relations practice, there were those who practiced professional and unprofessional public relations, and the level of sophistication of practice largely depended on the expertise of the practitioner, not the time in which they practiced. Another major development of public relations since the 1990s was increased attention to PR practice outside of the United States.56 These scholars criticized the

Theories of Public Relations Development 23

prevailing view that public relations was an American export that took root in other countries. Instead they argued for a public relations history that recognized the cultural and social factors that led to public relations in different nations. Research in this area has primarily focused on western Europe, which has histories that emphasize the political roots of PR over the corporate. Additionally, other work has been done in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Those public relations efforts have various historical accounts that are unique to those regions and present historical narratives that include issues of colonialism, Westernization, independence movements, gender issues, political upheaval, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and other non-U.S. factors that have shaped the creation of public relations.57 Theoretically, the view of non-U.S. public relations history has been important as well. Scholars from research traditions not hindered by the four models and a Bernaysian narrative have looked at public relations development in a new way. There is a greater methodological and theoretical rigor that has been part of the historical accounts of public relations. Specifically, there is a call to understand that historical writing is a reflexive process that includes personal and cultural lenses that impact the meaning of histories.58 Historiography, the history of history, has become popular and necessary for public relations scholarship to understand the current landscape of public relations history and areas that need further inquiry and reassessment.59 One theory that has gained particular salience in European public relations is the stratification model of public relations.60 Borrowing the theory from other research done in social history, this model of public relations argues that PR develops over time, building upon its past practices much the same way a layer of rock would show different eras of development. Unlike the four models or the Whig histories of Bernays, the stratification model does not make value judgments on past practice. Rather, those past practices are just influencers on today’s reality. The theory’s main advocate, Günter Bentele, shows this stratification model using the public relations field in Germany, which was heavily influenced by German unification in the nineteenth century, the rise and fall of National Socialism, the Cold War, and corporations.61 Part of these new histories of public relations is to debunk the older inaccurate narratives posited by Bernays and reinforced by the four models. However, another reason for these new histories is to examine and document previously unknown contributors to public relations. Often these figures represent areas of public relations that did not work in the corporate public relations sector, but made contributions to public relations practice that affected all aspects of PR practice. These figures sometimes are women, racial minorities, and members of sectors of practice that traditionally are outside the businesses, PR firms, and large non-profits that many PR practitioners are associated with. Part of this recognition of overlooked PR practitioners includes a diversity of PR work in the historical narrative of the field. For instance, social movements are regularly examined as part of public relations, especially because they use techniques of engagement with publics and communication expertise. Older public relations histories, such as Bernays’s, do not include social movements as part of public relations at all, and within the

24 Theories of Public Relations Development

four models of public relations it would be difficult to categorize these movements within the time-frame established for each type of PR.62 Similarly, many sectors that practice public relations do so organically, and do not employ a self-identified public relations practitioner. For example, religious movements in the United States during the Second Great Awakening used public relations techniques and media engagement to spread their messages. However, these communicators were frequently church members or religious leaders who would likely have described their communication as proselytizing, and not some iteration of public relations. In their 2010 meta-analysis of histories of public relations, Margot Lamme and Karen Russell determined that much of public relations history was largely unwritten.63 In the nearly 10 years since that publication, the current status of public relations history is as a field actively seeking to fill in many missing pieces of its history. At this point, public relations history is moving on from the older narratives of the four models and Bernays. Historiographic work suggests that these older approaches to PR history have been debunked by historians to the point where current history does not use them. However, the field does not have a new monolithic theoretical or historiographic approach, nor does it seem to want one. Rather, current public relations histories seek to examine public relations, its figures, practices, and events in a way that acknowledges the diversity of communication practices and the sector.

Conclusion Despite this inclusion of public relations histories, and the work that has discredited and debunked inaccurate historical narratives, much of PR history is yet unknown. Part of the reason for this is that the academic movement to critically assess public relations history is relatively recent (within the past 30 years), and much of the important scholarship in PR history has focused on critical assessments of historicity, historiography, and micro history. The current debates in PR history revolve around periodization, the role of theory within historical research, and way the field should be more inclusive of PR events and figures in the larger historical framework of PR. The current historical discussion in public relations also explores how public relations history should be evaluated in terms of narrative, theory, practice, and definition. Historians largely agree, however, that the current debates in public relations history are a good thing. They do not seek to find a unified theory of development to replace the Bernaysian and four-model approach. Additionally, there is a movement in public relations history to examine all aspects of PR, including public relations that may be unprofessional and unflattering to the field. Historical figures, while still important, also have taken a more measured place in drafting the narrative of PR development, and timeframes for public relations history take a more expansive view, looking at a variety of industries, people, and practices rather than the achievements of a few corporate, American, male practitioners. It is important to note that these older histories of public relations served a purpose. That is why they have had so much impact in the field. It was not only

Theories of Public Relations Development 25

that they highlighted the contributions and impact of those who wrote the history, but they served a function in creating a PR identity. Public relations as a practice has sought legitimacy for decades. Because of that corporate history, the history of PR in large organizations took precedence over histories of smaller organizations and less well-known practitioners. Corporate history also lends itself to a one-dimensional history. The history of corporate growth is a history that largely involves white, male, American, industrialized, and moneyed figures and interests. It is an important part of PR history. However, focusing exclusively on corporate PR as public relations’ sole history is exclusionary, and, as a result, historically limited. What current historians are doing is going beyond this well-trodden area in an attempt to find the complete picture of public relations’ past. However, this too represents challenges. Because the older narratives were so ingrained in the identity of public relations, historians may find themselves working on research to debunk older PR myths, but then unknowingly falling back in the familiar narrative of Bernays and the four models in order to make their arguments. Inherent assumptions about the field itself sometimes serve as a bulwark against asking the necessary research questions to uncover seminal figures and events. Our human need to have an arch to every story, and a clear-cut starting point may motivate historians to create new periodizations of the field, only to find that those periodizations are as arbitrary as the history that underpins older histories.

Discussion Questions  

  

Is it necessary to have a starting point for the history of public relations? Is it even possible? Historicity is the notion that historical accuracy of histories varies. How has historicity affected the narrative of public relations? As public relations history becomes more inclusive, do you think a new definition of public relations will be found? How are the historical debates within public relations history reflective of contemporary issues in the field? Is there a historical narrative that is more salient to current practitioners? What role, if any, should theory play within public relations history? How would an accurate and inclusive history of public relations be used to examine and critique contemporary theories of the field? How should historians handle the role of Bernays and Barnum in public relations history? To date, they have been major figures, but current history has brought new figures and events to historical consciousness of public relations. Is there a place for the old figures? What about the old historical narrative?

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Notes 1 Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. 2 Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965); Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective Public Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958); Scott Cutlip, The Unseen Power: Public Relations: A History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994); Scott Cutlip, Public Relations History from the 17th to the 20th Century: The Antecedents (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995). 3 Tom Watson, “Let’s Get Dangerous—A Review of Current Scholarship in Public Relation History,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 874–877. 4 Bernays, Biography of an Idea; Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations; Cutlip, The Unseen Power, Cutlip, Public Relations History. 5 Margot Lamme and Karen Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History,” Communication Monographs (2010): 281–357. This monograph is a survey of public relations history research and a state of the field as it was in 2010. 6 Debashish Munshi, Priya Kirian, and Jordi Xifra, “An (other) ‘Story’ in History: Challenging Colonialist Public Relations in Novels of Resistance,” Public Relations Review 43 (2017): 366–374; Pamela Creedon, “Public Relations History Misses ‘Her Story,’” Journalism Educator 44 (1989): 26–30. 7 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23; Irving Wallace, The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum (New York: Knopf, 1959). 8 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23. 9 Cutlip, Public Relations History, 172. 10 Bernays, Public Relations, 38. Yellow journalism was the practice of using sensational material in journalism to increase readership. The term began in the late nineteenth century to refer to tabloid-style content. 11 Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Business (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1998), 7–47. 12 New York Times, “Vanderbilt in the West,” October 9, 1887, p. 1. 13 Scott Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States: Its Role in America’s Philanthropy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 35. 14 Ray Hiebert, Courtier to the Crowd: Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations in America (1966, reprinted New York: PR Museum Press, 2017), 142. 15 Sherman Morse, “An Awakening in Wall Street: How the Trusts after Years of Silence, Now Speak through Authorized and Acknowledged Press Agents,” American Magazine 62 (1906): 457–463, 460. 16 Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–134. 17 Bruce Pinkleton, “The Campaign of the Committee on Public Information: Its Contributions to the History and Evolution of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research 6 (1994): 229–240, 231–238. 18 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 155–161. 19 Ibid., 288. 20 Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923, reprinted New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1961); Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928, reprinted New York: Ig Publishing, 2005). 21 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 774–775, Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 18–19. 22 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 288. 23 Karen Russell, “Arthur Page and the Professionalization of Public Relations,” in Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of Practice and Profession, ed. Burton St. John, Margot Lamme, and Jacquie L’Etang (London: Routledge, 2014). 24 Ibid., 306.

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25 Ibid., 307. 26 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 287–295; Edward Bernays, Public Relations (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), 11–155. 27 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations. 28 Ibid., 30–45. 29 Ibid., 20–23. 30 Karen Russell and Cayce Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” Public Relations Review 45 (2019): 246–257. 31 KevinStokerandBradRawlins,“The‘Light’ofPublicityintheProgressiveEra:FromSearchlight to Flashlight,” Journalism History 30 (2005): 177–188; Karen Russell and Carl Bishop, “UnderstandingIvyLee’sDeclarationofPrinciples:U.S.NewspaperandMagazineCoverageofPublicity andPressAgentry,1865–1904,”PublicRelationsReview35(2009):91–101. 32 James Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984), 13. 33 Ibid., 21–22. 34 Ibid., 22. 35 Ibid., 30–37. 36 Ibid., 35–41. 37 Ibid., 41. 38 Ibid., 41–43. 39 Ibid., 43. 40 Ibid. 41 James Grunig and Larissa Grunig, “Toward a Theory of the Public Relations Behavior of Organizations: Review of a Program of Research,” Public Relations Review 15 (1989): 27–66; Larissa Grunig and James Grunig, “Public Relations in the United States: A Generation of Maturation,” in The Global Public Relations Handbook: Theory Research and Practice, 2nd ed., ed. K. Sriamesh and D. Vercˇicˇ (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2009); James Grunig, “Furnishing the Edifice: Ongoing Research on Public Relations as Strategic Management,” Journal of Public Relations Research 18 (2006): 151–176. 42 Lynne Sallot, Lisa Lyon, Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, and Karyn Jones, “From Aardvark to Zebra: A New Millennium Analysis of Theory Development in Public Relations Academic Journals,” Journal of Public Relations Research 15 (2003): 27–90. 43 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 16–56; Bernays, Public Relations, 17–125. 44 Grunig and Hunt, Managing Public Relations, 21–43. 45 Richard Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900–1950 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1979), 25–57. 46 Ibid. 47 Marvin Olasky, “Public Relations vs. Private Enterprise: An Enlightening History Which Raises Some Basic Questions,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1985): 6–13; Marvin Olasky, Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987). 48 Marvin Olasky, “A Reappraisal of 19th-Century Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 11 (1985) 3–12. 49 Marvin Olasky, “Retrospective: Bernays’ Doctrine of Public Opinion,” Public Relations Review 10 (1984): 3–12. 50 Ron Pearson, “Perspectives on Public Relations History,” Public Relations Review (Fall 1990): 27–88; Karen Miller, “National and Local Public Relations Campaigns During the 1946 Steel Strike,” Public Relations Review 21 (1995): 305–323; Karen Miller, “‘Air Power Is Peace Power’: The Aircraft Industry’s Campaign for Public and Political Support, 1943–1949,” The Business History Review 70 (1996): 297–327; Elizabeth Burt, “The Ideology, Rhetoric, and Organizational Structure of a Countermovement Publication: The Remonstrance, 1890– 1920,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (1998): 69–83; Ronald Fullerton, “Art of Public Relations: U.S. Dept. Stores, 1876–1923,” Public Relations Review 16 (1990): 68–79;

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51 52 53 54 55

56

57

58

59 60 61 62 63

Scott Cutlip, “Fund Raising in the United States,” Society (March/April 1990): 59–62; John Ferré, “Protestant Press Relations in the United States, 1900–1930,” Church History 62 (1993): 514–527; Jacquie L’Etang, and Magda Pieczka. Critical Perspectives in Public Relations (London: International Thomson Business Press, 1996); Susan Henry, “‘There Is Nothing in This Profession…That a Woman Cannot Do’: Doris E. Fleischman and the Beginnings of Public Relations,” American Journalism (Spring 1999): 85–111; Rodger Streitmatter, “Theodore Roosevelt: Public Relations Pioneer. How TR Controlled Press Coverage,” American Journalism (Spring 1990): 96–113; Elizabeth Burt, “Dissent and Control in a Woman Suffrage Periodical: 30 Years of the Wisconsin Citizen,” American Journalism (Spring 1999): 39–43; Susan Henry, “Dissonant Notes of a Retiring Feminist: Doris E. Fleischman’s Later Years,” Journal of Public Relations Research 10 (1998): 1–33; Linda Hon, “‘To Redeem the Soul of America’: Public Relations and the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Public Relations Research 9 (1997): 163–212; Karen Miller, “Woman, Man, Lady, Horse: Jane Stewart, Public Relations Executive,” Public Relations Review 23 (1997): 249–269; Bruce Pinkleton, “The Campaign of the Committee on Public Information: Its Contributions to the History and Evolution of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research 6 (1994): 229–240. Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations. Cutlip, The Unseen Power. Cutlip, Public Relations History. Richard John, “Robber Barons Redux: Antimonopoly Reconsidered,” Enterprise and Society 13 (2012): 1–38, 32–38. Cayce Myers, “Reconsidering the Corporate Narrative in U.S. PR History: A Critique of Alfred Chandler’s Influence on PR Historiography,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 676–683; Karen Miller, “U.S. Public Relations History: Knowledge and Limitations,” Communication Yearbook 23 (2000): 381–420. Kate Fitch and Jacquie L’Etang. “Other Voices? The State of Public Relations History and Historiography: Questions, Challenges and Limitations of ‘National’ Histories and Historiographies,” Public Relations Inquiry 6 (2017): 115–136; Natalia Salcedo, “Mapping Public Relations in Europe: Writing National Histories Against the U.S. Paradigm,” Comunicación y Sociedad 25 (2012): 331–374; Tom Watson, “Time Marches On, and So Does the History of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research 27 (2015): 193–195. Tom Watson, ed., Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Tom Watson, ed., Latin American and Caribbean Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Eastern European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Asian Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Jacquie L’Etang, “Public Relations and Historical Sociology: Historiography as Reflexive Critique,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 654–660; Jacquie L’Etang, “Writing PR History: Issues, Methods and Politics,” Journal of Communication Management 12 (2008): 319–335. David McKie and Jordi Xifra, “Resourcing the Next Stages in PR History Research: The Case for Historiography,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 669–675. Günter Bentele, “Germany,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices , ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 45. Ibid., 46–47. Bernays, Public Relations, 11–125. Lamme and Russell, “Removing the Spin,” 356.

3 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

Politics has been an essential part of public relations for centuries. More importantly, when examining the historical development of public relations practice, politics has produced innovative public relations strategies and tactics that were then used in mainstream public relations. This influence of politics on public relations is apparent across time and geographic boundaries. Many contemporary histories of public relations begin with how political communication and actions by governments were some of the first public relations practiced. Political public relations shows two things. First, it is the origins of many aspects of standard public relations practice because it requires the communicators to know public opinion and understand stakeholders and publics. Second, it transcends countries and time. While it is impossible to historically prove causality between one nation’s political public relations and another’s, it was clear that political public relations emerged in situations where public opinion and sentiment were needed to achieve certain attitudinal and behavioral changes. It is by no means a requirement that the objective be democratic. In fact, many uses of political public relations have not been democratic. All that is required is that the public sentiment is needed to achieve political purposes, however positive or nefarious. Including politics in public relations is significant because it provides for an expanded view of the definition of PR practice. Frequently political public relations does not use the term PR or any of the associated terms of public relations practice (e.g., practitioner, publics, relationship management). Instead political public relations uses terms such as issues, voters, campaigns, victory, and defeat. While most public relations practitioners do not use that terminology to describe public relations practice, many of the core functions of politics are public relations practice. For instance, constituent services, those things elected officials provide the people they represent, and lobbying are highly dependent on relationship management and understanding the publics’ attitudes and

30 Political Public Relations

beliefs. Media relations is a key ingredient in any political campaign, and understanding public opinion is essential to any successful political figure. Given this important role of politics in public relations, this chapter examines political PR in three major areas: (1) nation building; (2) political press relations; and (3) social movements. While these areas overlap in some cases, they each represent a unique area of public relations history, and demonstrate how politics has played an important role in establishing public relations norms. While it is impossible to detail each historical use of political PR, this chapter includes examples across the globe and in a variety of political contexts to demonstrate how politics and PR tell the story of public relations history.

Political Public Relations and Nation Building Political campaigns can take many forms, but frequently campaigns are thought of as exclusively election-year campaigns for office. Campaigns occur to mobilize voters and citizens, create public awareness of political issues, and even to mobilize other political entities or countries to behave in certain ways. They have even been used for nation building. In much of the public relations literature, the use of political campaign in public relations is well established. Early political public relations operated at a much slower pace than today’s digital reality, but despite using different mechanisms for public relations practice, the use of PR in campaigns marks some of the earliest use of public relations practice.1 However, political causes are complex because they try to galvanize public opinion around an idea. Changing attitudes and beliefs of individuals in this context requires multiple communication channels repeating a similar narrative with different voices. In the larger narrative of public relations history, American historians frequently point to the Boston Massacre as a watershed event in political campaign PR that generated anti-British public opinion. The Boston Massacre occurred in March 5, 1770, when British soldiers shot and killed several Boston longshoremen who were taunting the soldiers. Although historians disagree as to whether the coverage of the Boston Massacre was a manipulative attempt to drum up anti-British sentiment, or reflected legitimate concerns over colonial rule and abuse of colonists, this act was portrayed as an act of aggression by the British colonial government and served as a flashpoint for anti-colonial sentiment in Massachusetts and Connecticut.2 However, in an era where news travelled slowly (it took two to six weeks for news to travel from Boston to Charleston and six weeks before the news of the fight at Lexington and Concord was known throughout the colonies), the use of communication to galvanize public opinion was strategy.3 Colonial leaders used a three-pronged communication approach to spread the news of the massacre: pamphlets, newspaper editorials, and sermons. Moreover, public memory of the event was an influencer on the perception of the abuses of the British government. This effort, headed by “militant Whigs,” was used as a galvanizing event that highlighted abuses by the British government from 1770 to 1775.4

Political Public Relations 31

This use of public relations in the formation of the United States is reiterated in analysis of the American Revolution. Other events, such as the Boston Tea Party, have been credited as being pseudo-events that helped gain press attention and galvanize public opinion for the pro-independence cause.5 Because colonial America was 90 percent rural, the promotion of revolutionary ideas was difficult, both in terms of logistically spreading news and in convincing a largely proBritish society to separate from the British government.6 The use of anti-British pamphlets and editorials demonstrated a great knowledge of message saliency to publics. Using the writings of the philosopher John Locke and the poet John Milton, early writers of pamphlets couched their arguments for revolution in a philosophy that was part of the zeitgeist of the time. Samuel Adams, an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector, is credited as being an expert in public relations. Although he was not a congenial personality, Adams understood public sentiment and how public opinion is shaped. Adams lived in an era where the press was largely non-objective and regularly used pseudonymous editorials. Adams, along with Benjamin Franklin, used those norms of the colonial press to advance his anti-British politics. These writing were targeted to a larger, less educated general public. This approach was complemented by more in-depth discussion found in colonial pamphlets written by figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and most famously, Thomas Paine. In fact, Paine’s famous writing, Common Sense, was widely read and received coverage similar to the level of more accessible newspaper editorials.7 These writings, along with organized groups, such as the Committees of Correspondence, assisted with spreading the writings of these largely Boston-based revolutionaries. In fact, PR historian Scott Cutlip credited the American Revolution’s success partly to the communication competence of the Patriots who understood how communication could change public opinion. The Tories, by contrast, did not use communication strategy to suppress the rebellion, and instead used legal and military solutions instead.8 Once the United States was established as an independent country in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, another campaign was launched to galvanize public opinion. This time the issue was the creation of the U.S. government’s structure outlined in the U.S. Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay’s Federalist Papers have been credited as a highly sophisticated public relations campaign. Using the pseudonym Publius, the Federalist Papers comprise 85 essays and editorials that examine specific aspects of the U.S. Constitution. Speaking to the Public Relations Society of America in 1962, historian Allan Nevins said that the power of the Federalist Papers was that it turned the public sentiment from anti- to pro-ratification, and that Hamilton, “a born public relations man,” understood the power of communication in shaping and changing political public opinion.9 As more formalized political campaigns emerged in the nineteenth century so did more formalized public relations practice. In fact, President Andrew Jackson is credited with using one of the first forerunners of public relations practitioners, Amos Kendall, in

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his Kitchen Cabinet, an official group of presidential advisors. Kendall, like Samuel Adams, was not necessarily what people today would think of as a modern public relations practitioner. A quirky introvert prone to not looking at people when he spoke to them, Kendall was an obscure figure in Washington, D.C., working as the Fourth Auditor of the U.S. Treasury before Jackson began using his advice on developing his public image.10 However, like many contemporary public relations practitioners, Kendall understood the power of the press. He wrote speeches for Jackson, wrote advances to the press, created official position papers, and even conducted polling for the president. This knowledge of how politics and the press work together was in part because of his own background as a newspaper editor of the Kentucky newspapers Minerva and Argus of Western America.11 Part of Kendall’s strength as a communicator was his understanding of public opinion and how to build public consensus for the Jackson administration. He lived in a time when public opinion in the United States was becoming increasingly important as the voting population expanded with the removal of property ownership as a pre-qualification for voting for white men.12 American political campaigns were not the only political uses of PR for state creation. Scholar Margalit Toledano compared public relations’ influence on public sentiment in colonial America and the Zionist Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In both cases, public relations was used to galvanize public opinion and influence dormant publics, and used communication techniques to make an argument for creating a new nation. In 1896, Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist, published an influential pamphlet Der Judenstate (The Jewish State) that advocated for a Jewish state to combat the antiSemitism that had prevailed in Europe after the revolution of 1848.13 Enhancing the call for a Jewish State was the Jewish secularization and European assimilation during the Haskala (Enlightenment) in the nineteenth century. Scholars point out that Herzl’s work seized upon public opinion and created a targeted branding of Zionism, including the creation of flags and symbols. In his work analyzing Zionism, Avineri claims the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the 1947 United Nations Resolution that called for a Jewish state would not have occurred if it had not been for the communication efforts that led to a larger public debate on a Jewish homeland.14 According to public relations historian Margalit Toledano, it was Herzl, like Adams in colonial America, who recognized the importance of galvanizing public opinion for a political cause.15

Public Relations and Formal Political Press Relations Political campaigns and presidential politics have long used highly developed communication strategies. They are similar to raising awareness of political causes, but unlike them, political campaigns involve two major campaign objectives: raising money and getting votes. American political public relations is arguably the most expensive and innovated type of public relations practice because of the large amounts of money spent and the innovative use of technology. However,

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American political public relations is also a by-product of the government and media structure of the United States. An expanding and pervasive press, a robust First Amendment freedom of the press, and political consultants who understand how to package candidates for election make for a highly effective communication strategy that has both refined political communication and, some argue, degrades real democratic choice.

Early Uses of Political PR in the United States Early American use of the term “public relations” even involved the idea of political campaigns. The term frequently meant that an individual had a type of high-profile status in which public sentiment and attitude were extremely important. In fact, as early as 1804, the term “public relations” appeared in the U.S. press, referring to Connecticut Congressman Jeremiah’s official duties as a politician.16 Political campaigns are an essential ingredient in democratic government, and in the context of politics a public relations campaign can only occur when there are voters free to make a choice in an election. For this reason, this section only discusses PR campaigns in a democratic context. However, political campaigns are associated with political power. Because of that, the role of political public relations is not necessarily exclusive to democracy, but is related to crafting public opinion to support the political status quo. In the United States, political campaign management began in the late eighteenth century, and is associated with John Beckley. Immigrating to the United States from Great Britain, Beckley became the first Librarian of Congress, a Mayor of Richmond, Virginia, and the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. However, his most lasting contribution to political public relations was his alignment with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in his work with the Democratic-Republicans and Jefferson’s presidential campaign in Pennsylvania. His use of handbills as a means to promote Jefferson and the DemocraticRepublicans was highly effective, especially because up until that time active campaigning was viewed as undignified for candidates.17 American political campaigns gained more sophistication during the nineteenth century as voting rights expanded to include non-property-owning white men. At the presidential level, campaigns became more targeted in the early nineteenth century, and the partisan press, the newspapers controlled by political parties, were a major instrument in communicating party talking points.18 In 1858, Abraham Lincoln used a series of debates with Stephen Douglas throughout the Congressional districts of Illinois in what was tantamount to a campaign for the U.S. Senate.19 The new invention of the telegraph and press coverage of the debates gained widespread attention, and newspaper coverage of the debate occurred in Illinois and other states. Ohio publisher Follett and Foster even published the debates in a book, Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois, selling over 16,000 copies.20

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Political Campaigning and White House Press Relations By the mid-nineteenth century, political campaigning had become more institutionalized. Although not to the level of modern campaigns, William McKinley was one of the first presidents to run a modern political campaign, running his “front porch” campaign that brought leaders to his home in Canton, Ohio, while Mark Hanna, the Republican National Committee Chairman, raised campaign money while traveling around the country. This approach to political campaigning was popular in the late 1800s when McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan who traveled extensively giving speeches. Karl Rove, the chief campaign strategist for George W. Bush, said that the McKinley front porch campaign inspired him to use a similar approach in the 2000 presidential election.21 Nowhere is political public relations more refined and deliberate than the election of the President of the United States.22 Press relations between the White House and journalists also began to be formally developed during the McKinley administration and refined during the Theodore Roosevelt administration. Part of this was due to the changing press dynamic in Washington. After the Lincoln administration, the power dynamic in Washington changed, with Congress, not the president, being the most powerful entity in the federal government. Press relations typically were between journalists and Members of Congress. Because the late nineteenth century was dominated by the Republican Party, it was the party leadership, not the president, that spoke on behalf of the administration.23 Moreover, the presidencies in the late nineteenth century had their fair share of scandals that made for a tense presidency-press relationship. It was in 1885, during the administration of Grover Cleveland, a president known for avoiding the press because of his personal scandals, that W.W. Price of the Washington Evening Star began to be the first full-time White House (then called the Executive Mansion) correspondent. However, the White House press corps became established during the McKinley administration when McKinley changed the nature of press relations by providing accessibility to journalists and even providing written position statements that were given directly to reporters. This was a departure from prior administrations, such as Cleveland’s, who used personal secretaries to serve as intermediaries between the White House and the press.24 George F. Parker is said to have tried to convince Cleveland to interact with the press, but was unable to convince him. Instead he used Daniel S. Lamont and Henry T. Thurber, his personal secretaries, to communicate with the press. In the 1870s, prior to being president, Cleveland had fathered a son out of wedlock while he was still a bachelor. He later had the mother of the child, Maria Halpin, institutionalized, and had the child adopted. Newspapers reported that Halpin said Cleveland raped her, and he accused her of having numerous sexual relationships with his friends. Despite this, Cleveland’s political career survived, and in 1886 Cleveland married the 21-year-old daughter of his best friend, Frances Folsom, in the first ever marriage ceremony in the White House. George Cortelyou, McKinley’s assistant

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secretary, even clipped newspaper articles from a variety of U.S. newspapers daily so the president could monitor news about the administration.25 The president sought out press relationships, particularly with the Associated Press, New York Sun, and Scripps-McRae, to shape the press coverage of his administration and the Spanish-American War.26 If McKinley is credited with beginning the relationship between the presidency and the press, Theodore Roosevelt can be credited with refining it. Roosevelt understood the value of the press and the relationship between the press and public opinion. However, unlike McKinley, Roosevelt was actively involved in press relations, even picking out specific journalists for favorable treatment and punishing those whom he thought portrayed him in an unflattering light.27 At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. press was undergoing a radical change with muckrakers, a term Roosevelt is credited with inventing. Part of the change was also within the newspaper business structure with reporters, not editors, becoming the major force within the newspaper industry. Historian Lori Bogle has even argued that Roosevelt, and men like him, recognized by the early twentieth century that image making and crowd psychology were essential in creating positive political images for candidates.28 Roosevelt understood news cycles, the power of photographs, and the interest that the presidency garnered. He used his own children’s exploits to obtain favorable press coverage of the presidency, and understood the impact of phraseology in creating the maximum effect for presidential communication.29 Part of Roosevelt’s control over the press was also his own institutionalization of press relations in the White House. Creating the first press room in the White House, Roosevelt was able to create a permanent press presence around the presidency. Moreover, he inherited press-savvy staff, including George Cortelyou from the McKinley administration, and later William Loeb, Jr. who became Roosevelt’s secretary and spokesman. Loeb managed the access to the president by the press, and also began giving daily briefings on behalf of the president. It was during these briefings that Roosevelt fed the press story ideas, including those positive press stories about his children that were popular with readers. In his assessment of Loeb as press secretary, historian Rodger Stritmatter argues that Loeb established the precedent of blaming bad news on the press secretary.30 Loeb’s role was amplified by Roosevelt’s appointment of a White House social secretary, Belle Hagner, who worked to create special events at the White House.31 Roosevelt’s success working with the media is partially because of his willingness to go around the typical communication routes, such as the Government Printing Office (GPO), that were controlled by Congress.32 After the system of presidential press relations was established by McKinley and Roosevelt, the relationship between the press and the presidency has ebbed and flowed from administration to administration. President Taft largely reverted back to a preMcKinley attitude with the press that ultimately framed his administration, because of its lack of publicity efforts, as unsuccessful. Amid his plunging popularity, his private secretary, Dyer Norton, eventually got him to engage in press conferences in 1910.33

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Woodrow Wilson, by contrast, had a robust press relationship, starting with his time as Governor of New Jersey.34 As president, Wilson employed Joseph Tumulty, a man who had worked with Wilson since he was governor, to reestablish White House press relations. Wilson used press conferences, advances of his speeches, and special events, such as his Western Tour in 1919 to promote his presidency and policies. Though critical of the press personally, Wilson understood its power and influence. This is seen in his creation of the Committee for Public Information (CPI) in 1917. After his stroke that largely immobilized him in 1919, Wilson’s wife Edith and personal physician Cary Grayson managed the press and its inquiries about his health. He and his inner circle were aware how public perception of his health and ability would affect the perception of his presidency.35 The presidencies of William Harding and Calvin Coolidge were less engaged with press management than Roosevelt or McKinley. However, their presidencies were popular with the press (with the exception of Harding during the Teapot-Dome Scandal from 1921 to 1923). What their presidencies did do, however, was institutionalize the White House-press relationship that had been in a state of flux from McKinley to Wilson. In the presidential campaign of Harding, his wife Florence was instrumental in press relationship management (she had worked as a newspaper reporter for her family’s newspaper). Relationship management was part of Harding’s success. Owning the newspaper The Marion Star, Harding also personally liked reporters; there was even an informal “Order of the Elephant” club of Republican reporters who socialized with Harding.36 Harding and Coolidge engaged with the media regularly, although personally Coolidge was famously taciturn. By the Hoover administration in 1928, cabinet-level public relations had become the norm.37 However, Hoover was less willing to engage with reporters, despite having a large degree of success in press relations during his work with the American Relief Administration after World War I. Hoover did appoint the first full-time dedicated secretary to deal with the press, George Akerson, and later, in 1931, Ted Joslin.38 White House communications remained the same as previous administrations, but the changing dynamic of news also caused a different relationship between presidential publicity and the press. Specifically, career journalists became more common, Washington, D.C., became more of a focus of news, and journalist norms changed with reporters having more autonomy.39 President Franklin Roosevelt, like his distant cousin Theodore, was an innovator in the publicity and press relationships. Using his famed fireside chats from 1933 to 1944, Roosevelt connected with the American people throughout his presidency. Roosevelt’s press secretary, Stephen T. Early, remained in that position through the Truman administration, and was adept at dealing with reporters and coordinating press conferences while Roosevelt traveled. He is also credited with controlling photographs of the president’s handicap, particularly pictures of his leg braces.40

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Presidents’ use of public relations went beyond White House communications. During Eisenhower’s presidency there was a concerted public relations. He was the first president to use television to communicate directly with the American people, he employed Madison Avenue agencies to assist him with image development, and dealt transparently on three major health issues while in office.41 However, it is important to note that White House-press relations varied, depending upon the president’s relationship with the press secretary. Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press secretary, was frequently not included in the information loop.42 However, Kennedy was receptive to using a television presence, and he used his television presence effectively as a candidate and president. It was during the Kennedy administration that blame shifting to a press secretary became more apparent, and White House mistakes became more focused on as news.43 By the 1970s, presidential and Congressional communications with the press became the norm. Each president had a varying relationship with the press and their media image, with Richard Nixon having perhaps the most adversarial relationship with the press of any president, with the exception of perhaps President Trump. Nixon’s communication practice actually helped him get into the presidency, with his famed Checkers speech in September 1952 helping him remain on the ballot as Vice President.44 In the 1960 presidential campaign, Nixon considered using Madison Avenue firm BBD&O to create campaign advertising, but instead took the work in-house, hiring Carroll Newton, a BBD&O vice president, as the head of Campaign Associates, Nixon’s presidential ad agency.45 Later in 1968, Nixon, trying to resuscitate his political career after losing the presidency in 1960 and the governorship of California in 1962, crafted a campaign that reintroduced Nixon to America. Through a series of interviews in establishment publications such as New York Magazine, and favorable coverage in Harper’s by Norman Mailer, Nixon reinvented himself as a representative of middle American values opposing the radical activism of the 1960s.46 The adversarial relationship between the press and the White House continued through the end of the Watergate scandal. However, Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980 utilized television and a carefully crafted communication message that resulted in his identification as “The Great Communicator.”47 Honing his abilities as an actor and spokesman, his abilities were highlighted on television, with his campaign staff, notably James Baker, encouraging him to debate Carter in the singular 1980 presidential debate (post-debate opinion resoundingly viewed Reagan as the winner).48 Michael Deaver, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, was responsible for the image management of Reagan. He used the Office of Communications to help form Reagan’s image during the 1984 campaign, and used photos to promote the president’s image. Backdrops were especially important to Deaver, and cameras, but not reporters, were allowed at many events (a strategy started in the 1980 presidential campaign).49

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Political public relations expanded in the United States with the advent of the internet and later social media. President Barack Obama is credited with having the first presidential campaign to embrace social media as part of a political campaign. His social media use translated into using big data to target donors, and increasing his ability to attract small donors.50 Similarly, President Donald Trump’s use of social media, especially Twitter, allows him to have his message disseminated for free and turn those tweets into earned media coverage for the presidential election in 2016.51

Public Relations and Political Social Movements It is important to consider political public relations broadly. While American presidents were normalizing press relations, social movements were making their own political inroads through PR in the nineteenth century. In modern times, social movements have become as well organized as any formal political campaign. Issue related to political campaigns have been around for decades, and lobbyists, a field frequently associated with public relations, have worked to persuade politicians to support or oppose certain laws. As long ago as the early nineteenth century with the anti-slavery movement, specifically the American Colonization Society that argued for the establishment of Liberia, public relations strategies have been used to promote social causes, which later gained political traction.52 While arguably all social movements have a public relations component, public relations historians have focused on American social movements including women’s suffrage, temperance, civil rights, and gay rights as examples of social movements using public relations. In the nineteenth century United States, there were three main social-political movements that used public relations: progressivism, women’s suffrage, and temperance. All three movements were distinct, yet interrelated. All had organic aspects to their movement, yet also had formalized public relations (at least in the historical context of the nineteenth century). The Progressive movement has a unique history with public relations and contributes to public relations because it serves as a bridge between political, social movement, and corporate public relations development. Historian Eric Goldman, author of the 1948 book Two-Way Street: The Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel, in his 1965 address to the Public Relations Society of America, said that progressive changes in the United States during this era were due to a constellation of factors, including the awareness of public opinion as well as the change of communication technology.53 He argued that the Progressive movement in the United States was the harbinger of modern public relations practice because it inherently led to a distrust of corporations. This distrust turned into the need for corporate communication practice, notably public relations. It was in this environment that figures such as Ivy Lee emerged to take on the mantle of corporate communicator and image manager.54 In fact, Progressive criticisms of the capitalist, industrialized United

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States caused corporations to use publicity to promote their own interests and they even used progressive ideals to couch their own corporate interests.55 Part of this growth of the Progressive movement was the proliferation of published materials, as evidenced by the new printing technologies highlighted in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.56 Muckrakers, such as Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker, exposed corporate abuses and workers’ issues. The Progressive era sought many reforms, and was coopted by both Republicans in Theodore Roosevelt and Democrats in Woodrow Wilson.57 Suffrage also was a social-political movement from the nineteenth century until the 1920s that used public relations strategies and tactics, including parades, handbills, planned demonstrations, and grassroots lobbying of politicians. However, the two major public relations strategies used by the suffrage movement were newspapers designed to attract support and provide cohesion among suffragists across the United States, and demonstrations, notably parades. In the United States, the suffrage movement organizationally began in 1869 when the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and the American Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. The organizations merged in 1890 to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association.58 State groups were also formed to advance suffrage causes, and typically once women’s suffrage was achieved in a particular state, the state suffrage organization closed.59 Suffrage publications, such as Genius of Liberty, The Una, The Mayflower, and most famously The Revolution, served as a means to keep cohesion within the movement that frequently referred to suffragists as being part of a “sisterhood” and “sorority.”60 In fact, group cohesion was so important to the suffrage movement that periodicals, like the Wisconsin Citizen, suppressed internal disagreements in its coverage of the movement.61 However, within the suffrage movement, public relations practice was not limited to one side. There were three major anti-suffrage organizations: the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Woman, the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, and the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.62 The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women had a publication The Remonstrance that gave voice to the anti-suffrage movement.63 Special events, such as parades, were part of the larger suffrage movement in the United States. The 1913 National Suffrage Parade, which enlisted 5,000 suffragists marching on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C., was depicted in the press as a significant event recognizing the constitutional rights of women.64 Similar and related to the suffrage movement in the nineteenth century was the temperance movement, which focused on the evils of alcohol consumption. Public relations scholarship has focused on the organizational efforts of the Anti-Saloon League, a group founded in 1895 by Howard Hyde. Like the various groups within the Suffrage Movement, the Anti-Saloon League made use of media with

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its own publication, American Issue, which promoted the league’s causes and special events such as Field Days at churches.65 Later the organization became more institutionally sophisticated with the publication of the League’s Blue Book, written by Purley Baker, that expressed the core ideals and strategies of the organization.66 To promote the idea of temperance, the Anti-Saloon League, working with the Scientific Temperance Federation, used a variety of techniques that targeted specific publics. For example, businesses and corporations were targeted using arguments about drinking on the job lowering productivity while other communications spoke about health issues for individual alcohol use. Later, World War I made the temperance movement shift its strategy, couching temperance within wartime rationing efforts and anti-German sentiment. Public relations historian Margot Lamme found that these types of practices by the Anti-Saloon League were examples of modern public relations campaign because the messages used changed according to public and current events.67 Perhaps the two greatest social movements of the twentieth century, at least in the United States, that used public relations practices were the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the Gay Rights Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Although these movements have matured over time to incorporate standardized institutional support and staffing, their genesis shows how activists used public relations to galvanize support for their cause. Perhaps most interestingly, key to these movements’ success was the appearance that they were unsophisticated, grassroots movements that eschewed the polish of a public relations campaign. Although some aspects of these movements were organic, they were also part of larger, well-crafted, and orchestrated campaigns that sought to maximize the impact of the media and public opinion. The Civil Rights Movement has received much attention from public relations scholars because the movement was a highly sophisticated effort by multiple established organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). However, what makes the Civil Rights Movement so interesting, at least for public relations scholars, is that its strategy to promote behavior, attitudinal, and legal changes was based on a larger strategy of media engagement and coordination of smaller groups within different states. Early history of public relations in the United States written by Edward Bernays noted that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used public relations efforts in its organization. In fact, Bernays thought so much of the NAACP’s efforts that he devoted an entire chapter to the organization’s public relations efforts in his 1965 autobiography (Bernays worked for the organization in the 1920s).68 The Civil Rights Movement, led by the SCLC in the 1950s and 1960s, used a highly sophisticated strategy of nonviolence and used public relations efforts in a formalized way, even having a publicity department in 1959 and employing Edward Clayton as a writer of promotional SCLC materials and with figures including James Woods, Junius Griffin, and Ella Baker serving in public relations

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roles.69 Primary among the SCLC’s messages was non-violent resistance that was a hallmark of the organization and was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach to civil rights.70 Similar to the SCLC, the SNCC, which was a student-based group with younger members than the SCLC, used public relations efforts early on in its organizational structure.71 Specifically the SNCC was able to procure national media attention, although not without difficulty, to promote their civil rights work.72 The Civil Rights Movement also used special events, specifically the arrest of Rosa Parks and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 to 1956 to illustrate its cause of highlighted inequality within the segregated South.73 Later, several orchestrated marches, including the Freedom Riders in 1961, the March on Washington in 1963, the March to Selma, Alabama, infamously known as “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, and the Poor People’s Campaign from 1967 to 1968, highlighted the cause of the Civil Rights Movement and garnered national media attention.74 The other major social movement of the late twentieth century was the Gay Rights Movement. Unlike the 1960s Civil Rights organizations, the Gay Rights Movement has been described as having a distinct starting point with the Stonewall raid and subsequent riot in New York City in 1969. Stonewall is unique in that it was not an organized public relations attempt to gain media attention, but was instead a spontaneous event that was the culmination of frustration by the LBGTQ community of New York and is widely considered to be the flashpoint that began the Gay Liberation Movement.75 Key to the LBGTQ movement in the United States was media visibility, and the history of the movement shows that earned media, particularly in large national outlets, was a strategy that had been used since the 1960s. However, public relations historians have found that the Gay Rights Movement did have public relations knowledge, although not in the same way as Civil Rights organizations had in the 1950s. Rather, the Gay Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s had what historian Edward Alwood describes as the movement’s members “intuitively understood the concepts of press agentry and issues management.”76 Early attempts to form Gay Rights groups date back to 1950 with the founding of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles.77 Ron Brookhart, likely a pseudonym because of the criminalization of homosexuality in 1950s America, was the first public relations director of the Mattachine Society.78 The Mattachine Society attempts at Gay Rights went beyond just gay issues, but also included civic engagement such as blood drives.79 Later the Mattachine Society splintered in the 1960s with Randy Wicker forming the Homosexual League of New York. Wicker earned the title “father of gay PR,” because of his willingness to engage with the publicity he gained from New York City media with special events.80 Later in the twentieth century, LBGTQ organizations, such as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), founded in 1985, became more organized and engaged in what would be considered institutionally professional public relations activities.81

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Social movement public relations is unique due to the fact that social movements use the ingenuity of PR practitioners who are not necessarily formally trained. Additionally, social movements have their own idiosyncratic characteristics that present a unique form of public relations practice. For example, unlike corporate or political public relations, social movements can be used for a variety of purposes that more freely link causes with a variety of moral and ethical dimensions. For instance, the Italian-American Civil Rights League, founded by mafia boss Joe Colombo, used public relations effectively until the leadership’s criminal activities ultimately took over the message of the organization.82 Another unique characterization of social movements is their duration. Such is the case with abortion, the social issues campaign changed over time by both pro- and anti-factions and continues because the social issue has not been permanently resolved.83 Social movements also attract both pro- and anti-factions that equally use public relations to advance their cause. Such was the case in the 1970s, when the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) saw the rise of a highly charged political debate with both sides creating a sophisticated public relations campaign for and against its passage.84 Notably conservative Phyllis Schlafly, a constitutional lawyer who advocated for the defeat of the ERA, created the STOP ERA campaign, which ultimately helped defeat its ratification in the late 1970s, even though it had received ratification in 35 states. Similarly, in the 2010s the debate over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit, prompted a similar crafted narrative with remain and leave sides using public relations campaign to galvanize voters.85 What social movement public relations shows, most importantly, is that PR practice is not unique to corporate and formal political figures. Moreover, some of the most innovative and skilled uses of earned media, public opinion, image management, and relationship building have been performed by those who would be termed in some circles non-professional public relations practitioners.

Conclusion Public relations history is contextualized by time, organization, and, increasingly, by country. However, what political public relations shows is a more unifying characteristic of public relations practice. Public relations does not depend upon type of government. Democratic governments use public relations for autocratic purposes. Conversely, autocratic governments do not necessarily stifle the use of public relations for democratic purposes. Politics, democratic and otherwise, use public relations to achieve their intended purposes, and so long as the consent of the public is required to achieve power, public relations strategies and tactics will continue to be used. The maturation and sophistication of public relations in politics are largely irrelevant to the definition of the field. Compared to public relations in the eighteenth century, in the twenty-first century the tools of the trade are obviously better and more complex as time goes on. However, the core principles that define practice remain the same. Public

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relations requires some level of targeted communication to people who can understand and receive the message. Political PR is all about making individuals have a change in attitude that translates into behavior that consents to be governed. In the days of ancient Rome, Caesar Augustus needed political support, however undemocratically achieved. His use of image to reflect power and strength was an essential part of his politics. Samuel Adams used his skills as a communicator to achieve political change in the American colonies, and he, along with the pamphleteers and writers of the American Revolution, used the framing of events, such as the Boston Massacre, to achieve attitudinal change that supported independence. Political public relations seems to use three common ingredients: (1) knowledge of public opinion; (2) control of the political message and image; and (3) awareness of how messages are distilled and transformed in communication channels (namely, the press). These core ingredients make for the creation of political PR in all contexts, regardless of nationality, level of agency, technology, or historical era. While individual nations or events have idiosyncratic differences, many of which are truly distinctive, all eras of the history of political PR have these factors in common. The importance of political public relations cannot be overstated. PR as a political and government function led to many of the first uses of public relations practice. Its innovative use of images, use of the press, understanding of public opinion, and awareness of spreading messages are reflected in many other nonpolitical aspects of PR practice. Moreover, the government itself is an innovator in public relations communication. Wartime, the growth of bureaucracy, and the scrutiny of the powerful by the press forced public relations to become an ingrained part of government work.

Discussion Questions    



When public relations is used for undemocratic purposes, is it still public relations? What is the difference between public relations and propaganda? Is it only about speaker or is it about content of communication? Looking at the examples of public relations in this chapter, is there an era or specific event that seems to be a watershed period in public relations development? The core ingredients in political public relations are knowledge of public opinion, control of political message and image, and awareness of how messages are distilled and transformed in communication channels. Is there something else that could be added to this list? How is political public relations distinct from other areas of public relations? Is it more effective or less effective than commercial public relations efforts by a corporation?

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Notes 1 Scott M. Cutlip, “Public Relations and the American Revolution,” Public Relations Review 2 (1976): 11–24, 13. 2 Bernard Baliyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), 18–19; Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1759–1776 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), ix; Gordon S. Wood, “Rhetoric and Reality,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. XXIII (January 1966): 3–32. 3 Cutlip, “Public Relations and the American Revolution,” 20. 4 Robert W. Smith, “The Boston Massacre: A Study in Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 2 (1976): 25–33, 27. 5 John Tedesco, “Political Public Relations and Agenda Building,” in Political Public Relations: Principles and Applications, ed. Jesper Ströbäck and Sprio Kiousis (New York: Routledge, 2011), 95. Tedesco writes that the use of the Tea Party image has saliency in multiple eras of American history through the twenty-first century with the Tea Party movement. Stephen Ponder, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897–1933 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 75–76. 6 Cutlip, “Public Relations and the American Revolution,” 13. For a detailed biography of Adams’s political communications, see John C. Miller, Samuel Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1936). 7 Ibid., 19. 8 Ibid., 23. 9 Allan Nevins, “The Constitution Makers and the Public, 1785–1790,” Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education, lecture to the Public Relations Society of America, Boston, November 13, 1962, 3. 10 Donald B. Cole, A Jackson Man: Amos Kendall and the Rise of American Democracy (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 2. 11 Fred Endres, “Public Relations in the Jackson White House,” Public Relations Review 2 (1976): 5–12. See William Stickney, ed. Autobiography of Amos Kendall (New York: Peter Smith, 1949). First published in 1872, the autobiography was written by William Stickney who was Kendall’s son-in-law. Much of the autobiography is centered around the life of Stickney with some of Kendall’s correspondence interspersed throughout. 12 Cole, A Jackson Man. 13 Margalit Toledano, “Challenging Accounts: Public Relations and a Tale of Two Revolutions,” Public Relations Review 31 (2005): 463–470. 14 Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York: Basic Books, 1981). 15 Toledano, “Challenging Accounts,” 466. 16 Cayce Myers, “United States Antecedents and Proto-PR,” in North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 11. 17 Scott Cutlip, Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th Century (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995), 61–62. 18 William Sloan, “The Party Press—1783–1833,” in The Media in America, ed. William Sloan (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2017), 69–94. 19 It is important to note that the popular election of U.S. Senators did not occur until 1913 with the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Lincoln-Douglas debate was essentially a campaign to control the Illinois state legislature, which prior to the Seventeenth Amendment elected the U.S. Senators. 20 Allen Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 305–306.

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21 Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), 130–132. 22 Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, “Presidential Public Relations,” in Political Public Relations: Principles and Applications, ed. Jesper Ströbäck and Sprio Kiousis (New York: Routledge, 2011), 95. 23 Ponder, Managing the Press, 2. 24 Stephen Ponder, “The President Makes News: William McKinley and the First Presidential Press CORPS, 1897–1901,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 24 (1994): 823–836, 824–825. For an accessible book on the sex scandal of the Cleveland administration, see Charles Lachman, Sex, Lies, and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011). 25 Ibid., 826. 26 Ibid., 828. 27 Rodger Streitmatter, “Theodore Roosevelt, Public Relations Pioneer: How TR Controlled Press Coverage,” American Journalism (Spring 1990): 96–113, 111. 28 Lori Bogle, “Pandering to the Crowd: The American Governing Elite’s Changing Views on Mass Media and Publicity During the Nineteenth Century,” Journalism History 43 (2017): 62–74, 64. Part of Bogle’s argument is that Gustave Le Bon’s book The Crowd, published in 1895, provided a major flashpoint for understanding mass society’s attitudes and beliefs. It was during this era that politics fundamentally changed to embrace the publicity and image-making necessary to make candidates relatable to the mass voting public. 29 Ibid., 102. Streitmatter says that Roosevelt is responsible for the popularity of many phrases and words that made their way into the modern American vernacular: “muckrakers, trustbusters., malefactors of great wealth, square deal, bull moose, and lunatic fringe.” 30 Ibid., 108. 31 Ibid., 108–109. 32 Ponder, Managing the Press, 35–36. 33 Ibid., 49–75. 34 James Startt, Woodrow Wilson and the Press: Prelude to the Presidency (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 93–116. 35 Cayce Myers, “Managing the ‘Prophecy of Wilson’: Cary T. Grayson’s Role in Crafting the Public Image and Memory of Woodrow Wilson, 1919–1921,” paper presented at the American Journalism Historians Association, annual convention, St. Petersburg, Florida, October 2016. 36 Ponder, Managing the Press, 111. Ponder notes that Florence was unique in that she was the first First Lady after the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. During the presidential election in 1920, she and her husband were photographed together voting. He also argues that Harding lost control over the administration’s voice when he allowed cabinet secretaries to give interviews with reporters. This created public disagreements and highlighted tensions within the administration. 37 Ibid., 127–128. 38 Dale Nelson, Who Speaks for the President: The White House Press Secretary from Cleveland to Clinton (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), 45. 39 Ibid., 143. Ponder notes that Hoover’s presidential campaign used a lot of hyperbole about him as a businessman and philanthropist. Because of this, there was perhaps too much publicity that led to unrealistic expectations. Hoover’s election in 1928 was also a landslide with him carrying 40 of the 48 states; his downturn in public opinion coincided with the economic collapse in 1929, which began the Great Depression. 40 Ibid., 80. 41 Pam Perry, Eisenhower: The Public Relations President (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014).

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42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Nelson, Who Speaks for the President, 126. Ibid., 136–137. John Farrell, Richard Nixon: A Life (New York: Vintage Books, 2017), 195–197. Edwin Diamond and Stephen Bates, The Spot: The Rise of Political Advertising on Television (Boston: MIT Press, 1984), 97. Farrell, Richard Nixon, 324–325. John Maltese, Spin Control: The White House Office of Communications and the Management of Presidential News, 2nd edn (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 179. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 198–199. James E. Katz, Michael Barris, and Anshul Jain, The Social Media President: Barack Obama and the Politics of Digital Engagement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 31–33. John Allen Hendricks and Dan Schill, “The Social Media Election of 2016,” in The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice, ed. Robert Denton (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 123–128. Tyler Page and Ed Adams, “Public Relations Tactics and Methods in Early 1800s America: An Examination of an American Anti-Slavery Movement,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 684–691. Eric Goldman, “Public Relations and the Progressive Surge: 1898–1917,” Public Relations Review 4(1978): 52–62, 54–55; Eric F. Goldman, Two-Way Street: The Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel (Boston: Bellman Publishing Company, 1948). Ibid., 57–58. Kevin Stoker and Brad Rawlins, “The ‘Light’ of Publicity in the Progressive Era: From Searchlight to Flashlight,” Journalism History 30 (2005): 177–188, 177. Ibid., 178. Goldman, “Public Relations and the Progressive Surge: 1898–1917,” 52. Elizabeth Burt, “The Ideology, Rhetoric, and Organizational Structure of a Countermovement Publication: The Remonstrance, 1890–1920,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (1998): 69–83, 70, n.6. Ibid., 70. Linda Steiner, “Finding Community in Nineteenth Century Suffrage Periodicals,” American Journalism (1983): 1–15, 1. Elizabeth Burt, “Dissent and Control in a Woman Suffrage Periodical: 30 Years of the Wisconsin Citizen,” American Journalism (Spring 1999): 39–43. Burt, “The Ideology, Rhetoric, and Organizational Structure of a Countermovement Publication,” 70. Ibid., 83. Linda Lumsden, “Beautify and the Beasts: Significance of the Press Coverage of the 1913 National Suffrage Parade,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (2000): 593–611. Margot Lamme, “Tapping into War: Leveraging World War I in the Drive for a Dry Nation,” American Journalism 21 (2004): 63–91. Margot Lamme, “The ‘Public Sentiment Building Society,’” Journalism History 29 (2003): 123–132, 129. Lamme, “Tapping into War,” 83–84. Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 208–216. Linda Hon, “‘To Redeem the Soul of America:’ Public Relations and the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Public Relations Research 93 (1997): 163–212, 173, 175. Ibid., 178.

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71 Vanessa Murphree, “The Selling of Civil Rights: The Communication Section of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,” Journalism History 29 (2003): 21–31. 72 Ibid., 24. 73 David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1986), 11–18. 74 Ibid., 154–155, 282–286, 395–400, 574–580. 75 Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 171–187. 76 Edward Alwood, “The Role of Public Relations in the Gay Rights Movement, 1950– 1969,” Journalism History 41 (2015): 11–20, 12. 77 Ibid., 12. 78 Ibid., 13. 79 Ibid., 13. 80 Ibid., 15. 81 Faderman, The Gay Revolution, 424–425. 82 Larry Burriss and Cary Greenwood, “When Good PR Goes Bad: The Assassination of Joseph Columbo and the Demise of the Italian-American Civil Right League,” Journalism History 42 (2016): 101–111. 83 Marvin Olasky, “Engineering Social Change: Triumphs of Abortion Public Relations from the Thirties through the Sixties,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1988–89): 17–21. 84 Donald Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and the Grassroots Conservative Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 212–242. 85 Kevin O’Rourke, A Short History of Brexit: From Brentry to Backstop (London: Penguin Press, 2019), 171–174.

4 PROPAGANDA, PUBLIC RELATIONS, AND PUBLIC OPINION

Propaganda is one of the most loaded terms in the English language. It connotes deception, dishonesty, anti-democratic ideals, manipulation, and communications used to produce monstrous results like that of the Third Reich. However, in the history of public relations, propaganda is an important, although uncomfortable, subject. Part of the reason for this is that propaganda in its nineteenth-century context meant something less negative than what we think of today. Moreover, the intellectual development of propaganda is tied to the understanding of public opinion and its importance in society. Propaganda as a term also had curious history prior to World War II with the communication industry struggling with what propaganda really meant, and whether it could be used for good as well as bad purposes. This chapter focuses on propaganda as a term, so it is limited to a discussion of English and German communication practice. Despite this narrowed discussion of English and German communication history, the discussion of propaganda as a term is essential to understanding modern public relations practice. Although propaganda had a long history prior to the nineteenth century, the understanding of propaganda grew in tandem with the intellectual roots of public opinion. This history of propaganda is tied very closely to those socio-psychological understandings of the public, and how group behavior and dynamics worked. This understanding of propaganda also is tied to the growth of modern mass communication, and the way society understood and processed information presented in the press, films, and radio. What is fascinating about the role of propaganda is how it was discussed and analyzed in intellectual circles as well as in the popular press. Examining the publications in the early twentieth century, there seems to be a public awareness and interest in the role and power of propaganda and public opinion. In fact, this interest was so pronounced that works on the subject were written for mass audiences. Even academic writings on the subject seemed to acknowledge the larger societal interest in the subject.

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More importantly for public relations history is that the discussions of propaganda, public opinion, and communication foreshadow many of the ethical issues found in current public relations practice. Until World War II there was a serious debate within academic and trade presses about the role propaganda could play in a democratic society. In fact, high-minded ideas espoused by elites were thought by some, notably Edward Bernays, to be a force of good within society. To him and his devotees, this form of propaganda led to a more informed citizenry that was beneficial to democracy. This understanding of propaganda did not gain traction, and it was ultimately abandoned as a serious discussion in communication trades press by the late 1930s. Nevertheless, the intellectual roots of this propaganda bled into the larger discussion of public relations, its role, and its ethical obligations to publics. Interestingly, the issue of propaganda presents a unique view of the transatlantic discussion over a communication issue. Propaganda was not just an intellectual or professional discussion. It was both simultaneously during the 1920s and 1930s. This chapter traces the intellectual roots of public opinion and propaganda beginning in the late nineteenth century through World War II. Specific attention is paid to the historical evolution of propaganda as a term, the rise of public opinion as a concept and area of study, and finally the role that public opinion played in the creation of propaganda in the twentieth century. This history shows that propaganda and public opinion as a concept played a large role in the creation of modern public relations practice.

The Intellectual Roots of Propaganda and Public Opinion While public relations practice may have taken root in democratic countries, public relations strategies and tactics were also used by undemocratic governments. Much of the time this use of public relations strategies is referred to as propaganda. As a term, propaganda today has negative connotations that invoke the idea of manipulative communication practices to produce a one-sided argument in favor of a behavior or viewpoint. Frequently, this type of communication is viewed as negative and promoting anti-democratic values and ideals with the aim of maintaining power. Communication scholars Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell argue that the defining features of propaganda are its intentionality and manipulation, which differ from mere persuasion, which is about influencing from a point of view.1

A Brief History of the Term Propaganda The term first came about in 1622 with the Congregatio de propaganda fide (The Office for the Propagation of the Faith), a group formed by Pope Gregory XV to manage the missionary work.2 In his introduction to the reprint of Edward Bernays’s 1928 classic Propaganda, Mark Miller says that the negative association with the term was not necessarily established until 1920. He found examples of propaganda being used

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in a positive manner, including well-known authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson using the term “propagandist” in association with the idea of colonial rule in his 1852 work, English Traits.3 In the United States prior to World War I, the term had a mixed use with some people referring to ideas or writing that they did not agree with as propaganda. Frequently these ideas were related to socialism or communist movements in the United States.4 During World War I, the power of propaganda in the war effort became apparent to both the Allied and Central Powers. After World War I, there was a move to reclaim the term for peace and business, but ultimately that movement did not gain traction. There was an awareness that propaganda was a manipulative communication practice, frequently associated with the Germans. Princeton professor Hadley Cantril referred to propaganda as “the famous ‘paper bullets’ which some claim were as important during the last few months of the war as were lead bullets.”5 In fact, George Creel, head of the famous World War I Committee on Public Information, said that his committee did not engage in propaganda. He wrote in his 1920 report How We Advertised America: The Committee on Public Information was called into existence to make this fight for the “verdict of mankind,” before the jury of Public Opinion … In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of concealment or repression. Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive. At no point did it seek or exercise authorities under those war laws that limited the freedom of speech and press. [original capitalization and italics]6 Conversely, in Germany, the term propaganda had a neutral meaning prior to World War II, and it was only after the rise of Joseph Goebbels as the Reich Minister of Propaganda that the term became associated with manipulative communication practices.7 Goebbels was keenly aware of public opinion and how media in all forms, such as film, radio, and newspapers, created shaped people’s attitudes and beliefs. In an early meeting with the German press on April 6, 1933, Goebbels said, “Public opinion is made and those who work at forming public opinion take upon themselves an enormous responsibility before the nation and the whole people.”8 Later, in 1965, Edward Bernays, the famous American PR practitioner, even claimed Goebbels used Bernays’s 1923 book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, to influence German public opinion.9

The Study of Public Opinion Propaganda and public relations are inextricably linked to the rise and formalization of the study of public opinion. The recognition of public opinion and its importance to society began in the nineteenth century. There was awareness of the power and problems of public opinion as evidenced in Hugh Smith’s (1842) address entitled “Theory and Regulation of Public Sentiment”

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at Columbia College on public opinion. In his address, Smith, the Rector of St. Peters Church in New York, detailed the malleability of public opinion, and the inherent deception that comes with the perception of public sentiment.10 In 1861, a series called Public Opinion was published in London, covering thoughts and opinions about current events.11 However, it was French sociologist Gabriele Tarde’s work, notably Les lois d’imitation [The Laws of Imitation], published in 1890, and Les lois sociales: Esquisse d’une sociologie [Social Laws: An Outline of Sociology], published in 1898, that was a watershed moment for public opinion scholarship.12 Tarde’s development of psychology, which focused largely on criminology and social behavior, provided a basis for the scholarship of Gustav Le Bon’s 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which was widely read and translated.13 Le Bon was a French doctor who wrote extensively about socio-psychological issues. In his book, Le Bon argued that crowd have certain characteristics that make it take on its own crowd psychology or “mental unity.”14 This crowd psychology included a certain degree of irrationality and can be manipulated into impulsive behaviors that gravitate to ideological extremes with lower morality.15 Additionally, Le Bon posited that individualism and individual thought are replaced by that of the crowd because the individual person seeks a sense of belonging.16 This idea of the crowd and its psychology gained traction in the twentieth century. Historian Jay Gonen argues that Hitler’s views about crowd psychology in Mein Kampf were likely inspired by Le Bon’s book, which was translated into German in 1908.17 After World War I, the interest in public opinion and communication increased, and popular books on the subject were widely read in the American market. In the 1920s, there was a high degree in interest in how the public receives and processes messages. Everett Dean Martin wrote The Behavior of Crowds in 1920, which argued that in an era where communication technology expanded and education was lacking, ordinary citizens with little education could be highly susceptible to propaganda.18 He argued that the education of the public was necessary to overcome the issues of “crowd thinking,” which he equated to being a by-product of democratic government.19 He wrote that the issue of crowds’ susceptibility to groupthink was a misconception. He wrote, “People in crowds are not thinking together; they are not thinking at all, save as a paranoiac thinks. They are not working together; they are only sticking together [original italics].”20 Later, Walter Lippmann, a journalist who wrote proAmerican propaganda for The New Republic during World War I, wrote his influential book Public Opinion in 1922.21 In it, he argued that people live in a pseudo-environment of their creation, and that, although fiction, these environments work as reality for people.22 Similarly, Lippmann wrote that news construction also contained certain perspectives that excluded certain realities and included others. He wrote:

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The hypothesis … is that news and truth are not the same thing … The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of the truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act. Only at those points, where social condition take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide.23 The impact of Public Opinion was significant in its time and even today. It was one of the first popular recognitions of how opinion is created and formed, and had a major influence on the field of political psychology. With his work he challenged the notion that a person was a rationale actor capable of making decisions objectively. Rather, Lippmann’s work introduced concepts, such as stereotypes, that demonstrated how people make decisions based on biased information that is engineered to create a desired response. Commenting on stereotypes, Lippmann wrote: For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, bustling confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.24

Application of Public Opinion to Propaganda and Public Relations Lippmann’s work was in part inspired by his interest in the writings of Sigmund Freud.25 Psychographic aspects to advertising and public relations were already present in the trade press as early as 1911 with Edward Thorndike’s article “Psychology and Advertising,” published in Scientific American.26 However, it was Freud’s cousin, Edward Bernays, who made one of the most significant contributions to the discussion of propaganda as it relates to public relations. By the 1920s, Bernays had begun his own successful career as a public relations practitioner, and had written several popular works concerning public opinion and public relations.27 His first major work, Crystallizing Public Opinion, published in 1923, a year after Lippmann’s Public Opinion, argued that public opinion could go beyond that of the government, as Lippmann argued, but could also be used by corporations.28 Bernays’s terms “public relation counsel” and “counsel on public relations” made their debut in the book, and he is credited with applying Lippmann’s principles to a variety of fields.29 This application resulted in successes for a variety of industries. For instance, the use of doctors’ endorsements to promote eating bacon for breakfast,30 promoting hair net use in an era when women were wearing short bobs,31 promoting a real estate development on Long Island,32 New York tourism and hotels,33 and a state visit from the King and Queen of Belgium.34

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The idea behind Crystallizing Public Opinion was that individuals can have certain predetermined views on issues, but that understanding those barriers to communication and tailoring the communication to combat those preconceptions would make a particular idea more acceptable. However, Bernays also understood the power of the group within individual decision-making and communications. He believed the press played a large role in shaping these attitudes, and that understanding the press and individual attitudes was an essential component of the practice of a public relations counsel.35 To Bernays, the public relations counsel had to understand “the group and the herd;” in Part II of his book,36 in his analysis of group behavior, Bernays argued that “public opinion may be as much the producer of ‘insidious propaganda’ as its product.”37 Bernays continued writing on the topic of communication and propaganda in the 1920s. His 1928 book, Propaganda, advocates that propaganda should be reformulated as a term, and he provided a narrow definition of propaganda as it should relate to public relations.38 Bernays said that during World War I the work of the CPI, of which he was a member, did not fully develop the shaping of public opinion to its full potential. However, he thought World War I was a watershed moment for the shaping of public opinion because U.S., British, and German governments engaged in pro-war propaganda that helped boost morale and shape public opinion.39 Bernays said, “Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.”40 For Bernays, this new concept of propaganda placed an emphasis on the knowledge of an educated and informed elite who could craft messages to tell the public what to think about. In a general sense, these people would be thought of as public opinion leaders, although he did not use that term. He thought that individual status made some people equipped to form public opinion, and that with that ability society would benefit from an elevated discourse about pre-approved topics. However, Bernays recognized that peers and others, called “invisible rulers,” influenced public opinion as well.41 This was not viewed as sinister, or manipulative by Bernays. Rather, his view of propaganda was that it served a democratic function in society, and with a knowledge of mass society’s psychology and the media, a person could make great inroads into shaping public opinion.42 Historian Burton St. John describes this unique approach to propaganda as “pro-social,” stating that Bernays viewed the role of propaganda as a social force that could actually empower those with innovative ideas who were normally ignored in society.43 However, Bernays forecast that as society became more aware, propaganda had to become more sophisticated and professionalized. He concluded by saying, “Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.”44 Bernays’s argument for the resurrection of the term propaganda never gained traction in American society. He argued that as a term propaganda was largely misunderstood, and that professionally propaganda was part of the work of the

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“counsel on public relations.”45 He equated the power of propaganda with its impact in politics, and saw the technique of propaganda as a proven tool that could be employed in business.46 He wrote: They [learned men] dismiss the public relations counsel lightly. They do not seem to realize that business can and should employ the same technique in regimenting the minds of public in normal times as the governments used during the war to create the famous ‘They shall not pass’ spirit of the French.47 Post-World War I propaganda, according to Bernays, served an essential function in business strategy, and the use of this business propaganda was described as “legitimate.”48 However, so-called legitimate propaganda came under federal scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into public utility “propaganda” that concluded that utility use of propaganda led to a monopolistic control over an essential service.49 Incidents like these, coupled with the memory of World War I, made propaganda as a term, in the American context, have a negative connotation. However, the acknowledgment of the importance of public opinion did take root in general society and academia. Public Opinion Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal examining public opinion attitudes, debuted in 1937 with an article by Edward Bernays entitled “Professional Services: Recent Trends in Public Relations Activities.”50 In the article Bernays noted a 1934 meeting of the American Political Science Association in which it took issue with the role of “propaganda” as it related to public relations practice.51 Although he later stopped using propaganda as a description of public relations practice, Bernays continued to write about public opinion and the role of public relations practice. In his writing in the 1920s, Bernays advocated for changing public opinion through communication, even going so far as saying that manipulation of public opinion was justified in order to bring about social change. Writing in 1928, Bernays said, “The manipulation of the public mind … serves a social purpose. This manipulation serves to gain acceptance for new ideas.”52 He went on to tie this manipulation to “honest propaganda,” which he believed had validity as a communication tool, and a degree of transparency, because it was “frankly partisan.”53 Bernays noted that propaganda was and is used for deceptive purposes and to advance ideas that were undemocratic and prejudicial. However, Bernays thought that educating the public was key to making them good consumers of honest propaganda.54 However, Bernays was not advocating for disinformation or lies to be used in communication. For example, he argued that inaccurate polling was a “menace to society” because it could be used for disinformation and manipulation that harmed the public.55 Although post-World War I journalists argued for an objective-based journalism and criticized the influence of propaganda, the production of news content embraced the use of propaganda as a necessity.56 By the 1940s, Bernays had moved away from advocating for propaganda as a term.

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He concerned himself with issues of redress, and morale within the American population. In January 1941, Bernays, communication scholar Harold Lasswell, and Norman Thomas discussed the role of morale in the United States as a type of defense in a Round Table at the University of Chicago. During the discussion Bernays mentioned that individual thought was the most powerful mechanism in a democracy and that state-sponsored “totalitarianism propaganda” could only be overcome by individual pledges to democratic governance.57 Later, in 1945, Bernays would argue that it was people, not propaganda or government, who should demand more internationalism and global democracy.58 The discussion of propaganda was not limited to Bernays, although he could be called the main proponent of the concept in 1930s America. In 1937, Colby Dorr Dam and Edward W. Pryor launched the trade magazine Public Relations, which published an article entitled “The Battle of Propaganda.” In that article, James P. Selvage, the Director of Public Relations for the National Association of Manufacturers, discusses how pro-business (right) propaganda is being outflanked and outdone by pro-worker (left) propaganda. Part of the issue is that the left was adept at calling out pro-business propaganda and criticizing its motives, while the right did not have the same saliency with the American people. He argued that propaganda was too effective and distorted the truth. At the end of his article he concluded: At our mother’s knee we learned the “truth will out.” This was in the day before the technique of propaganda had been developed to its Twentieth Century Efficiency … Today truth is more apt to emerge victorious if it has a good press agent.59 The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), started in 1937 by Edward Filene, founder of Filene’s Department Store, was an organization dedicated to making Americans aware of the power and deception of propaganda in domestic politics. The Institute published several books on the subject of deciphering and recognizing propaganda. Their main concern was the undemocratic movements of the right and left, and the necessity of creating a public that was aware of the proliferation of propaganda in the media. The IPA affiliations included high-profile figures in communication and higher education including Columbia University historian Charles Beard, Ohio State University professor Edgar Dale, Harvard professor and scientist Kirtley Mather, and Columbia University professor Clyde Miller. In their first newsletter, published in October 1937, the Institute stated: “If American citizens are to have clear understanding of conditions and what to do about them they must be able to recognize propaganda, to analyze and appraise it.”60 The Institute famously created seven characteristics of propaganda that they detailed in their monthly newsletter in November 1937: “1) the name calling device, 2) the glittering generalities device, 3) the transfer device, 4) the testimonial device, 5) plain folks device, 6) the card stacking device, 7) the band wagon device.”61 Each of these approaches had a detailed description illustrating

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how they could be used for deceptive purposes. Bernays later criticized the IPA over propaganda’s role in democracy, criticizing the notion that there was such a thing as pure truth.62 The IPA’s work was credited for creating a greater awareness of propaganda in U.S. society. In 1940, Edgar Dale and Norma Vernon, of Ohio State University, compiled an annotated bibliography of 65 works on propaganda and education (Bernays’s works were not included). Dale and Vernon proposed propaganda awareness as a key tool to combat fascism, and praised the IPA for teaching techniques for propaganda analysis in schools. In their Introduction to the bibliography, they wrote: We can learn to tell the difference between actual fact and mere opinion. In this connection we may compare propaganda to barbed wire. Just as a person who knows how to handle barbed wire handles it expertly without personal injury, the person who knows how to handle propaganda properly may do so without getting hurt.63 This awareness of propaganda and its power was seen in the fields of psychology. In 1940, Harold Lavine and James Wehsler wrote War Propaganda and the United States, analyzing the propaganda surrounding the ongoing world war. In the Introduction to the book, Eduard Lindeman and Clyde Miller, the president and executive secretary respectively for the IPA, wrote, “We live in a propaganda age. Public opinion no longer is formulated by the slow process of what Professor John Dewey calls shared experience. In our time public opinion is primarily a response to propaganda stimuli.”64 The two later went on to state that this maxim depended largely on how propaganda was viewed by society, but that in a growing dictatorial age propaganda was a threat to democratic ideas.65 Princeton psychology professor Hadley Cantril, editor of Public Opinion Quarterly and President of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, wrote in 1938 that propaganda should be guarded against by people using two “chief methods”: “understand the technique of the propagandist” and “understand our own biases.”66 The IPA ultimately closed in 1942 because of the war effort because, according to a piece by William Garber, “the approach utilized by the Institute might serve to disturb the unity needed for the war effort.”67 In the public relations literature, the term propaganda is used freely without a clear definition. By the 1960s, propaganda was thought of much of the same way it is today. In his book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin distinguished propaganda from pseudo-events for publicity. Boorstin said a pseudo-event was a “ambiguous truth” meant to persuade people to a certain belief based on “synthetic facts.”68 He distinguished these pseudo-events from propaganda, which he described as emotional appeals based on opinions disguised as facts; this type of communication is a hallmark of totalitarianism, as articulated by Hitler and Mein Kampf.69

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Boorstin’s approach to propaganda is similar to that found in public relations histories from the 1960s to date. As a term, propaganda in the public relations context is mostly used to refer to manipulative communication practices that lack transparency or ethics. Within the larger literature of communication and public relations, the term propaganda is used very freely to mean advocacy of any particular viewpoint. For example, in 1941, historian Philip Davidson authored a book, Propaganda of the American Revolution, which details the communication strategies of the Committees of Correspondence, the Founders, and the Declaration of Independence that shaped the zeitgeist of the colonial population and led to their ultimate support of independence from Great Britain.70 Other historians and public relations scholars have argued that the crafting of messages, such as the concept of Manifest Destiny in the U.S. westward expansion, was a type of social propaganda.71 However, public relations has been used very famously to control populations and support anti-democratic governments and ideas. Colonial rulers used public relations efforts to solidify their control and image as justified in their colonization of the non-Western world.72

Conclusion Propaganda has a complex history that, justifiably, makes modern public relations uncomfortable. As a technique it has been used to manipulate, control, and deceive the public. It also has a history of being tied to governments and movements that represent the worst values and behaviors in human history. However, the debate over propaganda has a large role within the development of modern public relations, particularly its ethics. It serves as a backdrop for many of the ethical issues that surround public relations practice. It also established many of the techniques and strategies that are employed, albeit in a more transparent way, in modern public relations practice. Propaganda as a technique is understood, at a very high level, to use the power of media, the complexity of public opinion, the role of targeted communication, and the importance of using communication to change behavior and attitudes. Today’s public relations literature values all of those things, and in the age of digital, big data, peer-to-peer, and viral messaging, the core principles of understanding public opinion and communication are still important. Similarly, the issues in modern public relations practice, such as the role of corporate transparency, PESO (paid/earned/shared/owned) media, native advertising, and ghost blogging relate back to the same issues propaganda had in the 1930s. Today the exam study guide for the Accreditation for Public Relations recommends those seeking accreditation must know the identifiers of propaganda developed by the IPA.73 Historically, propaganda in the development of public relations is significant. This survey of historical research on the topic illustrates three historiographically significant things. First, propaganda’s rise was in tandem with the rise of sophisticated understanding of public opinion. As the literature shows, public opinion was an area

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that received a lot of attention both academically and in the trade press prior to World War II. It was that consciousness of public opinion literature that gave rise to many of the propaganda techniques. Second, public opinion consciousness began as a Western European export that took root in American government and business. Many histories of public relations focus on U.S. contributions, and portray American public relations practice as an export to the world. Examining the role of public opinion literature shows that in the context of audience analysis, in the socio-psychological literature, understanding crowd behavior was a European export. While men like Bernays and Lippman analyzed this work to a more popular audience, it was Europeans who created these concepts. Third, public relations history prior to 1940 should look at propaganda and public relations as synonymous. Bernays attempted to coopt the term of propaganda and reinvent it after World War I. The contemporaneous writings of Bernays, the IPA, and business show that propaganda had a mixed use (positive and negative) between the world wars. Moreover, looking at the techniques of propaganda shows that the strategies and tactics between it and public relations were largely the same. The difference for modern scholars of public relations is the role of ethics in propaganda versus the ethics of public relations. The decades of the 1920s and 1930s show that in the larger professional and academic discussion, propaganda was viewed more as a tool than a value-laden approach. In that era’s literature, the concept of deception was more fluid, and the discussion revolved more around the ends rather than the means. Part of the challenge of public relations history is to look at historical events without using our modern-day values and knowledge. Historians and public relations practitioners have the advantage of knowing the rest of the story after 1940, and how communication was used to create devastating results in Europe and the Pacific. However, writing in the 1930s, the devotees of propaganda and public opinion were attempting to create a new and innovative form of communication practice that had power. They understood that, in a society with mass communication and larger concentrations of people within cities, the role of propaganda could influence thinking and behavior. It is that role and impact that make propaganda and public opinion part of the development of public relations practice.

Discussion Questions   

What is the difference between propaganda and public relations? How was Bernays’s definition of propaganda different than that of today’s? Why do you think Bernays’s attempt to redefine propaganda ultimately failed? Public opinion is something that is a key ingredient in salient communication. What role does public opinion play in public relations today?

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Bernays advocated for a propaganda that promoted minority beliefs that were “good” for society. Is such a thing even possible? Can propaganda ever be beneficial to society? Propaganda is something that is viewed as inherently deceptive. What is the difference between communications that are deceptive and communications that advocate for a particular idea or viewpoint?

Notes 1 Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda & Persuasion (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015), 7, 37–38. 2 Mark Miller, “Introduction,” in Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928, repr. New York: Ig Publishing, 2005), 9. 3 Ibid., 10. Citing Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (London: G. Routledge & Co., 1856), 26. In English Traits, Emerson used the term “propagandist” to refer to British citizens living abroad and influencing the behavior and habits of non-British, non-Western people. 4 Cayce Myers, “Reconsidering Propaganda in U.S. Public Relations History: An Analysis of Propaganda in the Popular Press 1810–1918,” Public Relations Review 41 (2015): 551–561. 5 Hadley Cantril, “Propaganda Analysis,” The English Journal 27 (1938): 217–221, 217. 6 George Creel, How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information that Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920), 4. 7 Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2015), 215–218. 8 Ibid., 217. 9 Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 652. Bernays’s account of Goebbels using his work was told to him by Karl von Wiegand, a foreign correspondent for Hearst. Wiegand met Goebbels and said that Goebbels had a large propaganda library, and that Crystallizing Public Opinion was being used by Goebbels to form the Nazi propaganda campaign. 10 Hugh Smith, “Theory and Regulation of Public Sentiment,” speech, New York, 1842. 11 “Introductory,” Public Opinion, October 5, 1861, 1. 12 Gabriel Tarde, The Laws of Imitation (1890; reprinted Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1962). 13 Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895; reprinted Dunwoody, GA: Sellanraa, 1982). 14 Ibid., 2. 15 Ibid., 15. 16 Ibid., 10. 17 Jay Gonen, The Roots of Nazi Psychology: Hitler’s Utopian Barbarism (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2013), 92. 18 Everett Dean Martin, The Behavior of Crowds (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1920). 19 Ibid., 281. 20 Ibid., 286. 21 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1922). 22 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922, reprinted New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), 10.

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23 Ibid., 226. 24 Ibid., 54–55. 25 David Miller and William Dinan, A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 32. 26 Edward Thorndike, “Psychology and Advertising,” Scientific American, 104 (1911): 250–251. 27 Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 299–444. 28 Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923, reprinted New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1961). 29 Ibid., 11. 30 Ibid., 18–19. 31 Ibid., 19. 32 Ibid., 20. 33 Ibid., 28–29. 34 Ibid., 30–31. 35 Ibid., 50–51. 36 Ibid., 59. 37 Ibid., 69. 38 Edward Bernays, Propaganda (New York: IG Publishing, [1928] 2005). 39 Ibid., 57. 40 Ibid., 52. 41 Ibid., 61. 42 Ibid., 161. 43 Burton St. John and Margot Lamme, “The Evolution of an Idea: Charting the Early Public Relations Ideology of Edward L. Bernays,” Journal of Communication Management 15 (2011): 223–235; Burton St. John, “Claiming Journalistic Truth: US Press Guardedness to Edward K. Bernays’ Conception of the Minority Voice and the ‘Corroding Acid’ of Propaganda,” Journalism Studies 10 (2009): 353–367, 356; Edward Bernays, “The Minority Rules,” The Bookman (April 1927): 150–155. 44 Ibid., 168. 45 Edward Bernays, “A Public Relations Counsel States His Views,” Advertising and Selling, January 26, 1927, 31. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Edward Bernays, “This Business of Propaganda,” The Independent, September 1, 1928, 198; Edward Bernays, “The Marketing of National Policies: A Study of War Propaganda,” Journal of Marketing 6 (1942): 236–244, 236–240. 49 Ernest Gruening, The Public Pays: A Study of Power Propaganda (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1931), 3–17. Gruening was a Democrat politician from Alaska who later became the first U.S. Senator from Alaska when it became a state in 1959. 50 Edward Bernays, “Professional Services: Recent Trends in Public Relations Activities,” Public Opinion Quarterly 1 (1937): 147–151. 51 Ibid., 150. 52 Edward Bernays, “Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How,” The American Journal of Sociology 33 (1928): 858–971, 959. 53 Ibid. Bernays noted that propaganda was and is used for deceptive purposes and for advancing ideas that were undemocratic and prejudicial. However, Bernays thought that education of the public was key to making them good consumers of honest propaganda. 54 Ibid., 960. 55 Edward Bernays, “Attitude Polls—Servants or Masters?,” Public Opinion Quarterly 9 (1945): 264–268, 264. 56 St. John, “Claiming Journalistic Truth,” 354–355.

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57 Edward Bernays, Harold Lasswell, and Norman Thomas, “Round Table A Radio Discussion of Morale First Line of Defense?,” lecture, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, January 19, 1941. 58 Edward Bernays, Take Your Place at the Peace Table: What You Can do to Win a Lasting United Nations Peace (New York: The Gerent Press, 1945). 59 James P. Selvage, “The Battle of Propaganda: Left Versus Right,” Public Relations, May 1937, 7. 60 Institute for Propaganda Analysis, “Announcement,” Propaganda Analysis 1 (October 1937): 1–4, 1. 61 Institute for Propaganda Analysis, “How to Detect Propaganda,” Propaganda Analysis 1 (November 1937) 5–7, 5. 62 Edward Bernays, “Propaganda Analysis,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 2 (1938): 491–496, 496. 63 Edgar Dale and Norma Vernon, Propaganda Analysis: An Annotated Bibliography (Columbus, OH: Bureau of Educational Research The Ohio State University, 1940), ii. 64 Harold Lavine and James Wechsler, War Propaganda and the United States (New York: Garland Publishing Inc. 1972), vii. 65 Ibid., x. 66 Cantril, “Propaganda Analysis,” 220. 67 William Garber, “Propaganda Analysis—To What Ends?,” The American Journal of Sociology 48 (1942): 240–245, 240. 68 Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 34. 69 Ibid. Boorstin was a consensus historian who advocated a type of history infused with American ideals. 70 Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution 1763–1783 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1941). 71 Ray Allen Billington, “Words that Won the West: 1830–1850,” Public Relations Review 4 (1978): 17–27, 23. 72 Vincent Kuitenbrower, “Propaganda that Dare Not Speak Its Name: International Information Services About the Dutch East Indies, 1919–1934,” Media History 20 (2014): 239–253. 73 Public Relations Society of America, Study Guide for the Examination in Accreditation in Public Relations, 5th ed., updated 2018, 18. Retrieved from www.praccreditation.org/ resources/documents/apr-study-guide.pdf

5 PUBLIC RELATIONS, PROPAGANDA, AND CONFLICT

Conflict is the harbinger of change, and nowhere is that more evident than in public relations. It is the use of public relations during times of conflict that has refined the field, and brought about a greater public and professional awareness of the power of communication. Wartime is especially important for understanding the historical development of public relations. Wars are watershed moments in any era. They bring about radical change, and, in many cases, bring about social and governmental changes that create new norms for humankind. War is also an event that spurs on innovation. Racing to beat an enemy, frequently societies at war galvanized people and resources to take on new challenges without the normal constraints imposed during peacetime. Nowhere is this reality more evident than in the communication field. Wartime helped to create modern public relations practice. In wartime there was a higher degree of awareness of public opinion, the power of the media, and the role disinformation could play in defeating an enemy. Wars are not the only types of conflicts that have fostered the growth of public relations. Propagandistic efforts on behalf of autocratic rulers, terrorist organizations, and other non-democratic entities have as well. These uses of public relations, though nefarious, sometimes illustrate the power of public relations. These groups frequently used the tools of public relations, especially the knowledge of media relations and public opinion, to craft salient messages that resonated with stakeholders and publics. Although these groups’ efforts resulted in disastrous results for humankind, and frequently they advocated hateful and abhorrent ideologies, the success of these groups’ communication is a testament to how sophisticated their communications were. Public relations as a field has frequently argued that democracy is the cornerstone of public relations practice. In examining political public relations, histories tend to divide the use of public relations and propaganda between democratic

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and non-democratic governments. In 1975, on the eve of America’s Bicentennial, the Public Relations Institute, sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America, held the Foundation Lecture, focusing on public relations’ key role in a democratic society. That year William Weston, Director of Corporate Public Relations for Sun Oil Company, gave the keynote address, saying that public relations is a fundamental aspect of democracy and a free society. He called for PR practice to embrace their responsibility in ensuring democratic communication. He said, “The trusteeship I am urging is no easy responsibility. It requires a patriotic sense of mission in all that we [public relations practitioners] do.”1 In his speech, Weston went on to say that democracy was the essential ingredient in public relations practice. From this perspective, political public relations frequently emphasizes the histories that have occurred in democratic countries. However, history shows that this is not true.2 Public relations, broadly defined, occurs in many types of settings, political and otherwise. Because of that, the discussion of public relations and politics must acknowledge that public relations is not always a force for political good, and that bad political actors sometimes use public relations for their nefarious purposes. Government-sponsored public relations work frequently is associated with anti-democratic themes and state-sponsored propagandistic content. Autocratic rulers, going back to the times of ancient Greece and Rome, used public communication to shape and influence public opinion.3 Most of these examples pre-date a modern press, which only emerged in the eighteenth century in Western Europe. In the twentieth century, this use of public relations strategies was used to promote certain values and ideals among the public, and even led to the strengthening of anti-democratic movements.4 This chapter provides an overview of public relations and propaganda in a wide variety of contexts, including the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, as well as domestic and international terrorist organizations. While this grouping equates each entity, treating it as similar, this chapter illustrates how propaganda is used in a variety of contexts by both democratic and undemocratic actors. In this history the demarcation between propaganda and public relations also becomes blurred. As any reader will see, the delineation of the two is not easy in the context of conflict. Communications are frequently one-sided, omit essential information, and advocate a biased interpretation of events. This is made all the more effective because these communications also show a highly developed sense of how the media works, how to target messages to publics, an understanding of public opinion, and the establishment of measurable campaign objectives. All things that are also found in modern public relations practice.

Wartime Propaganda in the United States Propaganda in the United States has divergent interpretations. Some scholars point to U.S. communications, including pro-democracy communications abroad, as a form of propaganda. However, PR historian Burton St. John argues that propaganda was

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used in the United States even by prominent figures such as Ivy Lee to promote clients, using emotion, issue framing, and persuasion to gain a particular outcome for a client.5 Whatever the viewpoint of PR historians, propaganda use in the United States is deeply rooted in the early twentieth century when muckraking journalism, the growth of corporations, the expansion of the federal government, and the formulation of reporter-centered beat reporting occurred in tandem. During Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Forestry Service, created a press bureau and established a press relationship between newspapers and the Forestry Service.6 During his tenure he hired former reporters to manage press relations and sent out press releases on the agency’s behalf.7 He also is credited with successful special events, notably the 1907 presidential trip on the Mississippi River to highlight the President’s waterway policies.8 Corporate propaganda is also said to have existed in the United States during the 1910s. World War I was a seminal event in the development of American public relations, and the discussion of the meaning of propaganda and communication. Perhaps the best known event of that time is the establishment in the United States of the Committee on Public Information (CPI), known also as the Creel Committee.9 This organization was established under the Woodrow Wilson administration, and used communication strategies to influence public opinion regarding American entry into World War I. Headed by former journalist George Creel, the committee was made up of figures in journalism and public relations who went on to great prominence after the war. The committee had several divisions that were tasked with varying communication responsibilities:          

Division of News (producing content from the U.S. government and the military); Advertising Division (publicity campaigns); Division of Pictorial Publicity (war posters and other visuals); Bureau of Cartoons; Division of Syndicate Features (distributing materials to newspapers); Division of the Four Minute Men (facilitating pro-war citizens’ speeches); Speaking Division (later governing Four Minute Men); Division of Films (war documentaries); Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation (disseminating CPI information to the public); Division of Women’s War Work (producing material that made women feel included in war effort).10

The CPI even partnered with non-profits such as the American Red Cross creating the “Knit Your Bit” campaign that was promoted in Ladies Home Journal to encourage American women to knit clothes for servicemen.11

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The Creel Committee served as a type of U.S. propaganda machine and censor, setting up various sub-committees to influence shaping public opinion in the United States. One example was the Four Minute Men, who were comprised of a group of male citizens, namely, lawyers and businessmen, who made short patriotic speeches about U.S. intervention in World War I. Organized by the Committee on Public Information, the Four Minute Men had State Chairman and local chairmen who worked with smaller state entities, such as Chambers of Commerce, in identifying speakers. The speakers were given specific instructions by the local chairmen, who were given directives by the CPI in Washington, D.C.12 These communications were effective with Germany and Austria issuing the death penalty automatically for any member of the CPI (none were captured).13 After the war, Creel recognized the importance of public opinion in crafting communication writing so that it was during World War I that the power of public opinion was discovered. He wrote that, in his opinion, “Public opinion has its source in the minds of people, that it has its base in reason, and that it expresses slow-formed convictions rather than any temporary excitement or any passing passion of the moment.”14 Despite the individual definitions of public opinion, there are many historical examples of public opinion being used for government propaganda. Like the CPI, other government bureaucracies were created to disseminate information. The United States is credited with creating pro-democracy propaganda abroad. This communication refined the field of propaganda during the Cold War, and used multiple channels of communication. During World War II, the Office of War Information (OWI), led by journalist Elmer Davis, was in charge of disseminating information domestically and abroad. The Office of Strategic Service (OSS), the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also engaged in communication strategies, including what was termed “black propaganda,” which referred to actions taken by an individual whose identity had to be kept secret.15 OWI ended in 1946, but was replaced during the Cold War by the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs (OIC) through the U.S. State Department, and the Voice of America (VOA) was developed to provide news service in 25 languages.16 Other agencies were soon developed from the 1940s to the 1970s to combat Communism and the Soviet Union, including:     

Office of International Information and Education Exchange (USIE); Office of Information (OII); Office of Educational Exchange (OEX); U.S. Agency for International Development (AID); the Peace Corps.

Many times these organizations included well-known celebrities and politically connected figures, such as Kennedy’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver (Peace Corps), and journalist Edward R. Murrow (USIA), to promote a pro-U.S. message.

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However, it must be acknowledged that government structure, while influencing the way PR can be practiced, does not have the power to stifle it completely. Statesponsored public relations content can be informative and even helpful to society. Such was the case with the U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, which provided updates for civil service productivity, as well as basic government information for citizens. Examples included information about where to find government agencies, tax inquiries, and information about the federal government structure.17 Other examples include U.S. government publications and information about nutritional eating and rationing information during World War II.18

British Wartime Propaganda and the Development of Public Relations British public relations development is largely credited to the creation of government-sponsored content that informed citizens during wartime.19 British use of propaganda, public relations, and public opinion is rooted in its government bureaucracy as well. During World War I, British press bureaus were common, but like the CPI were temporary and created specifically for wartime purposes.20 Charles Masterman, a politician and journalist, became the head of the War Propaganda Bureau in 1914, and the Ministry of Information (MOI) and the Department of Enemy Propaganda were later established in 1917.21 However, British public relations was developed during World War I, in part because of the increased concern about public opinion and military conscription.22 The Ministry of Information (MOI), directed by Lord Beaverbrook ,who owned the Daily Express, and the Department of Enemy Propaganda, directed by Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, were formed during World War I to boost morale and serve as a bulwark against Central Powers’ propaganda. Films, leaflets, and anti-German newspaper stories were an important part of British wartime communications.23 While some propaganda specifically dealt with home front morale, others demonized the enemy, particularly the German military.24 The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee has been described as a public relations wing of wartime Britain, especially involving the committee’s development of posters and pitching morale-boosting stories to the press.25 In the interwar period, the role of the MOI was highly debated in British government with some thinking a propagandistic ministry was antithetical to democracy while others saw it as necessary in the face of the growing dictatorships in continental Europe.26 Between World War I and World War II, the British government continued with official public relations programming, focusing on national issues, particularly public health.27 Historian Michael Heller argues that this growth is the result of the propaganda techniques developed during World War I and then applied within a mass media society.28 Prior to World War II, the British government, under the leadership of Ernest Brown, the Minister of Labour, continued its

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public relations efforts in National Service, which was a campaign to promote civil defense and auxiliary that swelled to 1.9 million volunteers by 1939.29 The MOI was reconstituted during World War II, though it was heavily criticized until the leadership of Brendan Bracken in 1941.30 Part of the early problems in the MOI was lack of experience in publicity, and a quick succession of leaders. However, Bracken made strides in the MOI, particularly in terms of pre-publication censorship.31 The publicity done on behalf of the MOI by the BBC also helped promote the pro-war government messages. Additionally, other agencies in Britain assisted with wartime publicity, including the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), and, within the military, the Army Bureau for Current Affairs (ABCA).32 Similar to British efforts in World War I, the government used films, such as The Next of Kin, to highlight wartime efforts and promote responsible proBritish behavior by civilians.33 After the war the MOI’s work continued, being replaced with the Central Office of Information (COI) in 1946 under the Labour government of Clement Atlee.34

German Propaganda German public relations development also has its beginnings in politics and the political sphere. Public relations historian Günter Bentele argues that German public relations began in the Middle Ages with Walther von der Vogelweide who was a “political poet” for Philip of Swabia, Otto IV, and Frederick II.35 After World War I, Germany experienced what Bentele calls a “boom of PR” with many government and economic uses of public relations.36 However, the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism in Germany gave way to a propagandistic and statist public relations in the 1930s. National Socialism and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany were the product of his widely read autobiography and manifesto Mein Kampf, published in 1925. In the book, Hitler spoke specifically about the power and role of propaganda in two chapters. The first discussion, in Chapter 6, entitled “War Propaganda” discusses the role of communication during World War I. He praised the use of anti-German propaganda during World War I by the United States and Great Britain, and thought it was effective because it fostered anger and hatred toward the German military.37 Commenting on the power of U.S. and British anti-German publications, Hitler wrote, “The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses’ attention to certain facts, processes, necessities etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.”38 In detailing his own Nazi Party’s rise to power, Hitler addressed propaganda’s role in Chapter 11, “Propaganda and Organization,” stating that he “devoted” himself to propaganda.39 He held several principles of propaganda and its relationship to organizations stating that “propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea.”40

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This approach to propaganda manifested in Hitler and the Nazi Party’s rallies and staged events. Starting in 1923 through 1938, the Nazi Party held Nuremburg Rallies annually. Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl made several films of the rallies, notably The Triumph of the Will [Triumph des Willens] released in 1935, recording the 1934 rally.41 This propaganda film, along with the symbolism of the Nazi Party, promoted the agenda and the ideology of National Socialism, using highly developed targeted communication. Even international events, such as the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, were used as a profile of Nazi power and ideology with carefully crafted images (antisemitic material was largely removed during the games to maximize the positive Nazi image).42 In fact, Hitler was initially reluctant to host the games, but was convinced when Reichminister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels convinced him that the publicity would be good for Germany. As a result, Hitler built a new stadium for the games and spent 20 million reichsmarks.43

Other Uses of Propaganda and Public Opinion When examining governmental use of public relations, one thing is clear. No type of government has a monopoly over the use of public relations. Moreover, public relations is not communication practice that requires a democratic environment. Propaganda as a label also presents certain historiographic issues because the term post World War II is exclusively derogatory, but in the practice of propaganda lie some very insightful and complex communication techniques, such as image building, framing of issues, and imagery, that can be found in mainstream commercial public relations practice. Propaganda certainly has been used for pro-democratic movements, such as republican efforts during the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance during World War II. Filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s pro-Republican films were an attempt to persuade neutral governments in Europe to intercede on behalf of the Republicans fighting against the Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco and backed by the fascist government in Italy.44 Public relations was used during the French Resistance during World War II with the Bureau d’Information et de Presse (BIP), which was created by former journalist Georges Bidault and Jean Moulin.45 The first telegram sent by BIP on April 28, 1942, stated that the missions of the unit was 1/ Spread information and propaganda from London. 2/ Distribute the propaganda material from the FFL using our networks. 3/ Pass on information which may be of interest. 4/ Prepare articles and documents to the published in the press (FFL, British, American and neutral).46 Other uses of propaganda outside of Europe involved creating a national identity and promoting diplomatic efforts in a country. For instance, Israel has used public relations through its press office since the country’s inception in 1948. As early as 1924, the Mayor of Jerusalem, Gershon Agronsky was the Commissioner of Press

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Relations in the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, which published a weekly newsletter about Zionist and Jewish issues entitled “News from the Land of Israel.”47 In Turkey with the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, public relations was used to create a modern nation state. With Westernization being a major goal of the Turkish government and people, special events were used to promote a Western-style Turkish society.48 Special events, such as beauty contests, were even used to promote Turkey’s new pro-Western identity during the late 1920s and early 1930s.49 During the Second Indochina War in the 1960s, both the National Liberation Front and the South Vietnamese Government of Vietnam used propaganda techniques to promote the legitimacy of each side’s cause, especially among the rural population where much of the fighting occurred.50

Propaganda, Public Relations, and Terror Frequently political actors outside the government are thought to engage in propaganda as the main form of political communication. This is largely associated with non-governmental groups, including terrorist organizations. In terrorism, violence and promotions go together to create the maximum effect for the organization.51 Inherent in these violent acts is a communication message that advocates for the terror organization’s cause and is used as a recruitment mechanism.52 Additionally, terrorist public relations is typical of what many consider to be propaganda because of its one-sided and dishonest portrayal of the terrorist organizations and their mission.53 However, scholars of terrorism and communication point out that many terrorist organizations have a sophisticated communication strategy that is frequently underpinned by public relations practices that helps to build legitimacy and “social capital.”54 Many of these public relations practices take the form of media relations tactics in which terrorists use media narratives to advance their cause.55 This use of media is powerful because smaller organizations can generate news coverage, and, as they grow, these smaller violent events can help the organization to mature to have a large public relations presence. The reputation of terrorist actors can change over time. For instance, John Brown, the abolitionist who engaged in violent conflict with the U.S. military at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, has undergone a reputational change that casts him now as a civil rights and abolitionist hero.56 This history of violent organizations using public relations as a mechanism for political legitimacy has its roots in nineteenth-century America. Created in 1866, the first Klan was a diffused violent organization in the American South that focused mainly on hatred toward newly freed slaves and African Americans generally. However, the Ku Klux Klan was resurrected in the early twentieth century to wield power in many non-southern states, and had a national presence in all 48 states. They had an awareness of politics, even having an evaluation of U.S. Senators based on their favorability to the Klan.57 In the 1920s, the second Klan

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had wider popularity using celebrations, barbecues, and recruitment advertising. This new KKK was more popular in the American North than the South because of its fraternal structure and its hatred of immigrants, Jews, and Catholics.58 This growth of Klan membership was in part because of the public relations tactics used to communicate Klan messages. Printed communications, rallies, use of paid recruiters, and hiring the Southern Publicity Association, owned by Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke. Tyler and Clarke were instrumental in growing the KKK. They expanded the Klan’s hatred beyond African Americans to grow northern membership where African American populations were low. They also began a large-scale publicity campaign where Klan leader William Simmons gave private interviews to the press, placed advertisements in newspapers, wrote press releases about Klan activities, and grew membership by giving free membership to ministers. Recruitment was particularly sophisticated with the Southern Publicity Association paying recruiters a finder’s fee (the PR firm percent of revenue from recruits) for new Klan membership while the national office generated profits from the sales of Klan paraphernalia, such as robes.59 Later in the twentieth century, other organizations viewed the importance of press relations as essential to legitimizing their cause. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which advocates for a free state of Palestine within Israel, and the Sinn Féin, an Irish nationalist organization arguing for the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, are two organizations that gained recognition from violent acts only to then create a sophisticated public relations campaign for their cause and organizations. For example, Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland began as a political group that many within the government of Northern Ireland viewed as domestic terrorists, only to transition into a recognized political party within a democratic government. This transition occurred in the 1990s and solidified in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. Scholars note that throughout the organization’s history, it used public relations to solidify its support among citizens, and that the political power of groups like Sinn Féin sometimes enjoy results in political engagement and recognition from governments.60 This is an important aspect of public relations history because when dealing with histories of organizations outside of government, particularly organizations that may be violent or even illegal, there is a public sentiment that excludes them from public relations practice. However, as Tom Watson argues, public relations history is filled with examples of effective public relations used by groups that are associated with nefarious goals.61 Political causes and their public relations efforts continue to proliferate in the twenty-first century. Al-Qaeda, the terror organization responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001, used numerous propaganda techniques on a variety of platforms to advance its cause and organization and modified their communication strategy as world events and technology changed.62 Groups such as ISIS, anti-government organizations on the left and right, and separatist groups use the internet to attract followers to their political movements. Analyzing the use of media shows a

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maturation of these groups because they have moved beyond single violent acts to attract attention. They also demonstrate that their awareness of media attention is important for their survival. For public relations history, the question arises, is this actual PR practice? The answer is. in the most general sense, yes, albeit an unethical form of it that should be condemned. However, these organizations use public relations strategies and tactics to garner attention, and their use of these communication techniques demonstrates that public relations as a form of communication has been coopted by many types of organizations that use it for their control over public opinion and image maintenance.

Conclusion In examining these historical uses of conflict and communication we are left asking if this is public relations or something else. The answer depends largely on how public relations is defined. For some, democratic intentions are a prerequisite to public relations practice. Anything deceptive or based purely on advocacy is not public relations. It is beyond the scope of this chapter, and book, to make an argument for or against either side of that debate. However, what is evident is that the propagandistic uses of communication are related to public relations practice. The people who engaged in these types of communication had a clear understanding of the core tenets of public relations practice: public opinion, message strategy, publics, stakeholders, advocacy, media relations, image management, crisis management, and events. Given that the use of these communications pre-dated the more institutionalized and professionalized public relations practitioner, it would be easy to infer that these practices did influence modern PR practice. For example, in the CPI were many men, notably Edward Bernays, who went on to practice corporate public relations in the 1920s and beyond. What the historical causality is between wartime PR and private sector peacetime PR cannot be stated definitively, it has to be noted that public relations practice uses many of the same tools and techniques. Perhaps the biggest takeaways from this historical era are that communication, public relations or propaganda, is a powerful force, and its impact can be significant, for better or worse. Historiographically, this use of public relations and propaganda shows some insight into how public relations and propaganda developed globally. The historical record does not support the idea that the American experience during World War I was imported to Europe. Rather, there seems to be historical evidence that the development of American and European propaganda or public relations emerged in tandem under similar situations. Perhaps it can be argued that public relations development is not something that emerges singularly in one country, but instead emerges in environments that are similar. The United States, Britain, and Germany were all experiencing a wartime environment, and had similarly developed communication technology. Because advocacy for one’s side has been a hallmark of all wars, the use of media to promote wartime efforts,

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demonizing the enemy, and boosting domestic morale were the natural consequence of the external factors of media and technology. Similarly, terrorist organizations that seek out conflict operate in a similar media environment. Their advocacy of their causes mirrors those of governments, and their awareness of media and news production seems to be a defining characteristic of their communication. In the terrorist organizations examined by historians, all of them have a goal of public awareness, recruitment, public support, and a desire for legitimacy. One tool to accomplish this is communication, and the refined and professionalized communication of public relations. This area of public relations history shows some insights into the development of the field. First, government’s use of public relations, especially in a wartime context, advanced the field’s knowledge of the importance of public opinion and media. Second, public relations/propaganda use by governments is more tied to context rather than nation. Current history shows that public relations use by governments emerged more or less contemporaneously because of government need and technological realities. Third, non-governmental groups, especially terrorists, use propaganda/public relations in a way that is very similar to governments. Image management, newsworthiness of events, and organizational image management are key communication functions of these groups.

Discussion Questions     

Is advocacy of a cause automatically propaganda? Does a speaker have to present all sides of an issue to avoid being labeled as engaging in deceptive communication? Is wartime communication, such as that of the CPI, propaganda, or something else? Can a democratic government engage in propaganda? After all, the hallmark of democracy is a free press. If there is a robust free press, can there really be propaganda? Terrorist organizations demonstrate a high degree of awareness of media and newsworthiness. Can you think of examples of a group that gained legitimacy in the public eye by utilizing these techniques? Public relations practice is frequently called a form of relationship management. However, media relations are part of most successful public relations efforts. Can public relations practice exist without the media?

Notes 1 William W. Weston, “Public Relations: Trustee of a Free Society,” Public Relations Review 1 (1975): 5–14, 14. 2 Natalia Rodrígues-Salcedo and Tom Watson, “The Development of Public Relations in Dictatorships—Southern and Eastern European Perspectives from 1945–1990,” Public Relations Review 43 (2017): 375–381, 377.

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3 Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda & Persuasion (Washington, DC: Sage, 2015), 59–64. 4 Ibid., 63–103. 5 Burton St. John, “The Case for Ethical Propaganda Within a Democracy: Ivy Lee’s Successful 1913–1914 Railroad Rate Campaign,” Public Relations Review 32 (2006): 221–228, 226. 6 Stephen Ponder, “Federal News Management in the Progressive Era: Gifford Pinchot and the Conservation Crusade,” Journalism History 13 (1986): 42–48, 43–44. 7 Rodger Streitmatter, “Theodore Roosevelt, Public Relations Pioneer: How TR Controlled Press Coverage,” American Journalism (Spring 1990): 96–113, 108–109. 8 Ibid., 109; Stephen Ponder, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897– 1933 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 43. 9 Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–134. For more information on the Creel Committee and World War I communication, see George Creel, “Public Opinion in War Time,” The Annals of the American Academy, July 1918, 185; George Creel, How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information that Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920); James R. Mock, and Cedrick Larson, Words that Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917–1919 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1937). For publications from the Creel Committee, see Committee on Public Information, Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information (Washington, DC: U.S.G.P.O., 1920); Committee on Public Information, The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy (London: Forgotten Books, 2015); Division of Pictures, Committee on Public Information, Catalogue of Photographs and Stereopticon Slides (Washington, DC: U.S.G.P.O, 1918). 10 Bruce Pinkleton, “The Campaign of the Committee on Public Information: Its Contributions to the History and Evolution of Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research 6 (1994): 229–240, 231–238. 11 Marcy Orwig, “Persuading the Home Front: The Communication Surrounding the World War I Campaign to ‘Knit’ Patriotism,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 41 (2017): 60–82, 63–68. 12 Carol Oukrop, “The Four Minute Men Became National Network During World War I.” Journalism Quarterly 52 (1975): 632–637. 13 George Creel, “Public Opinion in War Time,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 78 (1918): 185–194, 185. 14 Ibid., 185. 15 Fitzhugh Green, American Propaganda Abroad (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988), 16. 16 Ibid., 21. 17 Mordecai Lee, “The First Federal Public Information Service, 1920–1933: At the U.S. Bureau of Efficiency!,” Public Relations Review 29 (2003): 415–425, 415., 418–419. Lee explains that there have been numerous federal regulations that limit public relations work, including regulations by the General Accounting Office, federal statutes, and Congressional oversight committees. Lee specifically mentions the Office of Government Reports (OGR) in the Executive Office of the President that existed from 1939– 1942 and again from 1946 to 1948 as an example of how federal law is opposed to federal money spent on public relations work. For more about the OGR, see Mordecai Lee, “The Federal Public Relations Administration: History’s Near Miss,” Public Relations Review 28 (2002): 94–95. 18 Laura Purcell, “Getting People to Wish What They Need: How the United States Government Used Public Relations Strategies to Communicate Food Policy During World War II, 1941–1945,” MA thesis (Virginia Tech, 2017).

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19 Brendan Maartens, “To Encourage, Inspire and Guide: National Service, The People’s War and the Promotion of Civil Defense in Interwar Britain, 1938–1939,” Media History 21 (2015): 328–341. 20 Mariel Grant, Propaganda and the Role of the State in Inter-War Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 5. 21 Jacquie L’Etang, “United Kingdom,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations, ed. Tom Watson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 142. 22 Jacquie L’Etang, Public Relations in Britain: A History of Professional Practice in the 20th Century (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 30. 23 Ibid., 40–41. 24 Emily Robertson, “Propaganda and ‘Manufactured Hatred’: A Reappraisal of the Ethics of First World War British and Australian Atrocity Propaganda,” Public Relations Inquiry 3 (2014): 245–266, 255–262. 25 Brendan Maartens, “The Great War, Military Recruitment and the Public Relations Work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1914–1915,” Public Relations Inquiry 5 (2016): 169–185, 181–182. 26 Ibid., 28–29. 27 Ibid., 123–193. 28 Michael Heller, “Foucault, Discourse, and the Birth of British Public Relations,” Enterprise & Society 17 (2016): 651–677, 672–674. 29 Brendan Maartens, “To Encourage, Inspire and Guide National Service, The People’s War and the Promotion of Civil Defense in Interwar Britain, 1938–1939,” Media History 21 (2015): 328–341, 336. 30 Grant, Propaganda and the Role of the State in Inter-War Britain, 1–2; L’Etang, Public Relations in Britain, 42–49. 31 Ibid., 43. 32 Ibid., 44, 47. 33 Gareth Thompson, “The Next of Kin: Propaganda, Realism or a Film with a Purpose,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 812–820. 34 Grant, Propaganda and the Role of the State in Inter-War Britain, 250. 35 Günter Bentele, “Germany,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations, ed. Tom Watson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 48. 36 Ibid., 46. 37 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf , trans. Ralph Manhein (1925, reprinted Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971), 176–186; Susan Bachrach and Steven Luckert, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009), 14. 38 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 179. 39 Ibid., 581. 40 Ibid., 582. 41 James Wilson, The Nazi’s Nuremberg Rallies (South Yorkshire, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2012), 40–41. Wilson notes that Riefenstahl used innovative techniques in her film, Triumph of the Will, that are studied today. The 1934 rally was a well-choreographed piece of Nazi propaganda that was far more organized than earlier, less sophisticated rallies in the early 1930s. 42 Backrach and Lucker, State of Deception, 84. 43 Ibid. 44 Francisco-Javier Ruiz del Olmo and Jordi Xifra, “Public Relations Discourse, Ethical Propaganda and Collective Identity in Luis Buñel’s Spanish Civil War Films,” Public Relations Review 43 (2017): 358–365, 363–364. 45 Gareth Thompson, “The Public Relations Operations of the French Resistance in World War II,” Journal of Public Relations Research 27 (2015): 244–261, 250–251. 46 Ibid., 250.

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47 Clila Magen and Ephraim Lapid, “Facing Peace and War: Israel’s Government Press Office,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 776–786, 777. 48 Melike Yamanog˘ lu, Pinar Özemir, and Senem Hizal, “Turkey,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 122. 49 Pinar Özemir, “Building a ‘Modern’ and ‘Western’ Image: Miss Turkey Beauty Contests from 1929 to 1933,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 759–765, 761–764. 50 David Hunt, “Propaganda and the Public: The Shaping of Opinion in the Southern Vietnamese Countryside During the Second Indochina War,” Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 31 (2016): 497–531. 51 Donald Holbrook, “Approaching Terrorist Public Relations Initiatives,” Public Relations Inquiry 3 (2014): 141–161, 143. 52 Robert G. Picard, “Press Relations of Terrorist Organization,” Public Relations Review 15 (1989): 12–23, 14. 53 Holbrook, “Approaching Terrorist Public Relations Initiatives,” 144. 54 Robert Heath and Damion Waymer, “Terrorism: Social Capital, Social Construction, and Constructive Society,” Public Relations Inquiry 3 (2013): 227–244, 239–241. 55 Ibid., 232. 56 Robert Heath and Damion Waymer, “John Brown, Public Relations, Terrorism, and Social Capital: ‘His Truth Goes Marching On,’” Public Relations Inquiry 3 (2014): 209–226, 223. 57 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liveright, 2017), 213–216. 58 Ibid., 2. 59 Ibid., 13–17. 60 Ian Somerville and Andy Purcell, “A History of Republican Public Relations in Northern Ireland from ‘Bloody Sunday’ to the ‘Good Friday Agreement,’” Journal of Communication Management 15 (2011): 192–209. 61 Tom Watson, “Let’s Get Dangerous—A Review of Current Scholarship in Public Relation History,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 874–877. 62 Paul Baines and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, “Al-Qaeda Messaging Evolution and Positioning, 1998–2008: Propaganda Analysis Revisited,” Public Relations Inquiry 3 (2014): 163–191, 170–175.

6 PUBLIC RELATIONS IN NON-PROFITS, EDUCATION, AND RELIGION

Public relations practice outside corporate and political circles is under-researched in PR history. However, it is perhaps the most important aspect of public relations practice because it frequently involves people who are not traditionally thought of as public relations practitioners, e.g., the volunteer, the church committee, the school fundraising coordinator, and the philanthropist. Because these types of PR practices are conducted by a variety of people, the history of non-profits tends to be unknown. Much of the actual events are found in micro-histories, those hard-tofind granular histories of small places and relatively obscure events.1 Given this reality, it is no surprise that public relations history of non-profits tends to focus on the large ones, and even though that history is more established, it still is less complete than the public relations of corporations and politics. Education in public relations also represents a part of non-profit public relations practice. Looking at educational public relations, it is clear that many of the standards of PR practice, particularly the structure of public relations as a craft, developed in this environment. Because education in public relations development is so uniquely important, it has been placed in a separate section. Part of the reason is that education and PR developed much earlier than typical non-profit public relations. Additionally, education in public relations dovetails with the creation of public relations education that took place in the twentieth century. Non-profit public relations is a large part of PR practice today with over 1.6 million tax-exempt organizations in the United States.2 Non-profits range in identity from charitable organizations, churches, to schools. Non-profits use donations from individuals to fund their programs, and, because of this, fundraising is a large part of the development and sustainability of non-profit organizations. In the history of public relations, non-profits are important because they represent an area of PR practice in which public relations activities frequently are done by non-professional

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PR practitioners. In other words, many of the people who participate in outreach, relationship management, and fundraising would not self-identify as public relations practitioners, yet they certainly engage in public relations work. This is historically significant because many of these non-professional practitioners are lost to history because their efforts either are not recorded or because they are categorized as something else. For example, imagine the work done by a church league at the turn of the twentieth century, raising money for a new church building. This fundraising certainly is a public relations activity. However, this type of work is not historically recorded outside of perhaps local history or by a church historian. This lack of a historical record makes these types of public relations histories absent from PR history. However, thinking about the wide array of non-profit organizations throughout history in towns and cities across the world, it is self-evident that this type of work is a major aspect of PR history because of the sheer volume of these types of organizations. Even today, public relations work is regularly done by volunteers, church workers, student organizations, and alumni associations without it being recognized by the PR industry or the workers themselves as public relations practice. This chapter examines public relations in three distinct yet interrelated areas: non-profits, education, and religion. These three areas are similar in that their public relations is frequently practiced in an organic way; that is, without professional practitioners and with a targeted communication to specific group members and donors.

Non-Profits and Public Relations This history of non-profit public relations is rooted in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century practices. In 1965, public relations educator Scott Cutlip wrote a wellresearched book on the subject entitled Fund Raising in the United States: Its Role in America’s Philanthropy.3 The book focuses exclusively on the United States, and stops at the American post-war era. Cutlip groups fundraising efforts into four main areas: (1) corporate fundraising; (2) cause fundraising; (3) church fundraising; and (4) educational fundraising. Each sector of fundraising is distinct because they all have varying goals and intentions behind their efforts. However, what Cutlip shows is that the process for fundraising eventually became standardized for all sectors.4 Perhaps most important for public relations history, non-profit fundraising was a British export to the United States during the late nineteenth century. Prior to the twentieth century, public relations practice was not yet the solidified profession it is today. Press agents were emerging as the first public relations practitioners in the late nineteenth century working in a variety of sectors, and their jobs centered around what today would be called media relations.5 Non-profit fundraising in the eighteenth century usually centered around the largesse of few wealthy individuals. Organizations did raise money for certain causes, such as for monuments honoring American soldiers in the American Revolution, or for special causes such as

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Samuel Gridley Howe’s work to raise money to support the Greek War of Independence during the 1820s.6 Patriotic causes also used a fundraising model. In fact, Cutlip argues that Jay Cooke, an American financier who raised money for the Union during the Civil War, used modern fundraising techniques. His approach to fundraising used salesmanship that appealed to the emotions of donors. Cooke would go on to use these techniques for charitable causes, notably the “Germantown Experiment” that collected charity for out-of-work factory workers during 1873. This was also the time when the precursor to the American Red Cross, the U.S. Sanitary Commission, was formed. They, along with other organizations, began using fairs to promote their cause and raise money.7 Cutlip notes that fundraising during the nineteenth century was mostly small oneon-one interactions in which money was solicited directly. He notes, however, that fundraising in the United States was not an American invention, but was imported from Great Britain. The YMCA movement had its origins in Great Britain, and became established in the United States in 1851.8 Charitable fundraising was well established in England with the Charity Organization Society, founded in London in 1869, and the concept of “federated,” or combined charitable accounts, thus, charity began in Britain. This concept of federated charitable structures was exported to the United States by a Catholic priest, William J. O’Ryan, and Episcopal Dean M. Martyn Hart, both British ex-patriots, who helped established the Associated Charities of Denver, Colorado, in the 1870s.9 Campaign-style fundraising got its start in America with the Young Men’s Christian Association by Charles Sumner Ward and Lyman L. Pierce.10 This would be the campaign structure that would establish this modern way of fundraising by non-profits. At the turn of the twentieth century there was a concerted effort by corporations to engage in philanthropic endeavors to boost the image of the corporation. Wealthy men, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, began engaging in charitable causes. This was partially in response to muckraker journalists’ coverage of poverty and working condition of the poor in the United States.11 Carnegie became a thought leader in the sphere of philanthropic endowments as a requirement of the ultra-wealthy. In 1889, he published an article “Wealth,” popularly called “The Gospel of Wealth,” in the North American Review that described how he thought the wealthiest citizens had an obligation to leave their money for the benefit of society.12 However, these early corporate philanthropic endeavors were not about addressing real poverty in society, but instead were used to benefit society through research and education. Additionally, and perhaps important for PR historiography, Cutlip points out that public relations pioneer Ivy Lee was not the person who encouraged John D. Rockefeller, Sr. to engage in widespread philanthropy, as has often been told.13 Instead, Rockefeller’s charitable interests had more to do with the general idea that charitable interests needed to be organized, and that politically and socially it was to the benefit of millionaires to contribute money for philanthropic purposes.14

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World War I also was a major era for non-profit public relations, namely, because of the development in fundraising by the Red Cross. The War Council appointed Henry Davison, of J.P. Morgan, as the chairman. In his new role, Davison used a corporate model, and the fundraising abilities of Charles Sumner Ward and the public relations knowledge of Ivy Lee, to stimulate larger donations to the Red Cross.15 During this era the Red Cross used the membership and fundraising techniques developed by the YMCA. When the US entered World War I in 1917, membership surged by 3,000 to 4,000 a day.16 The efforts of World War I gave way to a more established system of fundraising. In 1919, Ward & Hill Associated, founded by Charles S. Ward and Harvey J. Hill, was formed, focusing on philanthropic fundraising and publicity.17 Later other PR firms focusing on non-profit fundraising were established, such as Marts, Lundy & Hedrick and Tamblyn & Brown. All of this growth of firms occurred in an era when fundraising was dramatically changing. Cutlip argues that in the 1920s the fundraising concept in the United States became more institutionalized, and the concept of charity largely disappeared from the public conversation. Donor lists and systematized ways of approaching potential donors for non-profits were becoming the norm, and, as a result, philanthropy increased in the 1920s, with 1921 boasting a total of $1.75 billion in philanthropic donations.18 Moreover, the post-World War I era saw a growth in non-profit organizations that needed to have donations to carry out their mission, especially in higher education and religious building projects.19 In the Depression era, non-profits suffered because of the downturn in the economy. However, there were noted successes during the 1930s for nonprofit PR. One standout campaign in the 1930s was the March of Dimes, which used the innovation of small donations from large numbers of donors. This concept was first articulated in 1933 by the firm of John Price Jones where Bayard F. Pope Jr. presented the idea in a paper entitled “The Dime and Quarter in a Fund Raising Campaign.” A major philanthropic success of the 1930s was The President’s Birthday Party, which was a special event coordinated by Carl Byoir for President Franklin Roosevelt. The birthday party was centered around the cause of polio.20 These celebrations later gave way to the establishment of the March of Dimes in 1938 as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which revolutionized the use of the small donation of a dime to generate massive donations and participation.21 By World War II, non-profits had well-established fundraising efforts that were very different from those at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1941, the United Service Organizations (USO) was established to create and maintain troop morale through recreational spaces and special events.22 Other non-profits proliferated in fundraising with war bond drives and the American Red Cross. Other non-profit organizations reorganized during the 1940s, notably the American Cancer Society (ACS). The ACS was founded in 1913, but had a small membership until Mary Lasker used public relations to raise funds and increase numbers of members.23

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After World War II, non-profit public relations proliferated as organizations recognized the need for public relations to establish members and donors for various causes. By the 1950s, public relations texts recognized that fundraising and non-profit public relations were a mainstay of public relations work. In their second edition of Effective Public Relations, Cutlip and Center devoted an entire chapter to non-profits, noting that their increase was “staggering.”24 In 1969, Bruce Canfield estimated 16 million people were engaged in either volunteering or fundraising for non-profits, making it an important sector of public relations.25 In the twenty-first century, non-profit public relations is a major part of public relations practice globally.

Public Relations in Education Although education is part of non-profit public relations, it has its own unique history. First, it has a longstanding history dating back before the Industrial Revolution. Second, its public relations is rooted not only in fundraising, but also in advocacy for certain educational principles and ideas. In the United States there have been several movements in education that have garnered public attention. For instance, Horace Mann spurred an educational reform movement in the United States. Mann used a journal he edited, The Common School Journal, to promote his ideas about public education and its necessity in American life.26 Similarly, parochial education in the United States was advocated by the Catholic Archbishop Bishop of New York, John Hughes, popularly known as “Dagger John” because his signature included a crucifix, who created what is the modern parochial school system in New York, and also Fordham University, by forming a political movement, and an actual party, Carroll Hall, to dismantle the antiCatholic Public School Society.27 Setting educational movements aside, the biggest impact of public relations in education was in colleges and universities. Today college fundraising, or development, as it is commonly called, is an important part of higher education. It is controlled by offices of development and communication that work in tandem to increase the profile and reputation of a school. Each unit within a college or university has its own public relations office that is devoted to promotion and reputation management. However, in the seventeenth century the concept of higher education and development existed, though in a much looser and unsophisticated form. As early as 1641, Harvard College sent three clergymen to raise money in England for the fledgling institution.28 In colonial times college fundraising was important for the survival of these institutions because tuition alone could not sustain them. Moreover, colonial colleges had royal charters, but their financial sources varied with levels of public support for the government. Colonial colleges included Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, King’s College (Columbia), Queen’s (Rutgers), Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), Newark (University of Delaware), New Jersey (Princeton), and Dartmouth.29 All of them needed to fundraise in order to stay open.

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These fundraising efforts took various forms, including direct fundraising appeals, pamphlets used to solicit donors in England, bequests from donors, and, most notoriously, lotteries. Fundraising lotteries were used by colleges, such as Harvard, to obtain building funds for special projects (the practice continued at Harvard until 1806).30 During this time the fundraisers were prominent men who had a relationship with the college. George Whitefield, a preacher and one of the founders of Methodism, solicited funds for Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania during his revivals.31 Similarly, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of Pennsylvania Hospital and the academy that later turned into the University of Pennsylvania, was noted for his fundraising efforts for the college.32 Education in the United States grew exponentially in the nineteenth century. Large universities and smaller liberal arts colleges began to develop. In the nineteenth century, fundraising efforts, for schools and non-profits, were largely about securing individual donations.33 Such was the case in the founding of Mt. Holoyoke, a women’s college in Massachusetts, founded in 1837. Starting in 1834, Mary Lyon started a campaign to raise funds for the establishment of the college by approaching individual donors; in two months she raised nearly $30,000.34 By the mid-nineteenth century, college administrations had turned to fundraising as a norm. President E.P. Tenney of Colorado College was noted as a fundraiser. Tenney’s strategy for raising college money frequently required him to go to the East Coast and solicit funds from donors, promising students a true Western experience.35 Institutional publicity started being used by higher education in the late nineteenth century. In 1904, David Hale published a history of publicists in the United States in a Saturday Evening Post article entitled “The Gentle Art of the Publicist: He Has Raised Puffery to the Dignity of a Profession.”36 In his article, Hale traced the history of publicists as a profession to higher education, specifically the 1890s when academics and universities used the press to create publicity.37 It was during this era that publicists at colleges and universities functioned in a role similar to modern-day university press and communication officers. Frequently the president of a college functioned in the role of a university publicist, highlighting its successes.38 The University of Wisconsin, under the leadership of Charles Kendall Adams, published a Bulletin for Educators in 1896. Although the press bureau at the university was closed after only two years, it seems that the concept of universities sending news to the press was popular. In 1904, the press bulletin resumed at the University of Wisconsin.39 Other universities contemporaneously created news and conducted press relations. William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago, used press relations to heavily fundraise for the university. Part of Harper’s success was the creation of a university press, which served as the publishing arm of the university, and the idea of extension services that dealt with the practical concerns of citizens.40 Later Harper would hire a publicity director, Oscar D. Skelton, who was a former journalist working on a PhD in economics.41 This model of having formal publicity and fundraising efforts for a college was replicated, notably by the president of the University of Wisconsin, Charles R. Van Hise, who was a friend of Harper.42

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Special events were used by colleges during this era to create publicity and serve as a way to promote the university. The University of Wisconsin’s semi-centennial was well publicized through Grant D. Hyde, a university professor who later went on to become the university publicist. Later, in 1904, the University of Wisconsin hired Willard Bleyer to become the Director of the University Press Bureau for a salary of $300.43 In this role Bleyer pitched stories to newspapers about the research and university news throughout Wisconsin.44 This approach gained traction elsewhere. Other universities, including Ohio State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, Cornell, Brown, and the University of Missouri, reached out to Bleyer to see how they could replicate the promotional success he had achieved at Wisconsin.45 These universities sought to promote their institutions with publications, typically run through university presses, and with news bureaus that operated like modern-day public affairs offices. The creation of public relations in higher education was not monolithic. Some universities, notably the University of Minnesota, balked at the idea of using publicity. Other schools used publicity as a tool for student recruitment, such as the University of North Dakota’s efforts to send circulars to high school graduates.46 Institutions were also criticized by some in the press for the use of publicity. Describing university publicity as a form of advertising, some journalists who held traditional views of university behavior described advertising universities and colleges as anti-intellectual and a form of corporatizing higher education.47 However, the institutionalization of public relations within higher education institutions was established by the 1910s. By 1917, there was even professional organizations for those in the practice, the American Association of College News Bureaus, later known as the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).48 At the turn of the twentieth century, public relations agencies began working in higher education. The Boston-based company, The Publicity Bureau worked for Harvard University with President Charles Eliot. Harvard viewed itself as a prestige client, and Eliot wanted The Publicity Bureau to do the work for free.49 Ultimately this view, coupled with disagreements over fee agreements, soured the relationship between Harvard and The Publicity Bureau. In the 1910s, fundraising efforts by colleges and universities employed men who worked in finance, such as Thomas Lamont, who was a partner in J.P Morgan & Co. Lamont would lead a $10 million drive for Harvard in 1916.50 By the 1930s, public relations in higher education had become more institutionalized. However, in a 1937 periodical Public Relations, a magazine devoted to the public relations industry, George Tamblyn, of Tamblyn and Tamblyn, wrote that well-known colleges were engaged in fundraising, collecting anywhere from $500,000 to $2,100,000.51 However, he noted that college fundraising was something that received negative reactions in some quarters. He specifically mentioned the University of Chicago, founded in 1890 through a donation made by John D. Rockefeller, as an example of a college that used the national stature of its professors to bring publicity and higher enrollment. However, by the 1930s, that type of promotional tactic had become the norm. He

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suggested that smaller, liberal arts colleges should follow suit in engaging in publicity for fundraising. He mentioned that the Institute of Politics at Williams College and the Mohawk Dream Festival at Union College were examples of how smaller colleges used special events and organizations to promote themselves.52

Education and Public Relations Practice Not only has public relations tactics been used in higher education, much of the formalization of the field of PR has taken place in public relations courses developed in colleges. At the turn of the twentieth century, public relations was closely associated with public utility work. Because of that, there was in effect the law of public relations, which mandated a certain transparency between utilities and local governments that provided easements and eminent domain for utility expansion. This complex dynamic was recognized as requiring a certain skill set for those involved. One of the first academic discussions of public relations came in 1904 with the publication of The Business Career in its Public Relations by Albert Shaw, Ph.D.53 The University of California’s School of Commerce held a lecture “Morals of Trade,” in a series of lectures called the Barbara Weinstock Lectures, that included a discussion about public relations and Shaw’s book. The New York Observer and Chronicle described the book and the Weinstock Lecture series as part of a movement that in this day of economic progress it is incumbent on the business man to be public spirited, do his part in promoting good government and the purity of political life and try to perfect “all possible improvements” which are beneficial for the people.54 In 1923, Edward Bernays began teaching a course in public relations at New York University, which focused on ethical practices and understanding and measuring public opinion.55 Bernays later said that the course was created in part to focus on the ethics of the public relations counsel that distinguished it from the press agentry of the early twentieth century.56 As the twentieth century progressed so did the institutionalization of public relations as an academic discipline. University publicity practitioners were some of the first professors of public relations, with Joseph P. Wright, publicity director at the University of Illinois, teaching a course on “Publicity Techniques” at that school in 1920.57 Rex Harlow became the first full-time public relations educator in the United States in 1939 at Stanford University. He also is significant to academic public relations because he founded Public Relations Journal that was published by the Public Relations Society of America.58 By the 1950s, public relations education had become more institutionalized in American colleges and universities with Betrand Canfield publishing Public Relations: Principles, Cases and Problems, and Scott Cutlip and Allen Center publishing Effective Public Relations in

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1952.59 The first Master’s degree in public relations was offered at Boston University in 1947, in what was then a highly interdisciplinary department of the social science faculty.60 Cutlip and Center’s Effective Public Relations would go on to become one of the main texts used in American colleges and universities to train public relations professionals.61 Scott Cutlip, who began his academic career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later was Dean of the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, helped establish the modern concept of public relations education. His writings and approach to public relations education solidified the educational approach to PR that is used in American universities today.62 By the 1970s, public relations journals were being established to provide outlets for academic public relations work: Public Relations Review (1975), Journal of Public Relations Research (1989), Public Relations Journal (reconstituted 2007), and Public Relations Inquiry (2012). Professional organizations also began having educational components, such as the Educator’s Academy that is part of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Accreditation for undergraduate curriculum also has become a norm in public relations at the college and university level, with PRSA providing certification for public relations programs, and a Certificate in Principles of Public Relations for college and university students.63

Public Relations in Religion Public relations in religion is part of non-profit PR because church organizations frequently are part of fundraising, charities, and civic organizations. However, religious public relations can fall into two different categories. First, is the public relations of faith, the proselytizing of a religion. This type of public relations, if one wants to call it that, has a much older history than almost any form of public relations. It goes back to Moses and the early Israelites leaving Egypt for the Promised Land.64 It includes the incredible travels of Paul the Apostle and his part in establishing an early Christian church among gentiles and Jews. In fact, Paul’s letters helped to establish the Christian religion. In fact, this establishment of early Christianity from Judaism is arguably the first example of religious public relations.65 These communication practices of Biblical figures all demonstrate the power of communication, and its impact on faith immeasurable.66 Some public relations scholars have worked on this area of public relations history, arguing that these figures do represent a type of public relations practice. However, when discussing religion and public relations, what most scholars are talking about is the church and public relations. Most public relations scholars focusing on religion argue that early Christian religious formation, including the creation and promotion of saints such as St. James and St. Swithun, was part of religious public relations.67 Similar to the religious movements like the Crusades, the promotion of saints are frequently religious events motivated by larger political issues. For example, the sanctification of St. James spanned centuries, with him serving a major role in

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Spanish nationalism from the seventh century until the twentieth century. Promotional materials were used during this time, including papal writings, such as the Liber Sancti Jacobi, published in 1130.68 Similarly St. Swithun was an English bishop in the twelfth century who was made a saint by Bishop Aethelwold in an attempt to silence Aethelwold’s critics.69 Contemporary examples of sainthood for political purposes exist. In 2019, Cardinal John Henry Newman, a nineteenth-century Anglican priest who later converted to Catholicism and was elevated to Cardinal, was made a saint by Pope Francis I. Many argue this move by the Vatican is an attempt to highlight the connection between Anglicanism and Catholicism in order to bring Anglicans into the Catholic faith, as Newman did in the nineteenth century.70 In their survey of public relations history, Margot Lamme and Karen Russell argue that the sixteenth century served as a watershed moment for the development of public relations.71 This is because four historically significant events occurred in that century: (1) movable type became widespread in Europe after the publication of the Gutenberg Bible in the fifteenth century (Chinese movable type was invented earlier, around 1045);72 (2) the Protestant Reformation prompted by Martin Luther’s 95 Theses began; (3) Pope Julius II in 1505 commissioned the fresco by Italian master Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni in the Sistine Chapel; and (4) in 1545, the Council of Trent began what is now called the Counter-Reformation.73 Publishing in the sixteenth century was significant because it ended the virtual monopoly the Church had on publications.74 Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were published in 1517. However, the impact of the 95 Theses was amplified by his publication, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation in 1520 with over 4,000 copies published throughout Germany.75 In fact, the Protestant Reformation benefitted greatly from the printed work, because it allowed widespread access to Bibles and other printings critical of the Catholic Church.76 However, it is important to note that printing, particularly printing criticisms of government, were not without restriction. During the reign of Henry VII, printing in Great Britain used the press as a form of image management, and his heir, Henry VIII, had an authorized Bible printed and he established the Court of the Star Chamber to prosecute publishers.77 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw a gradual liberation of printing regulations. The Court of the Star Chamber was abolished in 1641, and the licensing of printers established under Henry VIII was removed in 1695.78 Government control of the press was present. For instance, Queen Elizabeth I instituted government censorship through the Stationers Company. Criticism of governmental licensing was fierce during the Puritan era with poet John Milton publishing Aereopagitica, directed at the Parliament, which criticized the licensing schemes of the English government. Milton wrote the piece to protest the government’s refusal to allow him to publish a pamphlet on divorce.79 However, religious/government censorship extended through the seventeenth century, although censorship and licensing of publications decreased with the advent of the Enlightenment.80

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One of the turning points of religious public relations was the evangelical movement, starting in the eighteenth century. This was in part due to preachers’ use of special events and sermons that promoted their message, particularly outdoor preaching. Figures, such as George Whitefield, and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, used the press and special events to garner public attention and attract followers.81 Later the Second Great Awakening took hold in the United States. Women were also included in these religious movements, and these frequently dovetailed with social cause issues. Women such as Lydia Finney, who created the Moral Reform Society, and Annie Wittenmyer, who helped establish the Methodist Home Missionary Society, used formalized communication processes to reach various publics.82 It was during this time that publications of these religious events were used to promote the movement. Preacher-centered events took place, and people came to these events to see these specific religious figures. In the twentieth century, evangelism took on a new format with the technology of radio and television. Preaching to a mass audience grew, and the communication methods used fundraising and outreach to religious publics. Billy Graham, a mid-century American evangelist, held multiple Crusades, attended by thousands. In creating this Christian message, Graham created a sophisticated communication network that included television, publications, and even a Christian phonebank. However, Graham benefitted from positive press portrayals, and his organization, the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, was careful in its protection of the portrayal of Graham, as was the case with Marshall Frady’s 1979 biography Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness.83 Religion in public relations is one of the areas of PR that demonstrates the power of messaging. It also represents the one area of public relations where people are the least likely to self-identify as public relations practitioners even though they are doing that type of work. While some may argue that figures such as St. Paul or Billy Graham were not public relations practitioners, their work certainly includes many public relations functions. Perhaps what religion demonstrates in public relations history is the understanding of what public opinion is and how it can be shaped.

Conclusion Non-profit, educational, and religious public relations all comprise an important area of public relations practice and history. It is the area where public relations work is frequently done by, for a lack of a better term, non-professional PR practitioners. Because non-profit and educational public relations represents an area where practitioner status was more open, many of the figures were women and other disparate groups who were not included in traditional corporate or political communication work. Non-profit public relations also demonstrates that public relations practice was not a uniquely American idea. Institutions, notably the YMCA and the March of Dimes, had a major impact on the practice of non-profits PR, showing that institutional structure and fundraising technique impacted the nature of non-profits and public relations practice.

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Education in public relations is also an important, yet overlooked, area of PR history. First, educational public relations dates back to at least the seventeenth century, making it probably one of the oldest forms of institutionalized public relations practices. Educational PR also shows the power and influence of non-traditional public relations practitioners, namely, the early fundraisers who solicited money to keep colleges afloat. Additionally, the public relations work done on behalf of colleges was turned into curriculum that further solidified the field of PR. Looking at the early development of public relations curriculum shows the contours of the later field of PR that we know today. In fact, because public relations practice frequently comes from college programs in PR, it could be said that the educational boundaries placed on PR practice are the most significant because they set up how public relations is thought about and structured in practice. Religion also presents a unique background for public relations development. Because religious communication was so important to society during the Renaissance era, religion communication took advantage of the rapid changes within early communication technology. Interestingly, as society became more industrialized, it was religion again that used innovative communication techniques, notably the use of journals and special events, to promote its messages. Historiographically non-profits PR and educational public relations are important because they represent a more organic, inclusive, and diverse practice of public relations. They also are unique because fundraising and donor relationship management are essential. Unlike corporate public relations where sales are a main part of revenue, nonprofits represents a different structure that makes the relationship management function of PR all the more important. Despite the importance of non-profits and education in PR history, They have been under-researched. Part of the reason is that the emphasis has been placed on corporate public relations work within the narrative of PR, but, perhaps more realistically, the issue is that non-profit histories are more difficult to write. At the smaller organizational levels, which represents the majority of non-profits, the historical records are stashed away outside of libraries and archives, perhaps they do not even exist. Many of the figures are forgotten, and because their work was not viewed during their times as historically significant, no record was kept. It is important for public relations history to focus more on this area, and write the forgotten histories.

Discussion Questions     

What makes non-profit public relations different from other forms of public relations practice? What is the main innovation in non-profit public relations work? How essential is fundraising to the development of modern public relations practice? Is fundraising a form of public relations or is it something else? How is religious public relations different from other forms of public relations? How is it similar?

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Notes 1 Microhistory is a historical genre that looks at small events and places in order to critique larger historical narratives. One of the classic microhistories is Carlo Ginzberg’s The Cheese and the Worms, which describes the social and religious events of the sixteenth century through the experiences of a miller, Menocchio. Carlo Ginzberg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). 2 Glen Broom and Bey Ling Sha, Cutlip and Center’s Effective Public Relations, 11th edition (New York: Pearson, 2013), 377. 3 Scott Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States: Its Role in America’s Philanthropy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965). 4 Ibid. 5 Karen Russell and Cayce Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” Public Relations Review 45 (2019): 246–257. 6 Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States, 8–9. 7 Ibid., 12. 8 Ibid., 13. 9 Ibid., 12–13. 10 Ibid., 26. 11 Ibid., 32–33. 12 Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review (1889). 13 Ibid., 35. 14 Ibid., 36. Cutlip notes that Rockefeller’s philanthropic endeavors were not without criticism. In 1895, Washing Gladden, a minister, wrote an article “Tainted Money” in which he criticized men like Rockefeller’s donations for philanthropy. Rockefeller responded by hiring publicity agent Joseph Ignatius Constantine Clarke to handle the press for Standard Oil. 15 Ibid., 112–114. 16 Ibid., 120. 17 Ibid., 159. 18 Ibid., 202–203. 19 Ibid., 206–207, 242–291. In his book, Fund Raising in the United States, Scott Cutlip gives a detailed background on gift giving in the 1920s. Part of the zeal in philanthropy in the 1920s United States was the booming economy, which was viewed by many as permanent. 20 Ibid., 372–377. 21 Ibid., 382. 22 Ibid., 400. 23 Ibid., 427–428. Cutlip notes that by 1943 the American Cancer Society had declined to the point where it had only 986 members. 24 Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective Public Relations, 2nd edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1958), 330. 25 Bertrand Canfield, Public Relations: Principles, Cases, and Problems (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc, 1969), 310. 26 Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1972), 349. 27 John Loughery, Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America (Ithaca, NY: Three Hills, 2018), 147. 28 Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States. 29 Ibid., 7. 30 Ibid., 5. 31 Ibid., 6. 32 Ibid., 7.

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33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65

Ibid. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 19. David Hale, “The Gentle Art of the Publicist: He Has Raised Puffery to the Dignity of a Profession,” Saturday Evening Post, December 23, 1904, 4–5. Ibid. Cayce Myers, “Publicists in U.S. Public Relations History: An Analysis of the Representations of Publicists, 1815–1918,” American Journalism 34 (2017): 71–90, 79–80. Scott Cutlip, Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th Century (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995), 230. Ibid., 232–233. Ibid., 236–237. Ibid., 239. Ibid., 241. Ibid., 242. Ibid., 243. Ibid., 247. Ibid., 249. Ibid., 247. Scott Cutlip, The Unseen Power: Public Relations. A History (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), 16. Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States, 172. George Tamblyn, “Colleges Need Public Relations Programs,” Public Relations 1 (May 1937), 20. Ibid., 20–21. Albert Shaw, The Business Career in its Public Relations (San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company, 1904). Retrieved from www.gutenberg.org/files/29641/29641-h/29641-h. htm (accessed January 7, 2020). New York Observer and Chronicle, “Review,” August 31, 1905, p. 277. New York Times, “Course in Public Relations at N.Y.U.,” February 1, 1923, p. 28. Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 292. Donald Wright and Terrence Flynn, “Public Relations Education and the Development of Professionalization in Canada and the USA,” in North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed, Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 58. Broom and Sha, Cutlip and Center’s Effective Public Relations, 89. Canfield, Public Relations; Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective Public Relations (New York: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1952). Wright and Flynn, “Public Relations Education and Development of Professionalization in Canada and the USA,” 60. Broom and Sha, Cutlip and Center’s Effective Public Relations. Ibid., 97. PR Program Certification. Retrieved from http://prssa.prsa.org/chapter-firm-resour ces/start-a-prssa-chapter/pr-program-certification/; Certificate in Principles of Public Relations. Retrieved from http://prssa.prsa.org/internships-jobs/career-tools/certifica te-in-principles-of-public-relations/. The Book of Exodus. R.E. Brown, “St. Paul as a Public Relations Practitioner: A Metatheoretical Speculation on Messianic Communication and Symmetry,” Public Relations Review 29 (2003): 1–12, 10. This piece not only is an analysis of Pauline communication, but serves as a critique of symmetry theory, particularly the association with P.T. Barnum as the originator of modern public relations practice.

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66 Mark Powell, Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary and Theological Survey, 2nd edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018); John Collins, A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 3rd edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018). 67 Donn Tilson, “Devotional-Promotional Communication and Santiago: A ThousandYear Public Relations Campaign for Saint James in Spain,” in Public Relations: Critical Debate and Contemporary Practice, ed. Jacquie L’Etang and Magda Pieczka (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), 167–184; Tom Watson, “Creating the Culture of a Saint: Communication Strategies in 10th Century England,” Public Relations Review 34 (2008): 19–24. 68 Tilson, “Devotional-Promotional Communication and Santiago,” 167–184. 69 Watson, “Creating the Culture of a Saint.” 70 Robin Gomes, “Catholics, Anglicans Welcome News of Card. Newman’s Canonization,” Vatican News, last modified July 2, 2019. Retrieved from www.vaticannews.va/ en/church/news/2019-07/cardinal-newman-canonization-date-catholics-anglicans. html; Jonathan Luxmore, “Oxford Gives Mixed Response to Newman Canonisation,” The Tablet, last modified October 8, 2019. Retrieved from www.thetablet.co.uk/ news/12105/oxford-gives-mixed-response-to-newman-canonisation 71 Margot Lamme and Karen Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History,” Communication Monographs (2010): 281–357, 294. 72 Berrin Beasley, “Origins of Mass Communication,” in The Media in America: A History, ed. W. David Sloan (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2017), 7. 73 Lamme and Russell, “Removing the Spin,” 294. 74 Beasley, “Origins of Mass Communication,” 11. 75 Ibid., 11. 76 Ibid., 12. 77 Ibid., 14. 78 Ibid., 14–15. 79 Ibid., 14. 80 Ibid., 15. 81 Margot Lamme, Public Relations and Religion in American History: Evangelism, Temperance, and Business (New York: Routledge, 2014), 13–14. 82 Ibid., 55–56. 83 Doug Cumming, “‘Just as I Am’? Marshall Frady’s Making of Billy Graham,” Literary Journalism Studies 6 (2014): 74–98, 84–88.

7 CORPORATE PUBLIC RELATIONS

Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was published in 1955, detailing one man’s change from the military to corporate public relations practice.1 A portrayal of post-World War II corporate life, the novel’s protagonist, veteran Tom Rath works as a public relations executive for television station UBC. The novel presents public relations work for the television company as important and Tom replaces the structured order of military life with the structured order of corporate life. This novel presents something about the neat and compartmentalized portrayal of corporate public relations life. Corporate culture, the organized management system, and the embrace of new technology are part of the professional life of Tom Rath, and it epitomized for many what corporate public relations work was like. However, corporate public relations history is not so sterile. It is full of figures who used communication for a variety of purposes, and many use corporate public relations to highlight the legitimacy of the field. In reality, corporate public relations history is a complex array of success, failure, ethical tactics, and nefarious deeds. It is, in short, like all other PR history. Public relations history has an established connection with the rise of corporate growth in the world. Notably, the rise of corporations and the line and column structure in the late nineteenth century coupled with media innovations, muckraking journalists, progressive reforms, and bureaucratic oversight led to corporations needing public relations to create and maintain an identity and relationships. The corporate narrative of public relations also coincides with the growth of a society that is increasingly urban, literate, educated, and industrialized. Because of this, corporate public relations served a purpose: to reach out to various publics to maintain goodwill in the Progressive Era that exposed the excesses and inequity of industrialism and capitalism in an industrializing society.2

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Corporate public relations is one of the best-researched areas of public relations history. Part of the reason for this is that early public relations history writers focused on the moneyed aspects of PR practice.3 Situating public relations in a corporate, as opposed to entertainment or political, context, gave the field a higher degree of legitimacy as a profession. Moreover, corporate public relations is a place where many, if not most, public relations jobs are found.4 In many instances, corporate public relations is the highest paid, best supported, and most institutionalized form of PR practice. Much of the research in contemporary public relations also focuses on the corporate. Concepts such as C-suite access, a seat at the management table, the institutional standing of PR, and organizational consciousness are rooted in the corporate PR world. Additionally, the biggest names in public relations history such as Ivy Lee (John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil),5 J.I.C. Clarke (Standard Oil),6 John Hill (Hill & Knowlton),7 Arthur Page (AT&T),8 Carl Byior (A&P),9 Edward Bernays (United Fruit, among others),10 Harold Burson and Bill Marsteller (co-founders of Burson Marsteller which represents major international clients such as Coca-Cola)11 are all associated with corporate public relations. Even the attempt to include more women and minority figures in the narrative of public relations history is largely centered around corporate public relations: Ofield Dukes (African American PR pioneer who owned his own Detroit-based firm and counted Motown Records as a client),12 Inez Kaiser (first black woman to open a PR firm, Kaiser and Associates),13 Muriel Fox (first woman hired as Vice President at Carl Byoir & Associates),14 Barbara Hunter (first woman to own and run a PR firm in the United States),15 and Belle Moskowitz (early female PR practitioner specializing in employee and factory relationship management as well as politics),16 are all people of color or women who did public relations for corporate clients or, in the case of Moskowitz, factory workers. The portrayal of corporate communication and public relations is interesting because it either tends to glamorize the practice or criticize the practice for ethical lapses. In 1941, Constance Hope, who ran Constance Hope Publicity Office, wrote a book about the day-to-day life of public relations practitioners in a book memorably entitled Publicity Is Broccoli.17 In it she talks about how publicity work for corporate clients, and other, requires a real social awareness and networking. In discussing the difference in public relations and publicity work in 1930s and 1940s New York, she said: The publicist, as a general rule, makes more money than the press agent, but the Public Relations Counsel is rich like anything. Press agents are associated by tradition and temperament with Broadway, where legend says, many of them maintain offices in their hats. Publicists are generally to be found farther east, in the midtown forties and fifties, off Fifth Avenue. But when you have an office in the Grand Central area, you will know that you have definitely arrived as a Public Relations Counsel.18

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Hope also detailed that public relations counsel for corporations were largely responsible for keeping the corporation’s name out of the newspapers, and handling image management for an organization that is about to be ensnared in litigation.19 John W. Hill, co-founder of Hill and Knowlton, said in his autobiography, The Making of a Public Relations Man, that public relations work was frequently misunderstood by the public who thought of many practitioners as “‘a slick press agent,’ a ‘hidden persuader,’ or a devious manipulator of ‘dummy fronts.’”20 However, he argued, the reality is that the professionalism of public relations is mixed just like any field of law and medicine. Public relations work also benefitted the corporate image, advancing a pro-business narrative that made corporations have a humanistic identity.21 In examining the corporate public relations efforts since the nineteenth century, the same thing is true. Looking at the application of corporate PR work, it is evident that there are some cases of malfeasance, but much exemplary work. This chapter provides an overview of the public relations research done in the realm of the history of corporations and public relations. The chapter begins with a discussion of the rise of corporations, and how this development influenced the creation of the public relations practice. Next, the chapter discusses the position of public relations within corporate organizations, and the role PR firms played in working for clients in certain well-known PR campaigns. Finally, corporate communication and public relations history are discussed with particular attention paid to how corporate public relations work became an international practice in the late twentieth century with multinational public relations firms operating world-wide.

The Rise of Corporations and the Public Relations Practitioner The growth of the corporation as an entity began as a nineteenth-century phenomenon. Prior to the Industrial Revolution most businesses were small, artisanal businesses that usually were owner-operated. In his historical chart of public relations history, business historian N.S.B. Gras argued that public relations in business could be traced back to the twelfth century in which public relations was expected to help business achieve its goals. Monopolies of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries viewed the public skeptically and wanted them removed from the business process. In the late nineteenth century, Gras argued, public relations and business attitudes toward the public radically changed. During that era, the Wall Street capitalists looked to the public to support business efforts, but had populist pushback on business growth. This led to a departure from the hands-off approach to the public during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to one where the public had to have a level of, at least, tacit support for businesses.22 The creation of corporations created a new reality in society where corporations had certain rights, for example, owning land, bringing lawsuits, hiring individuals, paying taxes, as well as reshaping the labor force, thus inventing a new business class.23 This creation of corporations led to a new structure of

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business. Unlike the smaller owner-operator business models that were common in the eighteenth century, the corporate model created a line and column function of management. Similar to the military line and column, management allowed for the creation of lower-level entry-level workers who were then supervised by middle management who were supervised by executive management.24 Control over workers led to the creation of mid-tier management functions that included functions such as publicity and public relations.25 The creation of corporations ultimately drove costs down for products and increased the demand for middle management who oversaw operations.26 Corporations in this era were also able to have multidimensional aspects to their businesses because travel and communication through telegraph allowed for centralized headquarters that governed local units.27 The growth of corporate structure also had significance for the replication of middle management positions. Once established, middle management tended to replicate itself and was considered an essential part of business success. Managers came and went during this era, but like today they were replaced by people from the ranks of lower-level positions in the company. In fact, the ability to move into an upper management position became a recruitment source for entry-level jobs within a corporation. This led to the professionalization of managers, which became institutionalized, and is apparent in today’s corporate culture. This led to a division between managers and owners, which gave corporations the division between investor, shareholder, executive, manager, and worker.28 Corporations became reoriented under this model to have long-term goals that were driven by dual goals. For managers, the long-term goal of the corporation was continuity, so they could continue to work in their careers for the same employer. For investors, this goal was to make money regardless of the long-term career goals of managers. Stocks became important mechanisms to raise money for businesses, and the stockholders, the owners of corporations, were removed from day-to-day operations.29 These divergent goals led to the creation of continued corporate growth with more workers and materials being used by organizations. This culminated in a shift of corporate impact onto markets, making the corporate model the way goods were sold and marketed to consumers.30 However, this era did have a degree of conflict over the growth of corporations and labor. Small businesses still existed during this era with one-third of the 50 largest manufacturing companies being owned by families.31 Additionally, major players in this corporate growth were the so-called “robber barons” of the Gilded Age and market speculators who affected the boom and bust stock market of the late nineteenth century.32 Railroads, an industry that galvanized corporate growth in the nineteenth century, used bribes and political graft to achieve their business goals.33 During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, labor movements also began to use public relations to gain public support for their cause against corporations. Particularly the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Civic Federation used publicity campaigns to advocate for labor

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issues in the press and in their own publications.34 This reality of corporate history has led some PR historians to point out that the corporate history may not lend the credibility and professional status that many in the PR industry think it does.35 In fact, PR historian Marvin Olasky argues, prior to the corporate growth of the late nineteenth century, public relations was mainly grassroots, with volunteers, not professionals, practicing PR. Corporate growth created a professionalized public relations practice, which, ultimately, changed the profession to one of image management in relation to press coverage.36

Public Relations and the Railroads Business publicity or image management was something that existed in the early nineteenth century when Henry Varnum Poor, the first Secretary of the Union Pacific Railroad and writer for the New York Times, edited the American Railroad Journal (1849–1862) and the Manual of the Railroads of the United States (1868– 1887) to provide information about railroad business that was used by investors.37 Later Poor’s acumen as a business analyst became immortalized in Standards and Poor’s, which he established with his son in 1860. Poor used publicity as a mechanism to bring together owners and managers within the railroads. He used his position as the editor of American Railroad Journal to promote laws requiring accurate disclosure of information by railroad companies. In this sense, Poor may serve as the first public relations, or at least corporate publicity, practitioner in the nineteenth century. However, his approach was unique at the time, given that corporations largely were boom and bust, and received critical press of their handling of expansion, community dangers, and speculation.38 Richard Tedlow, a scholar of American business, viewed public relations work as a derivative of press agentry that existed in nineteenth century in an appropriately entitled chapter “Up from Press Agentry.”39 Prior to the arrival of corporate business in the Progressive Era, the corporate attitude toward the press was summed up in William H. Vanderbilt’s infamous saying, “the public be —[damned]” when asked by two New York Times reporters whether he ran his train lines for public benefit.40 However, as the Progressive Era and muckraking journalists turned more attention to the issues of corporate wealth and inequality within society, this made corporations create a publicity position.41 Part of the attention on corporations and business generally focused on the growth of power.42 Railroads expanded in the 1870s with large amounts of land being acquired through eminent domain. An outgrowth of these complaints about railroads made companies look at public relations as a means to handle community complaints.43 Similarly, public utilities, which were publicprivate partnerships, used public relations to maintain their relationships with customers, local governments, and coverage in the press.44 This creation of corporate models gained traction in several businesses. However, arguably the most significant industry for public relations was the massive railroad expansion of the nineteenth century. These public relations done by railroads

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promoted their expansion in the American West by encouraging workers to migrate to build the railroad infrastructure.45 These public relations efforts were not limited to the American West. In the 1850s, Virginia railroad expansion frequently used celebration special events to promote new railroad construction to quell resentment and fears about industrialization.46 However, early nineteenth-century railroads did not use public relations practitioners as a standalone profession. Instead railroads were involved in volunteer publications and brochures that gave information about railroad services. For instances Rogersville, Tennessee, had a committee that first published “The Railroad Advocate—Conducted by an Association of Gentlemen” on July 4, 1831.47 These types of publications were used to promote the innovation of railroads. The opening of stations also led to more organic railroad PR efforts by reception committees. Olasky states that, in the early nineteenth century, PR efforts did exist that used deception, but those were confined to sales, such as patent medicine. The real manipulation of public opinion would not occur until the introduction of larger corporations. Even figures such as P.T. Barnum were not completely deceptive in that their publicity was often done “with a wink” and an understanding that the public enjoyed Barnum’s over-the-top claims.48 There even is some evidence that there were nineteenth-century standards for persuasion. Hugh Smith stated in a speech before Columbia College Alumni in 1842 that the “ethics of persuasion” required a person to avoid false statements, emotional and prejudicial appeals, and “proscription of those who will not fall in with particular opinions or practices.”49 The essence of pre-corporate nineteenth-century public relations is that volunteerism in the field meant that deception would not occur because of the volunteer’s love for their organization and the ethical principles of the era. PR historian Marvin Olasky argues that railroads were the reason public relations practice began to decline into a deceptive practice. Early railroads did not receive federal funding, and in 1817 President James Madison vetoed a road building law because he believed it was unconstitutional for the federal government to be involved with road building projects.50 By the 1850s, railroads had moved away from pure private enterprise and started to request federal assistance. This created a public backlash in publications such as the American Railroad Journal. However, the Illinois Central Railroad used lobbyists George Billings and Robert Rantoul, Jr. to push for subsidization.51 This increased during the 1860s, particularly during the Civil War when southern Members of Congress were absent. Public-private partnerships with railroads saw government-appointed board of directors. While some railroad owners, such as George Washington Cass, Jr., were opposed to the idea of having public relations work done by professionals, many did. Termed “puffery” by those in the news business, writing flattering accounts of railroads was a standard practice.52 These positive news stories were frequently the result of bribes that railroads made to journalists. Another common practice was “deadheading,” which is a practice in which tickets were given away for free by railroads for positive coverage.53 Olasky argues this practice was actually portrayed as ethical by some in the railroad industry because it gave reporters access to news

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by giving them free access. This deadhead practice was extremely important to PR practitioners for railroads as a strategy to influence public opinion through the press. Olasky cites that William Ackerman, president of Illinois Central Railroad, thought that deadheading with reporters would encourage pro-railroad articles to be published across the nation, which would reduce the chances of the U.S. Supreme Court intervening in their business.54 This was done using a deceptive practice of soliciting colleges and universities to support railroads, and paying professors to write favorable articles concerning railroad regulation.55 Public relations helped sway the railroad industry into joining the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). This led to greater arguments for government regulation, and the press began openly supporting government regulation as a by-product of public interest.56 President Grover Cleveland signed the ICC into law on February 4, 1887.57 Although the practice of pooling (a railroad practice that permitted pooling money of all companies that was then divided between them at a fixed rate) was banned, railroad executives were happy with the new regulations because new regulations were interpreted from a pro-railroad perspective and they were able to create new rates and fares.58 There were two types of pooling in railroads. One was an agreement that allowed for a fixed rate of railroad traffic in a region. The other was a money pool of revenue that was divided up between railroads at a fixed rate. These were practices that were used to support railroad monopolies within certain areas and control prices.59 Railroad public relations developed fast in the 1870s and 1880s with the level of PR practice moving beyond press agentry to government relations and media relations by the 1880s. There was also an obvious shift in the attitude toward public-private partnerships by the 1880s, with the Republican Party platform of 1884 embracing the idea of government intervention in the railroads. However, government involvement with the railroads did bring about the end of the railroad boom, and the railroad companies ended up losing profits from these new regulations. However, what is clear from this era is that public relations was heavily used to change public and industry sentiment about railroad public-private partnerships. There is much criticism of public relations and the railroads in that it set up an unethical practice of public relations because it focused more on the engagement with government in the form of pseudo-lobbying than it did on informing citizens and publics.60

Public Relations and Utilities The telephone and electric utility companies were the next phase of corporate public relations development in the United States. This public relations practice set up as adversaries muckrakers and competitors in order to form a utility monopoly during the early twentieth century. Samuel Insull, who was Thomas Edison’s secretary, is credited with creating much of the core concepts of public utilities. Determined not to have Edison’s inventions threatened by competitors, he was dedicated to the idea of pushing for monopolies on Edison’s work. As the head of

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Chicago Edison, he secured a 50-year electric utility franchise, and he aggressively gathered contracts to purchase electric products, and viewed his push for government regulation as a tradeoff between high rates and complete market control. Insull obviously preferred market security to higher rates, because he felt in the long run a monopoly was better financially than charging higher prices. He argued that competition actually harmed utilities, and as president of the National Electric Light Association (NELA), he created a committee focused on Legislative Policy. Olasky states that Insull used certain tactics to achieve regulations, including tying utility monopolies as a bulwark against socialism, ensuring government regulation was viewed as strict and ensured quality service, and using corporate executives to argue in favor of more government regulations. This was a strategy devised largely because Insull knew that in the United States free trade rather than controlled public-private monopoly was the favored form of business.61 This was a similar strategy employed by Theodore Vail, who, as a member of AT&T’s Board of Directors, argued for decreased competition in the telephone industry. After becoming AT&T’s president in 1907, he was previously president at American Bell in the 1880s, he argued for monopolies based on reduced rates, greater ability to phone people in other cities, using politics to push out competitors in various cities, and advertising and puffery in the press. He believed that price, not government regulation of services, should dictate the market. However, part of the success of a utility relied on its relationship with the public. Vail wrote: All utilities are dependent not only upon the public for support, in that they must have customers for their service, but upon the public good-will and favor, in that, from the public or its representatives, they must have franchises or permits under which they can operate.62 In the early 1900s, the telephone industry was rapidly changing because the patents owned by the company and created by Alexander Graham Bell were expiring, creating more competition for telephone service.63 Olasky claims that utilities followed the strategy of railroads in using the press to curry favor, including hiring writers to place favorable articles in the press, hiring lawyers with government contacts, and sending executives to social and civic organizations to influence opinion leaders. Utility “front groups” began to send out “news releases” to garner public opinion. This was a gradual process because early content was accurate, but after news releases were accepted as fact, then more inaccurate information began to appear. This strategy was used by Illinois Committee on Public Utility Information PR man Bernard J. Mullaney, and, given his success, other managers began using a similar tactic. Another tactic used was utility publicists befriending editors of newspaper. These relationships included giving editors free long-distance service, advertising purchases, and using ghostwriters and reprints from other papers. Utilities even recruited college professors and administrators to serve on committees that promoted a pro-utility viewpoint. Prior to

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Vail, AT&T used the Boston-based company The Publicity Bureau, but under Vail’s leadership James D. Ellsworth was hired in 1908 to conduct publicity for the organization.64 Ellsworth was notable because he used a sophisticated media campaign, including advertising, to promote AT&T. This practice of peddling influence with newspaper editors and using contacts with politicians continued into the 1920s, even though the PR practice initiated by Vail was in decline. It had been replaced with a more nuanced public relations practice created by Arthur W. Page.65 Page, whose father co-founded Doubleday, Page, and Company publishing house and later became U.S. Ambassador to England, was a mediocre student at Harvard who got his start working at Doubleday.66 Working as a propagandist during World War I, Page was hired by AT&T President Walter S. Gifford, as the AT&T Vice President of Public Relations in 1927. Gifford wanted Page to write a book about AT&T, but Page instead suggested a multifaceted approach to image management.67 Instead of using press relationships exclusively to influence public opinion, Page used polling to gage public attitude. He is credited with making public relations in a corporate context a managerial function because of his close relationships with AT&T executives. Media coverage of AT&T also increased under his tenure, and Page is credited with bringing a more ethical form of corporate public relations into existence. In fact, in his honor the Arthur W. Page Society, a group dedicated to corporate communication, promotes the seven Page Principles, which advocate for honesty and dynamic managerial style.68 Page was noted for his ability to gain public confidence in AT&T during the Great Depression when trust in corporations was at an all-time low.69 He advocated for the idea that public relations was best practiced when there was a high level of transparency with the public, especially in the form of corporate publications.70 The prominence and legitimacy corporations give to public relations practice belie a strong criticism of corporate PR. That is, that corporate public relations was used as a mechanism to foster restrictive government regulations that benefit big business by eliminating smaller, startup competitors.71 Corporations turned to public-private partnerships as a means to reduce competition, because these large consolidated corporations were the only organizations that could comply with increased regulations. For example, J.P. Morgan was convinced that a new economic world order was necessary, but because of public support for free market capitalism, businesses needed a public relations strategy that championed public-private partnerships. Ivy Lee, who graduated with an economics degree from Princeton in 1898, knew a lot about trusts. From 1895 to 1904, 3,000 companies had been absorbed by mergers. Lee was an expert on mergers and trusts, with his Princeton yearbook stating, “What he doesn’t know about trusts is not worth knowing.”72 Lee advocated for larger economic units instead of smaller organizations. He also advocated that there needed to be more attention paid to communication with groups, as opposed to individuals, in the corporate context. This combination was the basis of Lee’s “career of telling leaders of the new

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economic order how to merge the new economics with new psychology.”73 Olasky claims that part of the allure of Lee’s tactics was his rooting his work in the truth, which was a departure from the older public relations practice of the nineteenth century. This was a larger strategy to make individuals agree with Lee on “small points,” then he would have them “follow him to his collaborationist conclusions.”74 Lee, along with Dwight Morrow (J.P. Morgan), Otto Kahn (Kuhn-Loeb), and Winthrop Aldrich (Chase National) proposed public relations departments were essential to corporations.75

Corporate Public Relations Becomes “Professionalized” The turn of the twentieth century was also unusual for business because it saw the first recognition of the power of using advertising to promote business. While management was the major change in the corporate creation in the late nineteenth century, major structural changes occurred in businesses. Chain stores began to appear regularly around the 1910s. Mail order businesses also flourished in the 1890s, offering a wide array of goods that were delivered by mail across the United States. This led to mass retail that were able to sell cheap goods to the public. Department stores, such as Wanamaker’s established in 1876, utilized public relations to promote its customer service and special events. These publicity efforts made the public’s relationship to department stores strong for the remainder of the twentieth century, creating the close relationship between it and its customers that led to life-long fidelity.76 In 1911, Scientific American ran an article, “Psychology and Advertising: The Scientific Appeal to Human Nature,” written by Edward Thorndike, an educational psychologist from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. In his article, Thorndike gave five laws for advertising’s relationship with the customer, using a psychological approach: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Know what his [the customer’s] situation is. Know what response you wish to get from him. Know what satisfies or annoys him. Make the connection; do not expect the response to come as a miracle. Other things being equal, make no connection which you will later have to unmake.77

This type of approach to business and customers gave rise to a consumerism in the 1900s, which made corporations even stronger and wealthier than they had ever been in history. This was coupled with a rise in corporate trust by American society, which developed relationships with the corporate image.78 It was during this time that corporations began to institutionalize public relations within the corporate structure. In the nineteenth century, corporations had press agents who worked to advance corporate interests. Railroads were some of the

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earliest adaptors of press agents as advocates for corporations. Men like Remsen Crawford, a press agent for Plant Railway and Steamship System, were typical of corporate press agents. A former journalist for the Atlanta Constitution, Crawford worked as a corporate press agent, handling newsworthy events for his company.79 Later public relations bureaus were created in corporations to provide communication efforts on behalf of corporations. Similar to today, publicity bureaus used their connections with newspapers editors to garner publicity for corporations.80 The man most credited with establishing corporate public relations was Ivy Lee, a Princeton-educated Georgian, who worked for John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (Lee never was directly employed by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. although he indirectly worked for him through Rockefeller businesses).81 He is credited with handling the media fallout from the Ludlow Massacre in 1914, in which 9,000 coal workers went on strike that prompted violence, in which two women and 22 children were killed.82 Lee’s insistence on honesty and fair dealing in the aftermath helped John D. Rockefeller’s organization manage the crisis by implementing changes, including the ability for workers to make redress to management.83 This corporate public relations philosophy of Lee’s was something that was part of the overarching professional values that he advocated. Lee’s famous Declaration of Principles was published in an article in American Magazine by Sherman Morse. The article, entitled “An Awakening in Wall Street: How the Trusts, after Years of Silence, Now Speak through Authorized and Acknowledged Press Agents,” detailed the lives of famous corporate press agents at the time. In the profile of Ivy Lee, there are the detailed Declaration of Principles: “This is not a secret press bureau,” said Lee. “All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news. This is not an advertising agency; if you think any of our matter ought properly to go to your business office, do not use it. Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly, and any editor will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact. Upon inquiry full information will be given to any editor concerning those on whose behalf an article is sent out. In brief our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply to the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning a subject which it is of value and interest to the public to know about.”84 Lee’s approach to public relations and publicity has been heralded for over a century as the first standard for public relations practice.85 Corporate publicity, for Lee, was something rooted in ethical decision-making. In a 1916 address to the Electric Railway Association, Lee said: Publicity must not be thought of as a cloak to look well on the outside of a body deformed and diseased within. It must be looked on rather as a social

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X-ray which shall reveal the bone and the tissue, even the very heart, of the body itself. No one must attempt to adopt publicity or make use of it for his benefit unless he is prepared to take all the consequences. A company cannot sing of its prosperity to security holders and at the same time cry over its poverty to tax appraisers and its workingmen. (Original underlining)86 Lee had a high regard for the public’s ability to understand issues, and a high degree of awareness of what was dishonest. Because of that, Lee advocated for organizations to be honest with the public and also to be self-aware when dealing with corporate issues.87 However, even in Lee’s time, the perception of the practice of public relations was not without criticism, particularly by the press.88 By the 1920s, public relations practitioners, though they were not yet called that, were established in corporations. Publicity bureaus and press agents were part of the professionalization of public relations in the early 1900s.89 By the end of World War I, corporations were using publicity agents to conduct corporate communications. These publicity agents were the replacement for press agents whose reputation had become tainted by the press and their unbridled efforts at publicity.90 Most of the time publicity agents worked with newspapers on stories about corporations. Publicity agents worked for well-known U.S. companies such as Western Union, Mutual Life Insurance, AT&T, John Deere, and Dupont.91 The 1920s were also significant because this was the time of the growth of independent public relations agencies that took on a variety of clients, mainly corporate. Public relations agencies did exist prior to the 1920s with The Publicity Bureau, a Boston-based PR firm, being established by George V.S. Michaelis, Herbert Small, and Thomas O. Marvin sometime around 1900.92 James Ellsworth, later of AT&T, joined the firm soon after its founding.93 Other firms were founded in the pre-World War I era, including Thomas R. Shipp and Co. in Washington, DC, Smith and Walmer in Washington, DC, Hamilton Wright Organization, Inc., in San Francisco, and the firm Parker & Lee in New York.94 Some of these firms were short-lived, such as Parker & Lee, but others, such as Pendleton Dudley and Associates founded in 1909 and finally closing in 1988, lasted for decades.95 In the 1920s, more public relations firms were established. Ivy Lee & Associates, founded in 1919, was a well-recognized public relations firm taking on clients that included some well-known public relations practitioners, such as Daniel T. Pierce and W.W. Harris, in addition to Lee’s brother Wideman Lee, Jr.96 Lee’s firm was significant to the growth of agency public relations because of its success representing high-profile clients such as Pennsylvania Railroad, Bethlehem Steel, and the Rockefeller family.97 It was in this firm that Lee used many of the innovative techniques he is credited with popularizing. John W. Hill opened a public relations firm in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1927 where his clients included the Union Trust Company. When Union Trust failed during the Great Depression, Hill took on one of its former publicity directors, Don Knowlton, as a partner,

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thus forming Hill and Knowlton.98 Other independent PR agencies were formed in this era. John Price Jones, a former journalist who worked in higher education fundraising, formed the John Price Jones Corporation.99 Harry Bruno, having turned down a job from Ivy Lee, began his own agency, focusing on aviation. He later merged with R. Blythe forming R.R. Blythe and Associates in 1924.100 It was during the 1920s that Edward Bernays’s independent agency began making an impact on corporate public relations in New York. During the 1920s, another professional title was emerging: public relations counsel. According to his autobiography, Edward Bernays said that he grappled with what exactly he was doing as a career in the 1910s and 1920s.101 Public relations as a term had been used by utility companies since the nineteenth century, but Bernays claimed he had never heard of the term and that it was not used in the popular press. After opening his New York office in 1919, Bernays, along with his wife Doris Fleischman and briefly with J. Mitchel Thorsen,102 created the term “counsel on public relations” around 1920. This prompted some criticism from the trades and press, but Bernays ultimately promoted the concept of public relations counsel in letters to the editor, most famously in Printer’s Ink in an article entitled “The Press Agent Has His Day.”103 In 1948, Eric Goldman published Two-Way Street: The Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel, which was a book about public relations counsel.104 Later, inspired by the success of Walter Lippmann’s book Public Opinion, Bernays wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion, which discussed at length the role of public relations counsel. In 1927, Bernays again promoted the idea of public relations counsel in an article in Editor & Publisher’s Yearbook, entitled “Counsel on Public Relations—A Definition.”105 In the article he emphasized that a public relations counsel focused on crafting public opinion, client counseling, and media relations.106 It is important to note that Edward Bernays was promoting something that was much narrower than what contemporary practitioners think of as public relations. For him, public relations was a social scientific approach to publicity and communication. It is epitomized in his pseudo-events, such as the famous Torches of Freedom for the American Tobacco Company, held during the 1929 New York Easter Parade, where women marched down Fifth Avenue freely smoking cigarettes (a social taboo at the time).107 Although the effectiveness and impact of this event have been questioned, the event itself demonstrated how Bernays saw public relations counsel. It was someone who understood social science and psychology, in this case, Freudian ideas about freedom and masculinity, and he used this to create attitudinal change.108 Bernays worked on a variety of high-profile campaigns during the 1920s, including campaigns for breakfasts, luggage, hair nets, Ivory Soap, and the Light’s Golden Jubilee in 1929.109 The creation of public relations counsel was significant for the professionalization of the field of public relations because it became a label that demonstrated a certain level of sophistication of practice. Ivy Lee, writing in 1928, described public relations as something that went beyond corporate publicity, but included ethical decision-making in which he looked at the “social effect” of corporate behavior.110

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However, by the 1930s, corporate public relations efforts were well established, but faced a new obstacle because of the Great Depression. Because there was a large anti-business attitude in light of the stock market crash in 1929, corporations turned to public relations to help them keep goodwill with various publics. This did not mean that public relations firms did not exist or even flourish during the decade. In 1930, Carl Byior, who once had worked for the infamous Creel Committee, founded Carl Byoir and Associates to promote tourism in Cuba.111 However, the skepticism of corporate public relations was significant during that era. In 1938, S.H. Walker and Paul Sklar wrote about public relations and business in a book entitled, Business Finds Its Voice.112 The book is a series of interviews with public relations practitioners that was originally published in Harper’s Magazine. Part of the corporate public relations movement at that time was to combat what was viewed as a takeover from the federal government reorganizing the economy.113 Part of the success of public relations practice in this era was due to the new technology of radio, which was used to create publicity for corporations and their products.114 Commenting on the use of public relations and business, Walker and Sklar wrote: “The process through which the views of business find their way into the news and editorial columns is made enormously more efficient by the various firms of ‘public-relations counsel’ and by the public-relations departments of big corporations.”115 The concern with business and the government in the 1930s was pronounced. In the May 1937 edition of Public Relations, a trade magazine published by Edward Pryor that only had one issue, James Salvage, the Director of Public Relations for the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote that public relations work by businesses had been the victim of “propaganda” of the left.116 By the end of World War II, corporate public relations was booming with the growth of American business. However, business public relations, while established, was not yet recognized as a profession. In his 1948 book on public relations, Two-Way Street: The Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel, Eric Goldman lamented that, while recognized as a business necessity, public relations counsel had not reached the professionalized respect it deserved in modern business.117 However, there is evidence that public relations as a field boomed in the post-war world. In 1945, N.S.B. Gras, a Harvard Business School historian who is credited with inventing the business history discipline, wrote that public relations had undergone major shifts.118 In defining the modern public relations practice of the 1940s, Gras argued that PR was part of almost every type of business. His definition of the field was broad, and he argued that public relations belonged in a corporate context especially since the business cycle, a graphical chart explaining the lifecycle of a business, was introduced in 1907.119 In the 1940s, Gras argued that public relations had changed from “the public be pleased” to actually educating and informing the public on a full range of issues.120 The profession of corporate public relations changed as well with the proliferation of business school graduates in the post-World War II era. He also noted that lawyers were emerging in non-legal fields, such as business public relations and executive

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positions, citing the work of Myron Taylor and Irving Olds, two lawyers who were executives for U.S. Steel.121 The recognition of public relations as a profession was also more fully developed. The Public Relations Society of America was established in 1947. Gras points out that there began to be professional listings and trades specifically designed for public relations professionals such as Public Relations News, The Public Opinion Quarterly, and the newly published directory, The Public Relations Directory and Yearbook, which contained 6,000 names.122 During World War II, corporate public relations practice focused on themes of community and patriotism.123 After the war the public relations field grew exponentially. Chicago-based public relations firm Edelman was opened in 1952 by Daniel J. Edelman,124 and Burson-Marsteller opened a year later in 1953 in New York. Public relations grew as a field both corporate and in-house. Internationally agencies expanded. Hill & Knowlton opened their first international office in Geneva in 1954.125 Burson-Marsteller opened its European office in 1961, and later PR pioneer Teresa Dorn became the President/CEO of Burson-Marsteller Europe in 1994.126 By the 1960s, PR firms like Hill & Knowlton had major corporate clients, such as Xerox, IBM, and AT&T.127 Women and minorities had become a larger presence within the public relations field since the 1950s. For instance, Jane Stewart became President of Group Attitudes Corporation, which was a subsidiary of Hill & Knowlton.128 Another corporate communicator, Betsey Plank, namesake of the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations, served as Executive Vice President at Daniel J. Edelman, Inc, and Director of Public Relations Planning at AT&T.129 Public relations post-World War II also underwent dramatic practical changes. Advertorials, a type of placed advertisement that appears to be an article, began to be used in the 1970s by Mobil Oil.130 Corporate public relations also waded into many of the cultural and political issues, such as Mobil Oil engaging with U.S. policy during the Energy Crisis in the 1970s.131 This expansion and awareness of corporate public relations had led to criticism. Sociologists David Miller and William Dinan argue that since the inception of corporate public relations after World War I, public relations practice has been used effectively by corporations to subvert democratic ideals to promote corporate values of consumerism and profit.132

Conclusion The practice of corporate public relations takes many different forms. Some say that corporate public relations has been used by big business to manipulate the minds of society. In this view, public relations is a communication practice that lies under the surface to influence people’s thoughts, attitudes, and, most importantly, behavior.133 Examples include some of the most infamous uses of public relations in history, particularly using public relations to prop up a capitalist system in the 1930s and reinforcing a market-driven solution in the 1980s.134 This perspective looks at large international public relations firms such as Weber Shandwick, Fleishman Hillard, Ketchum, Ogilvy, and Porter Novelli, to name a few, as the “global players” of

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public relations, and ergo corporate dominance.135 This cynical view of public relations is something that mirrors many of the criticisms of public relations practice. However, this type of view does not take into account the way corporate public relations has been developed and implemented over the years. Like all professions, corporate public relations has some bad actors. However, in the history of public relations there is a larger section in which public relations practice, specifically corporate PR, sought to create ethical communication. What the history of corporate public relations shows is an evolving profession that grew in complexity as corporate structure, communication, and technology became more sophisticated. The criticisms of corporations, notably those criticisms about unfairness toward competition, are up for debate, and extend to public relations practice precisely because PR was such an instrumental part of the growth of business in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Corporate public relations history is also a history that is rooted mainly in the United States, and because of that, it lends itself to the larger critique of non-U.S. national historians that the Americanist perspective of PR history is privileged. In fact, if historians only look to corporate PR history as PR history writ large, the American perspective is privileged. However, it is also true that the American corporate PR experience was a major force in defining and developing the field. It shows how institutional public relations became ingrained in the structure of capitalist society, and how the profession became the standalone field it is in the twenty-first century.

Discussion Questions     

Why do you think that PR history puts so much attention on corporate public relations? What type of historiographic issues does that cause? How does corporate public relations work compared to other areas of PR, e.g., politics, non-profit, religious, entertainment? Who are the primary figures in corporate public relations history? How should their contributions be included in the larger narrative of public relations history? How would you compare the early corporate public relations history to that after World War I? Did the field of corporate public relations become more professionalized? How does corporate public relations history influence modern concepts of public relations? Is the definition of twenty-first-century PR rooted in corporate identity?

Notes 1 Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955). 2 Karla Gower, “U.S. Corporate Public Relations in the Progressive Era,” Journal of Communication Management 12 (2008): 305–318, 315–316.

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3 Cayce Myers, “Reconsidering the Corporate Narrative in U.S. PR History: A Critique of Alfred Chandler’s Influence on PR Historiography,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 676–683, 681–682; Karen Miller, “U.S. Public Relations History: Knowledge and Limitations,” Communication Yearbook 23 (2000): 381–420, 413–415. 4 Ibid. 5 Scott Cutlip, The Unseen Power: Public Relations. A History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), 57–60. 6 Ibid., 55–56. 7 Ibid., 108. 8 Ibid., 527. 9 Ibid., 565–568. 10 Ibid., 196–197. 11 Harold Burson, The Business of Persuasion (New York: Rosetta Books, 2017), 128–129, 192–207. 12 Ofield Dukes, Ofield: Autobiography of Public Relations Man Ofield Dukes (New York: PR Museum Press, 2017). 13 Museum of Public Relations, “Inez Kaiser: Founder of the First African American Female-Owned PR Firm,” updated July 23, 2015. Retrieved from www.prmuseum. org/blog/2015/7/23/inez-kaiser-founder-of-the-first-african-american-female-ow ned-pr-firm. 14 Museum of Public Relations, “The Rise of Muriel Fox and Feminism,” updated March 8, 2016. Retrieved from www.prmuseum.org/blog/2016/3/8/cm q4tiv2wgzwfdragigfy9btc0jyrn. 15 Museum of Public Relations, “Barbara W. Hunter: The First Woman to Own and Run a PR Firm in the United States,” updated July 22, 2015. Retrieved from www. prmuseum.org/blog/2015/7/23/barbara-w-hunter-the-first-woman-to-run-a-pr-firm -in-the-us. 16 Elisabeth Perry, “Belle Moskowitz,” Jewish Women’s Archive. Retrieved from http s://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/moskowitz-belle. Moskowitz is a figure who is also important in political public relations because of her work for the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith. Moskowitz’s work in corporate PR focused heavily on workers’ rights, and included workplace grievances, and writing advisory materials on childrearing for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. 17 Constance Hope, Publicity Is Broccoli (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1941). 18 Ibid., 19. 19 Ibid. 20 John Hill, The Making of a Public Relations Man (Chicago: NTC Publishing Co., 1993), 1. 21 Nneka Logan, “Corporate Voice and Ideology: An Alternate Approach to Understanding Public Relations History,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 661–668, 667. 22 N.S.B. Gras, “Shifts in Public Relations,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 19 (1945): 97–148, 118–119. 23 Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 1; Alfred Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapter in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1962), 24–28. 24 Ibid., 2–3. 25 Marvin Olasky, Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987), 15–23. 26 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 7. 27 Ibid., 8. 28 Ibid., 9.

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29 Ibid., 236. 30 Ibid., 11. 31 Phillip Scranton, Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 11. 32 Richard John, “Robber Barons Redux: Antimonopoly Reconsidered,” Enterprise and Society 13 (2012): 1–38, 32–38. 33 Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011). 34 Vilja Hulden, “Employer Organizations’ Influence on the Progressive-Era Press,” Journalism History 38 (2012): 43–54, 44–49. 35 Myers, “Reconsidering the Corporate Narrative in U.S. PR History,” 681–682; Miller, “U.S. Public Relations History,” 413–415. 36 Marvin Olasky, “A Reappraisal of 19th-Century Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 11 (1985) 3–12, 3. 37 Alfred Chandler, “Henry Varnum Poor: Business Analyst,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 2 (1950): 180–202, 180. 38 Ibid., 196; John, “Robber Barons Redux,” 32–38. 39 Richard Tedlow, Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900– 1950 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1979), 25–57. 40 New York Times, “Vanderbilt in the West,” October 9, 1887, p. 1. 41 Kevin Stoker and Brad Rawlins, “The ‘Light’ of Publicity in the Progressive Era: From Searchlight to Flashlight,” Journalism History 30 (2005): 177–188, 185–186. 42 Alan Raucher, Public Relations and Business, 1900–1929 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968). 43 Ibid., 33–46. 44 Ibid., 47–63. 45 Andy Piasecki, “Blowing the Railroad Trumpet: Public Relations on the American Frontier,” Public Relations Review 26 (2000): 53–65. 46 Nneka Logan, “The Rise of the Railroad in Virginia: A Historical Analysis of the Emergence of Corporate Public Relations in the United States,” Public Relations Inquiry 7 (2018): 5–23, 15–19. 47 Olasky, Corporate Public Relations, 11. 48 Ibid., 12. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 15. 51 Ibid., 16. 52 Ibid., 19. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 20. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 27. 57 Ibid., 30. 58 Ibid., 31. 59 Ibid., 18. 60 Marvin Olasky, “Public Relations vs. Private Enterprise: An Enlightening History Which Raises Some Basic Questions,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1985): 6–13, 8–9. 61 Olasky, Corporate Public Relations, 33–45. 62 Theodore Vail, “Public Utilities and Public Policy,” Atlantic Monthly (1913): 307– 319, 312. 63 George Griswold, “How AT&T Public Relations Policies Developed,” The Public Relations Quarterly (Fall 1967): 7–16, 7. 64 Ibid., 8. 65 Olasky, Corporate Public Relations, 33–45.

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66 Noel Griese, “He Walked in the Shadows: Public Relations Counsel Arthur W. Page,” Public Relations Quarterly (Fall 1976): 8–15, 9. 67 Griswold, “How AT&T Public Relations Policies Developed,” 12. 68 Arthur W. Page Society, “The Page Principles.”. Retrieved from https://page.org/ site/the-page-principles (accessed December 9, 2019). 69 Cheryl Lambert and Abra Landau, “Positioning AT&T: A Rhetorical Analysis of Arthur W. Page’s Speeches,” Public Relations Inquiry 4 (2015): 201–222, 201; Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Business (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1998), 203–248. 70 Arthur Page, Bell Telephone System (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1941), v; Griswold, “How AT&T Public Relations Policies Developed,” 13. 71 Olasky, Corporate Public Relations, 45–47. 72 Ibid., 47. 73 Ibid., 49. 74 Ibid., 50. 75 Ibid., 50. 76 Ronald Fullerton, “Art of Public Relations: U.S. Dept. Stores, 1876–1923,” Public Relations Review 16 (1990): 68–79, 77–78. 77 Edward Thorndike, “Psychology and Advertising: The Scientific Appeal to Human Nature,” Scientific American, September 16, 1911, 250. 78 Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul, 21–47. 79 Karen Russell and Cayce Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century U.S. Press Agent,” Public Relations Review 45 (2019): 246–257, 249–250. 80 Cayce Myers, “Reconsidering Early U.S. Public Relations Institutions: An Analysis of Publicity and Information Bureaux 1891–1918,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 766–775, 769. 81 Scott Cutlip, Fundraising in the United States: Its Role in America’s Philanthropy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 35. 82 Ray Hiebert, Courtier to the Crowd: Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations in America (1966, reprinted New York: PR Museum Press, 2017), 142. 83 Ibid., 144–148. 84 Sherman Morse, “An Awakening in Wall Street: How the Trusts after Years of Silence, Now Speak through Authorized and Acknowledged Press Agents,” American Magazine 62 (1906): 457–463, 460. 85 Hiebert, Courtier to the Crowd, 80–81. 86 Ivy Lee, Publicity: Some of the Things It Is and Is Not (New York: Industries Publishing Company, 1925), 44–45. 87 Ibid., 45. 88 Lynn Zoch, Dustin Supa, and Debra Van Tuyll, “The Portrayal of Public Relations in the Era of Ivy Lee Through the Len of the New York Times,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 723–732, 728–730. 89 Russell and Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” 249– 250; Myers, “Reconsidering Early U.S. Public Relations Institutions.” 90 Cayce Myers, “Early U.S. Corporate Public Relations: Understanding the ‘Publicity Agent’ in American Corporate Communications,” American Journalism 32 (2015): 412–433, 419. 91 Ibid., 420. 92 Cutlip, The Unseen Power, 10. 93 Ibid., 10–11. 94 Ibid., 31, 37. 95 Ibid., 92. 96 Ibid., 115.

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97 98 99 100 101 102 103

104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

Raucher, Public Relations and Business, 93–96. Hill, The Making of a Public Relations Man, 33. Raucher, Public Relations and Business, 106–107. Ibid., 109. Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 287–88. Raucher, Public Relations and Business, 104. Edward Bernays, “The Press Agent Has His Day,” Printer’s Ink, February 26, 1920, 107– 108. In his autobiography, Biography of an Idea, Bernays on page 289 refers to this article as “The Press Agent Has His Say,” but the printed copy said “Day” not “Say.” Using a subheading quoting the Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 50 verse 2, which tells of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah’s proclamation that the Jews were freed under the rule of the Babylonian Empire, one can only assume that Bernays used this quote to emphasize his work was the large defense of public relations work to advertising agents. Eric Goldman, Two-Way Street: The Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel (Boston: Bellman Publishing Co. 1948). Edward Bernays, “Counsel on Public Relations—A Definition,” Editor & Publisher, January 29, 1927, 116. Ibid. Bernays, Biography of an Idea, 386–387. Vanessa Murphree, “Edward Bernays’s 1929 ‘Torches of Freedom’ March: Myths and Historical Significance,” American Journalism 32 (2015): 258–281. Raucher, Public Relations and Business, 105–106. Ivy Lee, Mr. Lee’s Publicity Book: A Citizen’s Guide to Public Relations (New York: PR Museum Press, 2017). Cutlip, The Unseen Power, 531–588. S.H. Walker and Paul Sklar, Business Finds Its Voice: Management’s Effort to Sell the Business Idea to the Public (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938). Ibid., 5. Ibid., 24–27. Ibid., 25. James Salvage, “The Battle of Propaganda: Left versus Right,” Public Relations 1 (May 1937), 6. Goldman, Two-Way Street, 23. Gras, “Shifts in Public Relations,” 118–119. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 118. Ibid., 123. Ibid., 101. Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul, 312–356. Edelman, “A Storied History.” Retrieved from www.edelman.com/about-us/ourhistory. (accessed December 9, 2019). Hill, The Making of a Public Relations Man, 144. Natalia Rodrígues-Salcedo and Beatriz Gómez-Baceiredo, “A Herstory of Public Relations: Teresa Dorn, from Scott Cutlip to Burson-Marsteller Europe (1974– 1995),” Journal of Public Relations Research 29 (2017): 16–37, 16, 20. Karen Miller, The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 169. Karen Miller, “Woman, Man, Lady, Horse: Jane Stewart, Public Relations Executive,” Public Relations Review 23 (1997): 249–269. The Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations, “Betsey Plank—First Lady of Public Relations.” Retrieved from http://plankcenter.ua.edu/about/betsy-plank/ (accessed December 9, 2019).

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130 Burton St. John, “Conveying the Sense-Making Corporate Persona: The Mobil Oil ‘Observations’ Columns, 1975–1980,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 692–699, 697–698. 131 Vanessa Murphree and James Aucoin, “The Energy Crisis and the Media: Mobil Oil Corporation’s Debate with the Media 1972–1983,” American Journalism 27 (2010): 7–30, 23–26. 132 David Miller and William Dinan, A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power (London: Pluto Press, 2008). 133 Ibid., 10. 134 Ibid., 50–66, 67–77. 135 Ibid., 111.

8 ENTERTAINMENT AND THE CREATION OF THE PR PROFESSIONAL

By the late nineteenth century, there was a constellation of public relations professionals who used various professional monikers: press agents, publicity agents, and publicists. Part of the reason for these changes is that each sector of practice focused on different types of clients. Compounding this era’s issues of professionalism was the role of entertainment within the industry. Then, entertainment was a huge sector of what would become PR. However, at that time, entertainment promotions had a mixed reputation. On the one hand, the entertainment industry received a lot of media attention because of publicityfocused communicators. On the other hand, entertainment publicity was viewed as less prestigious and ethically challenged. This was compounded by the fact that corporate public relations was emerging as a necessary part of any successful business. Entertainment publicity and corporate publicity coexisted, and at time seem related. What was different were the labels press agents, publicity agent, and publicist. Entertainment public relations is one of the most controversial areas of public relations history. It raises questions about what public relations is, and whether certain public relations-type work, such as publicity, really constitutes public relations at all. Compounding this issue of entertainment public relations is the view that entertainment public relations is really the genesis of PR practice. The infamous figure of P.T. Barnum, the nineteenth-century circus promoter known for self-promotion and side-shows, is the forerunner to modern public relations practice. However, Barnum is not the originator of public relations, nor is he a figure that should be eliminated from PR’s historiography. He, like entertainment public relations, is part of a larger story of public relations practice, and the various ways it has constituted itself in various sectors.

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This chapter covers entertainment public relations by looking at four major areas of public relations practice: publicity, press agentry, publicists, and publicity agents. These three areas of public relations work are frequently misunderstood, and maligned by PR history (particularly those that privilege the corporate view). However, what this chapter shows is these areas of public relations work, though controversial throughout history, are an important part of public relations development and history. These types of practice do not pre-date public relations, nor are they proto-public relations or antecedents. Instead they represent the way PR was conducted in various historical eras, and they all have a common thread of media relations, relationship management, and advocacy for clients.

Publicity: A Short History of a Misunderstood Word Publicity in public relations practice is somewhat controversial because publicity is typically not thought of as relationship management. Under the four models of public relations (see Chapter 2), publicity is unidirectional, and represents the type of communication that is viewed by many as unethical public relations practice because it focuses on messaging that is purely beneficial to the sender.1 Edward Bernays was probably the biggest advocate for differentiating publicity from public relations. In his writings, Bernays said that prior to his establishment of public relations counsel in 1920, that his work was largely publicity.2 That is important, because Bernays’s pre-1920 communication work was unidirectional, and largely associated with entertainment.3 For Bernays, publicity meant that the practitioner only sought positive media attention for the client. For Bernays, and for many PR histories that followed, publicity was a concept rooted in the unethical practice of public relations work. Because publicity work was closely aligned with entertainment, the effect was that entertainment PR was somewhat downgraded in historical importance and ethics. Publicity work, as such an important part of the nineteenth century, meant that PR as a field was in a type of perpetual self-improvement that required continual reassessment and ethical analysis. This resulted in many of the perceptions of public relations practice today; a view that PR is moving upward from a low beginning. However, publicity as a concept was largely defined by Bernays in order to establish the public relations counsel as truly distinct. Scholars argue that Bernays wanted to situate himself as the father of public relations. Perhaps this distinction between publicity and public relations served that purpose. In his 1965 autobiography, Bernays said that his first attempt to re-name what he did post-World War I resulted in “publicity director,” but that the name was too specific because it connoted that the work resulted only in publicity for clients rather than counsel.4 In his 1952 book, Public Relations, Bernays emphasized that publicity was a “one-way street” and that public relations was a “two-way street,” emphasizing that publicity was less complex and less ethical than PR practice.5

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In 1952, Bernays’s book Public Relations contained a long section that focused on the historical development of public relations. In it, Bernays creates what would become a familiar narrative in public relations history. However, his handling of publicity and its relationship to entertainment was particularly impactful because it created a narrative that publicity was used by entertainment figures to set up free press coverage to bypass advertising. Bernays claimed that as long ago as the early nineteenth century, during the partisan press era, publicity was obtained by “free puffs” or “deadhead courtesies,” which were essentially bribes, typically in the form of free perks, made to editors and reporters for favorable stories.6 Publicity was made more accessible by the penny press in the United States, which needed stories to increase subscriptions and newspaper purchases. It was in this environment of nineteenth-century publicity that one of the most infamous entertainment figures emerged: P.T. Barnum. His role within public relations history is closely tied to his use of inaccurate information and stunts to obtain free publicity. Even in Bernays’s history of public relations, Barnum is portrayed as a nefarious figure who was known for the maxim, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”7 Public relations historian Scott Cutlip in the second edition of Effective Public Relations, co-authored with Allen Center, and published in 1958, also placed Barnum in the role of a pioneer of publicity, and associated him with the press agentry of the nineteenth century.8 This discussion of Barnum in the realm of publicity and press agentry of the nineteenth century elevated him to being the infamous forefather of public relations practice. However, the description of Barnum as an unethical press agent and publicity seeker belies the much more complex history of nineteenth-century publicity and of Barnum himself. Barnum’s publicity success was in part because he understood journalism; he had once worked as a journalist and published a newspaper, The Herald of Freedom, which criticized religious figures in New England.9 In fact, he was sued soon after starting the paper in 1831 for accusing a deacon of usury in one of his articles. Barnum was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to 60 days in jail, and his supporters threw him a party and parade upon his release.10 The most seminal events in Barnum’s career for public relations history were his staged events and publicity-seeking side-shows. Among them was Joice Heth, the 161-year-old nanny to George Washington, who was later discovered to be only in her eighties upon her death. Her publicity, which was handled by Barnum and his associate Levi Lyman, used various tactics, including writing letters to newspapers attacking her credibility, as a method to generate publicity and $1,500 a week in revenue for the side-show.11 Barnum was known to use press agents, most infamously Rufus Wilmot Griswold and Richard F. Hamilton, for his promotions.12 Barnum did more than just promote circus side-shows with dubious honesty. He used the press and his notoriety to promote himself. For instance, in 1858, he gave a lecture “Art of Money-Getting,” that was to a standing room-only crowd in London’s St. James’s Hall.13 He also staged grand openings, such as the Barnum’s American Museum in New York City, which included publicity tactics

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such as paying a man to move bricks then charging patrons to watch him work.14 Barnum was not alone in his quest for publicity, many nineteenth-century sideshows used sensational publicity. “Buffalo Bill” Cody also used publicity and numerous press agents, such as Ned Buntline, Prentiss Ingraham, and John Burke, to promote his western shows.15 What is important for public relations history is that publicity-making went hand-in-hand with the growth of the popular press. This media relations element to publicity made it an important aspect of early public relations. These figures were well known and their publicity frequently took the form of a spectacle. Criticism of their work, however, revolves around the ethics of their deceptive practices, like that of the Joice Heth exhibitions. Scott Cutlip and Allen Center’s Effective Public Relations associated Barnum with press agentry, which led to that term and entertainment public relations being heavily associated with dishonesty; an opinion that is common even today.16 The historical truth about publicity is that it was a type of practice that was used by many organizations in the nineteenth century. Railroads, department stores, and manufacturers all used publicity efforts to influence public opinion about their organizations. For instance, the Pacific Railroad offered free trips to promote a new line from New York to San Francisco.17 In fact, railroad publicity was an important aspect in fostering goodwill between citizens and the publicprivate partnerships that allowed railroads to exist.18 Even businesses incorporated publicity efforts into their own structures, with many corporations creating publicity bureaus during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently to stem the tide of criticism generated from the Progressive Era muckrackers.19 These business publicity bureaus used the knowledge of how news was created and used their contacts with editors to receive favorable press coverage.20 The career of the publicity agent was also created sometime around the early twentieth century. Although some publicity agents worked in entertainment, frequently these agents worked for corporate organizations to gain favorable coverage in the press.21 Even corporate publicity in the early twentieth century was tied to the larger, nobler, idea of transparency within corporate work that had been argued for by President Theodore Roosevelt.22 Somewhere in the historical literature, publicity work became equated with entertainment, almost exclusively. Part of the reason for this is because of the work of Barnum, but also the association with him and other attention-seeking figures with their unethical promotions. However, what is not known, and perhaps will never be known, is how the public perceived these communications. Did they think they were real, or were they willingly part of the gag? While this is not something modern history can explore, historians (seem to) take the side that deceptive communication produces disinformation in the mind of the public. It is this belief that casts this area of public relations history, and those who are associated with it, in a bad light. It is this criticism of early entertainment that created perhaps the most criticized purveyor of PR practice—the press agent.

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Press Agents and Entertainment The most maligned and misunderstood figure in public relations history is the press agent. Their craft is largely considered an unethical, debased form of communication practice, which led to many of the criticisms of entertainment public relations. However, in examining press agents, not only are they not solely working for entertainment clients, they are, in many instances, working within the boundaries of modern concepts of public relations ethics.23 Press agents were essentially media relations professionals whose expertise was managing a client’s image in the press, primarily by gaining press attention for the person or organization. Their tactics are frequently characterized as unethical because some publicity seekers, notably in entertainment, used stunts and pseudo-events to garner press attention.24 The issue with press agentry, however, is that historical records show that it is not nearly that simplistic. Rather, press agentry operated simultaneously in multiple sectors, and publicity was only part of the press agent’s craft.25 The root of press agentry’s association with entertainment and unethical communication practices can be traced to Cutlip and Center’s characterization of them in Effective Public Relations. In the chapter on press agentry, Cutlip and Center associate press agents with P.T. Barnum, although they note that press agentry was first mentioned in 1868 for John Robinson’s Circus and Menagerie.26 Press agentry, however, was largely associated with P.T. Barnum, especially within the context of the four models of public relations. The press agentry model advocated that public relations done by press agents was in fact unethical because it used disinformation.27 Cutlip and Center credited press agents with expanding into multiple fields, but argued their exploits earned them more criticism from editors. This suspicion of press agent’s methods and motives ultimately made them lose credibility among the press.28 Press agentry is not such a neat definition. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, press agents worked in a variety of fields, including entertainment, railroads, politics, and social organizations, such as gun and kennel clubs.29 However, press agents were most likely representing entertainment clients, notably theater, at the turn of the twentieth century. Theatrical press agents mostly worked promoting theaters, shows, and individual talent. Singers and opera stars were frequently clients of these press agents. Press agents, however, did exhibit some sophistication in their approaches to handling various publics for the maximum turnout for a show. Prominent figures in the late nineteenth century had press agents, including Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, John Phillip Sousa, and Lord Byron.30 According to a 1903 Town and Country magazine article, even debutantes had press agents to help them promote special events, such as engagements to the press.31 Other fields, such as circuses and fairs, also had press agents, whose work mirrored a combination of public relations and advertising.32 Press agents also were not limited to working for famous or high-profile people. Press agents worked for a variety of lower-profile figures, such as people who wanted to break into show

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business, similar to the way a modern-day publicist or talent agent would work.33 Entertainment press agents even dealt with certain issues that affected the entertainment industry. For instance, in 1904, the Washington Post wrote how Barnum and Bailey press agent Whiting Allen detected a ticket fraud ring, where counterfeit tickets were given in lieu of real tickets to storekeepers supporting the circus.34 Press agents were employed outside of entertainment as well, frequently in civic organizations, corporations, political groups, and churches. In fact, church press agents represent an interesting role because their activities were not supposed to focus on proselytizing the faith, but instead the focus was on recruiting members.35 Railroad press agents worked similar to their entertainment counterparts trying to garner positive press attention for their organizations. Their work was frequently well paid, and their position within the organization was viewed as important. Remsen Crawford, an Atlanta-based press agent working for the Plant Railway and Steamship System in 1896, is typical of this railroad press agent. He was a former journalist working for The Atlanta Constitution, and, once hired as press agent, he worked closely with the Plant Railway and Steamship System’s advertising department.36 J.P. Morgan also employed a press agent, George W. Perkins, who had the job of keeping the press at bay.37 Press agentry is not as clearly defined as some public relations histories have argued, nor is it a practice exclusively associated with entertainment or the likes of P.T. Barnum. The takeaway about entertainment press agents is that they were part of a larger profession that spanned multiple types of organizations. Their role was in reaction to the growing press of the nineteenth century, and the publicity that they sought for clients was linked to the recognition that media attention and public opinion were valuable to organizations. However, the denigration of press agents and entertainment press agentry is partly the fault of historians themselves, who wrote about press agentry in negative ways. Interestingly, public relations history is critical of certain figures like Edward Bernays for writing self-serving accounts of PR development. However, in the case of the press agent, it is the textbook, Effective Public Relations, written by Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, not Bernays, who seemed to cast press agentry, particularly that of entertainment, as a negative form of PR practice.38

Publicity Agents and Publicists Contemporaneously with press agents yet two other forms of entertainment public relations professionals exist—the publicist and the publicity agent. Similar to press agents, these professionals sought publicity for clients, and had a job whose primary role was press relations. These professionals had a variety of clients, and frequently came from journalistic backgrounds. However, unlike press agents, there has been little historical attention paid to their work, which is why they are not as maligned. Despite the relatively understudied area of these PR professionals, they do provide some insight into why public relations was so heavily criticized, especially the PR done in the early years of the twentieth century.

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Publicity agents appeared at the turn of the twentieth century, somewhat in response to the negative connotations given to press agentry. Publicity agents spanned various sectors of public relations practice: corporate, non-profit, civic, and entertainment. Their role was to provide publicity for a specific organization or person. For instance, publicity agents for corporations acted like modern media relations professionals. They sometimes coordinated with newspaper reporters about stories involving a business. Sometimes this publicity agent role was deemed to be essential for the press because they served as a conduit for information. However, sometimes publicity agents were viewed as managing the press by providing limited, highly positive information about an organization. Large organizations, including Western Union, AT&T, DuPont, and Henry Ford, had publicity agents working for them. Particular industries, such as banking and financial institutions, also made use of publicity agents that focused on generating depositors and investors.39 Entertainment organizations used publicity agents, though as a term it seems to be more connected with corporations. Sometimes entertainment publicity agents operated in much the same way that traditional press agents did by promoting special events.40 However, publicity agents were related closely to advertising, and frequently the advertisements of the era mentioned publicity agents in context with advertising. In fact, the professional publicity agent organization, The Pilgrim Publicity Association, was described as being distinct from advertising. Their members only did publicity, which infers that it was about press attention, not paid promotion.41 Contemporaneously with the publicity agent was the publicist. In today’s world, publicists are almost always assumed to be working within the entertainment industry. However, in the U.S. in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their work was more diverse. In fact, publicists were sometimes famous themselves, frequently being held up as public intellectuals and experts in specific areas.42 However, like publicity agents and press agents, publicists did have a knowledge of the press, and had well-honed media relations strategies. Unlike publicity agents and press agents, the publicist’s main skill was good writing and the use of technology.43 They used a type of press release to promote their views and organizations, known as a telegraph advertisement. These communications were not ads per se, but were official communications on behalf of an organization, usually a corporation, that would then appear in the news section of a newspaper.44 The publicist also differed from publicity-related communicators because they sometimes took on roles of pure advocacy, sometimes working in a pseudo-lobbying fashion. They had an awareness of public opinion, and its role in political communication.45 However, studies show that despite the title used by public relations practitioners, entertainment public relations were advantaged because of the way the U.S. government assisted with film production. Olasky says that Ivy Lee’s strategy for public relations practice in the film industry was to get a czar, who would function as a

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trusted figure in the public’s mind during a crisis.46 The film industry in the 1920s was severely damaged because of the high profile murders of Virginia Rappe and director William Desmond Taylor and some of the controversial content of films. There was a movement to create government regulation through censorship laws on the film industry, and community groups threatened to boycott theaters and films because of family values issues. However, the biggest concern among entertainers was the reduction of the government protection of studios. Fearing that they could be subject to anti-trust lawsuits, studio executives hired Will Hayes, a former Postmaster General from the Harding administration, to serve as the leader of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). In that capacity, Hays was a spokesperson for the motion picture industry, and served as its public face. This was an attempt to create a better public perception of the film industry, and to give the perception that Hollywood was trying to reform some of the excessive and negative behavior that was appearing in the 1920s’ press. MPPDA created a public relations department in 1925 with Jason Joy as its director. Hays’s role also helped in government relations, notably his leadership of the MPPDA was viewed as the reason a law establishing the Federal Motion Picture Commission was ultimately defeated during the Coolidge administration. The MPPDA has to navigate other religious groups’ pro-decency boycotts and protests of the film industry. This included the “Legion of Decency” proposed by the U.S. Bishop’s Committee of the Catholic Church. Hollywood responded with the Production Code Administration (PCA), which screened scripts and gave seals of approval for films to be released.47 Publicists had a major impact on the film industry in the 1920s as California became the center of filmmaking.48 Their role was complex because publicists were used in a variety of contexts for a variety of clients, including: actors and actresses, studios, movie theaters, and individual films. In addition to these roles, the publicist of the 1920s worked extensively in a pseudo-lobbying role trying to get favorable laws enacted for the film industry.49 As this function evolved, so did agencies that specifically dedicated themselves to talent management such as the William Morris Agency,50 now Endeavor, which was established in 1898, and Rogers & Cowan,51 now Rogers & Cowan PMK, founded in 1950, among others.

Conclusion Historiographically, entertainment public relations is extremely important. It serves as the first chapter of many PR histories, because it is thought to be the forefather of modern PR practice. While that is historically untrue, it is still important because it affects public relations’ perception of itself. It may account for the industry’s preoccupation with ethical communication. If the field was spawned by the unethical P.T. Barnum, then the profession must make amends. That is likely why professional ethics in public relations continues to be discussed and refined. However, what is also important about entertainment public relations, and the infamous Barnum, is that it is an ethically mixed bag. Entertainment public

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relations is an area that has a checkered history. However, an analysis of entertainment PR shows that it gave rise to many of the tactics and strategies used in modern public relations, particularly media relations. What remains problematic is that as an area it is under-researched, perhaps because its value to public relations has been deemed lacking. Entertainment public relations also presents an issue for public relations practice because it is linked with the work of P.T. Barnum. Having him as a forefather of public relations practice raises questions about ethics, the value of publicity, and professional status. Modern public relations practice does not want to be viewed as an outgrowth of a circus owner and promoter, nor does it want to trace its lineage back to carnival side-shows where oddities were promoted by outright lies. Nevertheless, Barnum is an important figure in communication history. He represents the awareness of the importance of publicity and the nature of public opinion. He used the press in a way that was innovative, making it work for him in many ways to provide him the platform for promotion. Public relations history has to include him as a figure (though not the creator) in public relations practice. However nefarious his actions or tactics, his contribution is that he realized the nineteenth-century press (much like today’s) had a need for stories and information, and he provided them. One of the most important aspects of entertainment public relations is that its historical development was in tandem with other organizational types. Business, politics, non-profits, civic organizations, and entertainment used press agentry and publicity to achieve their organizational goals. In fact, there is a legitimate question as to whether entertainment public relations is any different from any of the other types of PR practice. Its history seems fairly similar to that of politics, nonprofits, and corporations. The only difference is its ends were to promote entertainment rather than to promote goods, services, candidates, or fundraisers. Like all areas of public relations, some of entertainment PR is bad. It had bad motives and unethical practices. However, what is striking about this period is that press agentry, like modern PR, had its good and bad actors, tactics, strategies, and campaigns. That should not be surprising because, like all professions, including the traditional disciplines of law, medicine and the church, there are mainly good professionals but some bad ones who stand out precisely because they are the exception, not the rule. Looking at this issue for entertainment public relations, it is incumbent that historians recognize that press agentry, publicists, or publicity agents are really no different from PR practitioners or communication directors of today. They are professionals, doing a job, frequently with mixed results.

Discussion Questions  

What is press agentry? Does it exist today, and how is it different from contemporary public relations? How is entertainment different from other sectors, such as corporate PR? How is it the same?

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Why is P.T. Barnum so reviled in PR history? Is there a real need for the profession to distance itself from him? How does entertainment public relations in the twenty-first century differ from that in the nineteenth? Define the roles of press agent, publicist, and publicity agent. How are these types of public relations practice different from modern PR practice? How are they the same?

Notes 1 James Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984). 2 Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 287–288. 3 Ibid., 75–145. 4 Ibid., 288. 5 Edward Bernays, Public Relations (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), 5. 6 Ibid., 37. 7 Ibid., 38. 8 Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective Public Relations, 2nd edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1958), 23. 9 Scott Cutlip, Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th Century. The Antecedents (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995), 173. 10 Irving Wallace, The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum (New York: Knopf, 1959), 37–39. Wallace notes that usury was the term used by Barnum, and that it was the fact this term appeared in the Bible as forbidden by God was the reason why Barnum was ultimately taken to court by the deacon, Seth Seelye. 11 Cutlip, Public Relations History, 172. 12 Ibid., 174–175. 13 Wallace, The Fabulous Showman, 201; P.T. Barnum, Art of Money Getting or, Golden Rules for Making Money (1880, reprinted Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1999). 14 Margot Lamme and Karen Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History,” Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, 11 (2010): 281–357, 328. 15 Cutlip, Public Relations History, 175–176. 16 Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective Public Relations (Englewood Cliff, NJ: PrenticeHall Inc., 1958), 23. 17 Bernays, Public Relations, 59. 18 Marvin Olasky, “Public Relations vs. Private Enterprise: Enlightening History Which Raises Some Basic Questions,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1985): 6–13, Marvin Olasky, “A Reappraisal of 19th Century Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 11 (1985): 3–12. 19 Kevin Stoker and Brad Rawlins, “The ‘Light’ of Publicity in the Progressive Era: From Searchlight to Flashlight,” Journalism History 30 (2005): 177–188. 20 Cayce Myers, “Reconsidering Early U.S. Public Relations Institutions: An Analysis of Publicity and Information Bureaux 1891–1918,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 766–775, 769. 21 Cayce Myers, “Early US Corporate Public Relations: Understanding the ‘Publicity Agent’ in American Corporate Communications, 1902–1918,” American Journalism 32 (2015): 412–433, 418–423, 428.

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22 Karen Russell and Carl Bishop, “Understanding Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles: U.S. Newspaper and Magazine Coverage of Publicity and Press Agentry, 1865–1904,” Public Relations Review 35 (2009): 91–101, 23 Karen Russell and Cayce Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” Public Relations Review 45 (2019): 246–257, 253–254. 24 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23–24. 25 Russell and Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” 246–247. 26 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23–24. 27 Grunig and Hunt, Managing Public Relations. 28 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23–24. 29 Russell and Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” 248–251. 30 Cayce Myers, “Revising the Narrative of Early U.S. Public Relations History: An Analysis of the Depictions of PR Practice and Professionals in the Popular Press 1770– 1918,” PhD diss. (University of Georgia, 2014), 144. 31 “Town and Country Life,” Town and Country, December 5, 1903, 18. 32 Russell and Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” 249. 33 Myers, “Revising the Narrative of Early U.S. Public Relations History,” 147. 34 Washington Post, “Bogus Ticket Swindle,” May 8, 1904, p. 2. 35 Myers, “Revising the Narrative of Early U.S. Public Relations History,” 146. 36 Russell and Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” 249–250. 37 The Independent, “Interviewing Wall Street Leaders,” December 24, 1903, p. 3040. 38 Cutlip and Center, Effective Public Relations, 23–24. 39 Myers, “Early U.S. Corporate Public Relations,” 420–421. 40 Ibid., 428. 41 Ibid., 424. 42 Cayce Myers, “Publicists in U.S. Public Relations History: An Analysis of the Representations of Publicists, 1815–1918,” American Journalism 34 (2017): 71–90, 79–81. 43 Ibid., 82–83. 44 Ibid., 83. 45 Ibid., 85. 46 Marvin Olasky, Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987), 55. Olasky notes that despite the positive portrayals of Lee, he had detractors who called him “Poison Ivy” for his communication practices. 47 Ibid., 55–65. 48 Donald Tilson, “Entertainment Publicity and Public Relations,” in North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 84. 49 Ibid. 50 William Morris Agency, “Our Story.” Retrieved from www.wmeagency.com/story/. 51 Tilson, “Entertainment Publicity and Public Relations,” 85.

9 PUBLIC RELATIONS ETHICS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND CREDENTIALING

In public relations development, two important areas have affected the qualities of public relations: law and ethics. Examining these two areas shows that legal and ethical factors have shaped the direction of public relations practice, especially in terms of ideas of duties, disclosure, relationship management, and campaign practices. Looking at public relations history, particularly professional views on press agentry, illustrates how the PR industry views itself, its role within organizations, and the popular concepts of professional practice in the twenty-first century. Ethical standards are the hallmark of any recognized profession. Crafting those standards is part of the professionalization of a field. This began in earnest for the public relations profession after World War II, when public relations organizations, specifically the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), were formed. Those organizations began championing public relations work, and its place within an organization. Part of this growth of professionalism was the role of ethics and setting ethical guidelines. These guidelines for ethical behavior coincided with the growth in arguing for more quality control in public relations generally. Because of that, during the latter part of the twentieth century a large professional conversation began around public relations licensing, accreditation, and ethical enforcement. This chapter looks at the legal and ethical dimensions of public relations by examining the law and ethics affecting public relations practice. Specific attention is paid to the legal influence on public relations practice, democracy, and public relations development, the creation of public relations ethical codes, and licensing and accreditation in public relations. Examining these areas of history shows that public relations practice was heavily influenced by institutional pressures, and that the development of ethical codes and professional associations coincided with increased corporate PR and international communication practice. This chapter

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also shows that the rise of professionalism occurred in tandem in the United States and Western Europe demonstrating how public relations emerged by the mid-1950s as a worldwide practice.

The Law and Public Relations Practice Because laws have the most force on the development of an organization or profession, it is important to examine the pressures that created PR practice. In the United States, corporate growth in the nineteenth century created a situation where public relations emerged simultaneously with corporate regulation. One historical view argued that it was in this corporate regulatory model that public relations emerged as a means to build public-private partnerships to squeeze out competition.1 Another historical view argued that early public relations frequently meant that corporations engaged in public-private partnerships to foster goodwill among citizens to continue operating in business.2 Despite these historical disagreements, the fact is that PR came about during an era when organizational duty and expectations, as defined by negligence and liability laws, were created. Because of that, public relations as a formal practice assigns a great deal of importance to public duty. PR ethics is partially an outgrowth of the legally mandated duties of PR professionals. For instance, mandatory reporting of income and taxes was an early part of public relations practice for utilities. This translates very closely to modern ideas of disclosure. During the Theodore Roosevelt administration, companies were criticized for lacking transparency in finances. As a result, laws were created to mandate disclosure, such as the Tillman Act of 1907, which was passed because of insurance companies and other corporate campaign contributions.3 Other disclosures followed, frequently couched in terms of “public relations.” For example, the use of seizure of private land for businesses (eminent domain), taxpayer-funded public-private partnerships, and the accountability local governments demanded of common carriers, such as trains, made for legally mandated transparency by organizations.4 While transparency was created through some of the government relations aspects of early public relations practice, duty to the public was established through the development of tort law. Torts are laws that address the breaches of duties owed to individuals, which result in financial or physical injury. During the late nineteenth century these laws were being created by courts to address many of the accidents and injuries caused by industrialization, particularly railroads. As public relations developed in this corporate environment, so did the legal concept of duty under negligence law. While not directly affecting corporate communications, the concept of duty to the public or customers was created because of the imposition of liability. Because corporate PR was born in that era, it is easy to see how the concept of duty to the public might have spilled over into the inner workings of PR. Certainly, scholars can see the role of duty in early public relations writing, specifically those of Ivy Lee.5

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Another major legal force within public relations practice in the United States was the development of First Amendment law. The First Amendment began addressing the protection of commercial speech and advertising in the early twentieth century with the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914. This issue of regulating what became commercial speech under the First Amendment has caused some discussion of what public relations actually is under the law. The truth is that public relations legally encompasses many types of speech from commercial to fully protected political speech, forcing public relations practice to adhere to a myriad of regulations concerning content.6 American laws have also had some impact on how the practice of public relations is viewed as a profession. For instance, unlike lawyers and doctors, public relations practitioners do not enjoy the legal protection of confidentiality even though ethical codes may protect them. Litigation in public relations shows that, under American law, PR practitioners’ confidentiality is not protected under the law unless practitioners are working with legal counsel.7 While this creates practical problems for practitioners, it also sheds light on the legal recognition of public relations as a practice. The field is largely viewed as dispersed among many roles, and with the exception of lobbying, does not have a set of legal guidelines that directly govern practice. For this reason, public relations practice has turned to ethical codes promulgated by professional organizations to guide and regulate the field.

Democracy and the Rise of Professionalized Public Relations Government regulation of public relations is important, especially considering how the government created many of the early formal examples of public relations work (e.g., the Creel Committee, the Ministry of Information).8 However, democracy, or the lack thereof, also played an important role in the development of public relations practice in a variety of countries. In fact, in the national histories of public relations, it is acknowledged that government environments play an incredibly important role in how public relations comes about and is practiced. The decline of fascism and the end of World War II were a major influence on the establishment of public relations practice and public relations organizations. This change was brought by international trade and, in some instances, by international companies expanding into new markets. Despite the influence of democracy and globalization on public relations, practice was limited because of totalitarian governments. For example, countries such as Greece and Spain, where undemocratic governments repressed free speech, public relations developed in a way that had to work around the restrictions imposed by the law. Greek public relations, heavily influenced by British PR and the Marshall Plan, emerged in the 1950s during political turmoil and military juntas that limited free speech.9 The Hellenistic Public Relations Association (HPRA) was founded in 1960 at a time when agencies began to be developed.10 Similarly, in Spain, the creation of modern public relations practice emerged during the Franco dictatorship that

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used propaganda to strengthen its control over the country. Similar to Greece, the international economic growth of the 1960s helped spur the public relations profession with the first Spanish PR firm, Sociedad Anónima Española de Relaciones Públicas founded in Barcelona in the 1960s.11 The post-World War II boom in public relations was due to increased internationalism, specifically brought about by the Marshall Plan. During a time of rebuilding Europe, Italian government entities such as the Istitutio per la Ricostruzione Industriale, an economic agency, began using public relations to communicate economic messages.12 However, similar to Spain, the residual effect of fascist control over media slowed the growth of modern public relations practice. However, the United States Information Service and Standard Oil are credited with creating a modern public relations presence in Italy, notably promoting Italian car manufacturing, specifically Fiat.13 From this grew a professionalized field of public relations, and the establishment of public relations norms of practice. The government can also have a residual effect on the nature of public relations practice. The decline of colonialism in the mid-twentieth century saw many nations emerge with public relations practices that mirrored those of their former colonial rulers. Specifically, British influence on public relations is seen in New Zealand where professionalized public relations began after World War II with the creation of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ).14 This creation of public relations in New Zealand was rooted in the post-war economic growth that resulted from its becoming a member of the British Commonwealth and gaining political independence.15 The influence on British colonial rule, specifically the governmental offices used by the British, had a profound effect on public relations in African countries. The impact of colonialism is apparent in the structure of many African countries’ public relations. Like most countries with professionalized public relations, PR organizations, such as the Zambia Public Relations Association (ZAPRA), provided ethical guidelines.16 However, despite colonial pressure and repressive regimes, public relations practice in many countries quickly adapted to public relations norms, especially in term of ethics. For instance, South Africa rid itself of the apartheid government in 1994, and in the twenty-first century the country practices PR in a way that embraces contemporary notions of two-way communication.17 Other nations that did not have a history of democratic government have seen the growth of professionalized public relations that is more idiosyncratic because of restrictive government control. Such is the case with public relations in the Middle East where public relations practice has emerged in a region where the media is frequently restricted, and with an economic system that primarily focuses on oil exports.18 This is the case with Saudi Arabia where public relations practice first emerged in the 1930s as a result of increased oil production and exports.19 Although based on a different political structure, Egyptian public relations practice was rooted in industry exports that emerged in the 1950s with nationalized industry under President Gamal Abdel Nasser.20 However, later Egyptian PR

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became less restrictive under President Anwar Sadat as the public relations practice became more internationally engaged because of business goals.21 Later during the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, privatization increased, and Egyptian public relations gained international public relations firms, such as Hill & Knowlton and Weber Shandwick, working through local PR agencies in Cairo.22 This phenomenon of economic liberalization coinciding with increased public relations is not limited to the Middle East. As China increased in economic power in the late twentieth century, it too underwent a change in public relations practice that created a unique type of PR that operated within a highly censored society that is rapidly modernizing.23

Corporate Influences on Public Relations Ethics Early organizations of public relations professionals largely centered around issues of practice and earnings. They also offered a form of camaraderie in the profession. For example, the Pilgrim Publicity Association focused on promoting publicity professionals, and their professional organization even associated with larger advertising organizations that focused on professional issues.24 However, public relations practitioners did not have large-scale professional clubs in the early twentieth century. As the profession began to coalesce into a defined field, especially in the corporate context, norms were established. Perhaps the most famous of these was Ivy Lee’s “Declaration of Principles.”25 It was in these principles that Lee declared what publicity was and how it interacted within an organization. More importantly, however, Lee’s work was about public relations ethics. He argued for ethical practice in the field, including transparency, the lack of pure promotion, accuracy, honesty, fair dealing, and the concept that communication (at least corporate communication) served the public good. In early twentieth-century America, this need for core principles of corporate public relations was related to the larger issues of government regulation, especially from President Theodore Roosevelt.26 Standard Oil’s use of private communications to politicians was singled out by Roosevelt and the Wall Street Journal as being deceitful and lacking transparency with the public.27 Transparency of business operations was routinely called for by the press during this era. In fact, publicity use by business and government was crafted by many who were former muckraking journalists in an attempt to promote positive publicity for corporations.28 By the 1920s, the ethics of American public relations had been roughly established. In a speech to the PRSA, Joe Frantz, a professor of history, said that by the 1920s some public relations practitioners saw the value of “full disclosure,” i.e., transparency, with the public.29 Frantz argued that public relations from the 1900s to after World War II was like Humpty Dumpty, a field that had fractured and been put back together in a more ethical form.30 Ethical dilemmas in public relations practice occurred, especially in the larger debate of the role of propaganda as advocated by organizations. For instance, in 1928, the National Electric Light Association

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(NELA) was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission because of its use of persuasion, or propaganda, on the issue of public ownership of electric companies.31 This level of propaganda by the NELA was so sophisticated that it even included paying college professors for vacations to tour electrical companies and then write textbooks and teaching courses that were pro-utility.32 Criticism of the press and the media was something that drove some of the discussion around public relations ethics. In the 1920s, journalists were highly critical of public relations, making the public relations industry respond to defend its tactics, strategies, and existence.33 Journalists routinely criticized the ethics of PR practitioners, which still continues in the twenty-first century.34 These conversations of the role of public relations and Bernays’s advocacy for the term “propaganda” led to a larger discussion of what ethical public relations was. This led to an eventual decision that found public relations as a practice to require a predetermined set of features that included: college preparation, professional associations, and ethical codes.35 The professionalization of the field of public relations also was affected by structural changes in corporations. In 1944, Edward Bernays wrote an article in Journalism Quarterly arguing that the press bred a high level of “social responsibility” in a world where democratic growth was still in its infancy in parts of the world.36 Bernays feared that if the public viewed the press as illegitimate, this would erode democracy, and prompt people to accept overt restrictions on the press despite First Amendment protection.37 Examining newspapers in the United States, Bernays said that news was generated by a platform that was dictated by management and expressed through editorials, but those platforms were not expressed as well as they could be. Moreover, Bernays argued that though the press was a cause for good in a democracy, other communication fields could promote the “engineering of consent” for the value of democracy and free speech.38 This article prompted over 500 responses from publishers and editors across the United States, discussing the role of the press and public relations.39 One comment mentioned that within public relations there was a responsibility for “sound and accurate truthful news.”40 Corporate attitudes were embracing ethical approaches to management and business. In the 1950s, the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) began to take root within corporate America. This shift in business responsibilities had a long history dating back to the nineteenth century concerning workers’ living conditions. Corporations in the nineteenth century were highly concerned about employee productivity, which turned into a concern about employees’ living conditions, especially factory workers, prompting the industrial welfare movement.41 In fact, some corporations during this time began a robust internal communications service, such as Toronto-based Massey Manufacturing Company. Massey began publishing Trip Hammer in 1885 to discuss worker issues.42 This is considered to be the first employee publication in North America, and focused exclusively on employee-related issues.43

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Another aspect of CSR, corporate philanthropy, also started to emerge in the nineteenth century. Corporate philanthropy as a concept, even for employees, was somewhat controversial. Legal cases bore this issue out, such as the West Cork Railroad Company case in 1883, in which Lord Justice Byron ruled that a company could not give charity to its own workers. Conversely, Steinway was permitted to provide corporate welfare for its workers by building amenities and schools for employees.44 Corporate donations to certain charities began in earnest. Famously, Macy’s department store contributed money to an orphan home, Pullman Place Car Company built company towns for workers, and YMCAs were frequently supported by businesses.45 However, corporate philanthropy was considered prior to the 1930s as a type of waste. The period between 1870 to 1930 is referred to as the “prelegalization period.”46 However, in today’s “corporate period” of management, the idea of social responsibility is fully engrained into the business lexicon and management practices.47 The idea that corporations owed more to their publics began to solidify after World War II. By the 1950s, corporate philanthropy was the main form of CSR, which later turned into the more complex model of CSR that embraces sustainability, CSR as profit building, and even CSR certifications, such as certified B corporations.48

The Creation of Professional Codes, Accreditation, and Licensing The ethics of public relations is rooted deeply within professional organizations. However, understanding the definition of public relations is key to understanding how the codes talked about PR. Within the industry, publicity was largely associated with public relations in the early twentieth century. However, as the 1930s progressed, the term public relations became more common within the industry. With that name change came the idea that public relations was about public opinion.49 This coincides with the discussion on public opinion starting in the 1920s with Walter Lippmann,50 and later Edward Bernays.51 Simultaneously was the unsuccessful attempt by Bernays to resurrect and refurbish the term “propaganda.” However, as the 1930s progressed, public relations also began to concern itself with issues of the labor force. Rex Harlow, an early public relations educator, argued that the federal bureaucratic growth of the 1930s led public relations to deal with employees because federal agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Employment Act, and the Council of Economic Advisors, and joint Economic Committee in Congress recognized labor relations as important. This grew the field of corporate public relations, which, in turn, grew professionalized practice norms.52 It was during the 1930s that one of the first public relations professional organizations in the United States, the American Council on Public Relations (ACPR) was established in San Francisco. The Council worked on public relations education, sponsoring courses on PR.53 In these courses, public relations was defined, and its core functions were analyzed.54 By the 1940s, these public relations foundations

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were more clearly established, but the responsibilities of the PR practitioner grew. Social science as a field grew, and with it insight into public opinion. Similarly, the media grew, and there was a recognition of the power of the press and media in shaping public opinion. It was during this era that the concept of the public relations practitioner and organization as having social responsibilities grew. Public Relations News, a trade press on current issues in the field, was founded by Glen and Denny Griswold in New York. The ACPR established Public Relations Journal in 1945, and in 1947 the ACPR merged with the National Association of Public Relations Council to form the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA would incorporate officially in 1948).55 In 1950, the PRSA adopted its first Code of Ethics, which went on to influence the codes of other PR organizations, such as the Canadian Public Relations Society’s Code of Professional Conduct, drafted in 1961.56 The PRSA worked hard to further ethical practices in public relations, creating the Code of Professional Standards for the Practice of Public Relations and the Declaration of Principles. The concept of public relations practice expanded. In an analysis of definitions of public relations, Rex Harlow, an early public relations educator, said that the social forces of Civil Rights, the Cold War, and the invention of corporate social responsibility challenged the term “public relations” because of associations with spin.57 There was a recognition in this era from the 1930s to the early 1960s that public relations was a distinct practice, but one which used one-way communication to achieve organizational objectives despite later calls for so-called “two-way communication.”58 By the 1950s, professionalization of public relations became a larger topic in the field. In 1958, Cutlip and Center embraced the idea that public relations was a “management function,” something that had been articulated earlier by PR News.59 This managerial placement created a concept of public relations that meant it was more than just communicating, but also part of the executive functions of an organization. Because of that, standardization of the field and a desire to professionalize public relations through licensing became a conversation topic in the United States. However, this standardization was complicated by the fact that the field of public relations was radically changing. Tom Hopkinson, in a 1967 article in Public Relations Quarterly, acknowledged the field of public relations was undergoing a new transformation of specialization and also becoming more “professionalized.”60 This management function concept of public relations has endured in public relations. It spawned many movements within academic public relations, such as the development of Excellence Theory, and the concept of how public relations’ value should be evaluated within an organization.61 Contemporaneously with American issues of ethics in the public relations profession, European debates about public relations work emerged. The International Public Relations Association (IPRA), founded in 1955, was involved in drafting an ethical code, eventually called the Code of Athens in 1965. The origins of IPRA began in the aftermath of World War II and it created a type of code in 1952, prior to its official founding, known as “Objects.”62 IPRA was an organization with members

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from across Europe, and, in 1955, Etienne Block, a French IPRA member, began working on an ethical code. In 1961, IPRA adopted the Code of Professional Conduct, and later the Code of Athens was adopted in 1965. The new Code of Athens had public relations significance for IPRA, and served as a strategy to promote the organization and the field of public relations.63 By 1973, many countries had adopted the Code of Athens, making it a world-wide code of ethics for public relations.64 Interestingly, immediately after World War II, a number of public relations professional organizations were created: PRSA (the U.S. 1947),65 the Canadian Public Relations Society (Canada, 1948),66 the Institute of Public Relations (now CIPR, the UK, 1948),67 Club de la maison de verre (The Glass Hour Club, France 1950),68 IPRA (1955),69 the Public Relations Institute of South Africa (South Africa, 1957),70 the Israeli PR Association (Israel, 1958),71 Deutsche Public Relations Gesellschaft (Germany, 1958),72 and the Hellenic Public Relations Association (Greece, 1960).73 During the 1960s, American public relations practice underwent a larger debate about what it meant to be professionalized. One area of intense debate was whether public relations practice should be officially licensed by states. The licensing debates in the 1970s and 1980s centered around the idea that public relations as a profession served specialized functions, but because the name had become synonymous with communications practice, there was a need to reclaim PR. Those in favor of public relations licensing advocated for it from the viewpoint of ethical standardization. Chief among these advocates was Edward Bernays, who sought legal recognition for licensing. Bernays thought that a state-recognized license would ensure a level of quality control over the field, and that without a way to keep unqualified people out of the profession, there would be no such thing as public relations practice.74 He argued that profession was a term that was legally defined and that because public relations had no legally recognized status, it was not a profession. Compounding this issue for Bernays was that public relations’ definition had become diluted and even sullied by some professionals who worked outside of the ethical realms of “normal” PR practice.75 Despite Bernays’s advocacy for licensing in public relations, there were those in the industry whose views ranged from fully favoring licensing, to those who favored certification, to those who were opposed to any type of licensing/credentialing altogether.76 Legal recognition of licensing was something that was potentially very difficult.77 Critics charged that any licensing scheme would ultimately create a logistical nightmare for the profession because of the bureaucratization of government licensing structures.78 Licensing was also criticized because it would never encompass the multifaceted demands of modern public relations practice, and the changing definitions of public relations.79 Licensing in the United States gained some attention in the field, but little interest in actual state legislatures. By 1975, only California, Arkansas, and Florida had entertained state laws for PR licensing, but none had actually moved beyond mere discussion.80 The conversation on licensing had turned to accreditation as a means to certify public relations practitioners. Accreditation in the United States had been around since 1964 when the PRSA introduced Accreditation in Public Relations

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(APR) as a designation for professional public relations practitioners who had demonstrated competence in core areas of public relations knowledge, skills, and abilities, known commonly today as KSAs.81 Although the distinction has undergone changes since its creation, the APR certification requires the candidate both to present material to a panel and pass a certification exam set by the Universal Accreditation Board (UAB). The UAB consists of several organizations that are involved in public relations practice: the PRSA, the Religion Communicators Council, the Southern Public Relations Federation, the National School Public Relations Association, the National Association of Government Communicators, the Maine Public Relations Council, the Florida Public Relations Association, the California Association of Public Information Officials, and Asociación de Relacionistas Profesionales de Puerto Rico.82 To date, nowhere in the United States requires licensing for public relations practice except for Puerto Rico, which recognized the APR certification as a license for PR practice.83 The licensing and accreditation issue was not limited to U.S. practitioners. In the UK, public relations accreditation was an issue during the 1950s when the Institute of Public Relations created the IPR Diploma and Certificate in 1957. Later this diploma was replaced with the CAM Diploma issued by the Communications, Advertising and Marketing Education Foundation, first issued in 1971.84 Lobbying has become a part of many public relations functions since the 1950s when it was first legally defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in two cases, United States v. Rumely and United States v. Harriss.85 This is true both for companies in the United States and for organizations in Europe where public relations practitioners routinely work with CEOs on lobbying strategy.86 European regulation of lobbying exists in countries even in Eastern Europe where lobbying does not have as developed a history; Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Macedonia, and Slovenia all have lobbying laws.87 In the United Kingdom lobbying has a large self-regulatory component, but with the passage of new lobbying laws in 2014, the UK now has more formal regulation of the field.88 Lobbying is a large income generator for public relations practice and is a way for PR practitioners to earn high six-figure salaries in the U.S.89 Although there has been criticism of the relationship between lobbying and public relations,90 it is true that lobbying is a component of modern PR. Federal and state laws have been developed since the 1950s to require licensing and disclosure of lobbying practices. However, lobbying laws require a very strict set of guidelines for communications, and lobbying itself is defined only as a direct solicitation of politicians. So-called grassroots lobbying, which is the practice of galvanizing public opinion to influence political outcomes is not lobbying. Public relations practice, generally speaking, frequently uses grassroots lobbying in its strategies. Because of the issues surrounding lobbying practice, there have been attempts, notably in New York state, to require licensing for grassroots lobbying efforts. While this effort ultimately failed, it signaled a new issue for licensing in public relations practice, and it may ultimately be an issue that arises for PR practice in the future.91

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Conclusion In his 1983 Farley Manning Fellowship Address, Daniel Edelman said that public relations practice suffered because of the negative associations with the term PR. These associations are largely because of ethical issues.92 Speaking about the twenty-first-century PR firm, something that was 17 years in the future at the time, Edelman said practitioners needed to acknowledge and take pride in their own professional status.93 However, ethical lapses in the field of public relations continue. In the twenty-first century there are high profile examples of ethical issues in public relations practice, such as the 2017 Bell Pottinger scandal and the growing awareness that public relations is sometimes used as a force for the oppressors in propping up regimes that are enemies of democracy (ironically the same democracy that is needed for the existence of PR).94 What the development of ethics and PR organizations shows is that professionalized public relations is closely linked to corporate growth and international economies. Even in countries where democracy does not exist, or exists in limited forms, the public relations profession has grown, both in terms of professionalization and ethics, with the introduction of international business and corporate needs. The 1950s serves as a watershed decade for the development of public relations in part because it signaled the transformation of the field into a more solidified role, but also because it introduced PR into a wide array of countries because of the fall of fascism, the decline of colonialism, and the introduction of globalization. Ethical issues in public relations are rooted in these institutional and political changes, which has shaped the practice of PR into its modern form.

Discussion Questions     

What are the core values of public relations practice? How important were professional PR organizations in shaping the debate about ethics in public relations practice? Is it important for a public relations practitioner to be accredited? Is licensing public relations feasible? What similarities are there between public relations associations in the U.S. and those in other countries? Are professional associations and ethical guidelines necessary for a truly “professionalized” public relations practice?

Notes 1 Marvin Olasky, Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987). 2 Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Business (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1998).

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3 Cayce Myers and Ruthann Lariscy, “Corporate PR in a Post-Citizens United World,” Journal of Communication Management 18 (2014): 146–157. 4 Cayce Myers, “Regulating Public Relations: How U.S. Legal Policies and Regulations Shaped Early Corporate PR,” American Journalism 37 (2020): 139–164. 5 Ray Hiebert, Courtier to the Crowd: Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations in America (1966, reprinted New York: PR Museum Press, 2017); Karen Russell and Carl Bishop, “Understanding Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles: U.S. Newspaper and Magazine Coverage of Publicity and Press Agentry, 1865–1904,” Public Relations Review 35 (2009): 91–101. 6 Cayce Myers, “What’s the Legal Definition of PR?: An Analysis of Commercial Speech and Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 821–831, 828–830; Cayce Myers and Ruthann Lariscy, “Commercial Speech, Protected Speech, and Political Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 39 (2013): 332–336. 7 Cayce Myers, “Public Relations Confidentiality: An Analysis of PR PractitionerClient Privilege in High Profile Litigation,” Public Relations Review 41 (2015): 14–21. 8 Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–134; Jacquie L’Etang, “United Kingdom,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations, ed. Tom Watson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 142. 9 Anastasios Theofilou and Tom Watson, “The History of Public Relations in Greece from 1950 to 1980: Professionalization of the ‘Art,’” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 700–706, 702. 10 Ibid., 702. 11 Natalia Rodrigues Salcedo, “Public Relations before ‘Public Relations’ in Spain: An Early History (1881–1960),” Journal of Communication Management 12 (2008): 279–293, 285. It is important to note that in Spain a type of publicity and advertising did exist before the formal practice of PR. 12 Elisabetta Bini, Ferdinando Fasce, and Toni Falconi, “The Origins and Early Developments of Public Relations in Post-War Italy, 1945–1960,” Journal of Communication Management 15 (2011): 210–222, 212. 13 Ibid., 213. 14 Lynne Trenwith, “The Emergence of Public Relations in New Zealand from 1945 to 1954: The Beginnings of Professionalisation,” New Zealand Journal of Applied Business Research 8 (2010): 51–62, 52. 15 Ibid. 16 Ray Mawerera, “PR in Zambia,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 26. 17 Chris Skinner and Dalien Benecke, “South Africa,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices , ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 109. 18 Tom Watson, “Introduction,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices , ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 2. 19 Nawaf Abdelhay-Altamimi, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 85–86. 20 Khayrat Ayyad and Ahmed Farouk, “Egypt,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 35–37. 21 Ibid., 37–39. 22 Ibid., 39–43.

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23 Baijing Hu, Yi Hui Huang, and Di Zhang, “Public Relations and Chinese Modernity: A 21st-Century Perspective,” Journal of Public Relations Research 27 (2015): 262–279, 272–274. 24 Cayce Myers, “Early U.S. Corporate Public Relations: Understanding the ‘Publicity Agent’ in American Corporate Communication, 1902–1918,” American Journalism 32 (2015): 412–433, 420–421. 25 Sherman Morse, “An Awakening in Wall Street: How the Trusts after Years of Silence, Now Speak through Authorized and Acknowledged Press Agents,” American Magazine 62 (1906): 457–463, 460. 26 Russell and Bishop, “Understanding Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles,” 98. 27 Ibid., 97. 28 Kevin Stoker and Brad Rawlins, “The ‘Light’ of Publicity in the Progressive Era: From Searchlight to Flashlight,” Journalism History 30 (2005): 177–188, 181–185. 29 Joe Frantz, “After the Fall—Opportunity, 1918–1945,” speech, New York, November 7, 1966, Institute for Public Relations. Retrieved from https://instituteforpr.org/wp -content/uploads/JoeBFrantz1966Lecture1.pdf 30 Ibid. 31 Tom Bivins, “A Golden Opportunity: Edward Bernays and the Dilemma of Ethics,” American Journalism 30 (2013): 496–519, 502–514. 32 Ibid., 507–508. 33 Ibid., 501. 34 Denise DeLorme and Fred Fedler, “Journalists’ Hostility Toward Public Relations: An Historical Analysis,” Public Relations Review 29 (2003): 99–124, 112–115. 35 Nicholas Browning, “Ethics and the Profession: The Crystallizing of Public Relations Practice from Association to Accreditation, 1936–1964,” American Journalism 35 (2018): 140–170, 147; Genevieve McBride, “Ethical Thought in Public Relations History: Seeking a Relevant Perspective,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 4 (1989): 5–20, 16. 36 Edward Bernays, “The Press Must Act to Meet Postwar Responsibility,” Journalism Quarterly (1944): 122–129, 122. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 128. 39 Edward Bernays, “Views on Postwar Responsibility of the American Press,” Journalism Quarterly 22 (1945): 255–262. 40 Ibid., 261. 41 Archie Carroll, “A History of Corporate Social Responsibility Concepts and Practices,” in The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility, ed. Andrew Crane, Dirk Matten, Abagail McWilliams, Jeremy Moon, and Donald Siegel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 19–46, 20. 42 Peter Johansen, “‘For Better, Higher and Nobler Things’: Massey’s Pioneering Employee Publication,” Journalism History 27 (2001): 94–104, 96. 43 Ibid., 94. 44 Carroll, “A History of Corporate Social Responsibility Concepts and Practices,” 21. 45 Ibid., 22. 46 Ibid., 23. 47 Ibid., 24. 48 David Chandler, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation, 4th edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017). 49 Rex Harlow, “Public Relations Definitions Through the Years,” Public Relations Review 3 (1977): 49–63, 52. 50 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1922). 51 Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923, reprinted New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1961). 52 Harlow, “Public Relations Definitions Through the Years,” 52.

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53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79

Ibid., 53. Ibid. Ibid., 55. Amy Thurlow, “Canada,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 44. Harlow, “Defining Public Relations Through the Years,” 57. Browning, “Ethics and the Profession,” 170. Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, Effective Public Relations, 2nd edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958), 5. Tom Hopkinson, “A Survey of Public Relations Counseling Today & Tomorrow,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1967): 7–16, 7. James Grunig, “Furnishing the Edifice: Ongoing Research on the Public Relations as a Strategic Management Function,” Journal of Public Relations Research 18 (2006): 151– 176. Excellence Theory certainly embraces an ethical dimension in its view of twoway communication being an ethically grounded form of public relations practice that engages publics with honesty and a two-directional exchange of information. Tom Watson, “IPRA Code of Athens—The First International Code of Public Relations Ethics: Its Development and Implementation since 1965,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 707–714. Ibid., 712. Watson notes that during the 1970s the Code of Athens was not largely implemented, but IPRA began publishing a series of Gold Papers, which advocated adoption of the code. Ibid. Browning, “Ethics and the Profession,” 148. Thurlow, “Canada,” 44. L’Etang, “United Kingdom,” 149. This should not be confused with the Institute for Public Relations, which was founded in 1956 as the Foundations for Public Relations Research and Education. Bruno Chaudet, Valérie Carayol, and Alex Frame, “France,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 36. Watson, “IPRA Code of Athens,” 708. Skinner and Benecke, “South Africa,” 113. Clila Magen, “Israel,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 55. Günter Bentele, “Germany,” in Tom Watson (Ed.), Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 52–53. Anastasios Theofilou, “Greece,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 62. Edward Bernays, “Viewpoint: Let There Be Licensing,” Public Relations Quarterly 31 (1986): 8; Edward Bernays, “The Case for Licensing and Registration for Public Relations” Public Relations Quarterly 24 (1979): 26–29; Edward Bernays, “Defining Public Relations,” Public Relations Quarterly 23 (1978): 15. Bernays, “The Case for Licensing and Registration for Public Relations,” 26. “The Credentials of Public Relations: Licensing, Certification? Accreditation?: A Symposium in Print,” Public Relations Quarterly 29 (1984): 9–27. Bill Baxter, “Lawmakers’ Views on Licensing in Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 86 (1986): 12–15. Baxter found that legislatures were more likely to pass a bill favoring certification. Phillip Lesly, “Why Licensing Won’t Work for Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 12 (1986): 3–7. Lawrence Nolte, “Let’s Forget Licensing,” Public Relations Quarterly 25 (1980): 14–15.

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80 Neil Lavick, “Public Relations Council: An Alternative to Licensing,” Public Relations Quarterly 20 (1975): 18–22, 18. 81 Browning, “Ethics and the Profession,” 147. 82 “Universal Accreditation Board Announces 2020 Leadership,” praccreditation.org. Retrieved from www.praccreditation.org/about-uab/new-notable/press-releases/docum ents/NewUABMembersRelease2020.pdf (accessed February 3, 2020). 83 Regulatory Board of Public Relations Agents of Puerto Rico, 20 L.P.R.A. §§855–864 (2008). 84 L’Etang, “United Kingdom,” 149. 85 United States v. Rumley, 345 U.S. 41 (1953); United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612 (1954). 86 Magne Huang and Haavard Koppang, “Lobbying and Public Relations in a European Context,” Public Relations Review 23 (1997): 233–247; Kurt Wise, “Lobbying and Relationship Management: The K Street Connection,” Journal of Public Relations Research 19 (2007): 357–376. 87 Ionut Tanase, “Lobbying Regulation and Ethics: Current Issues and Future Prospects,” Journal of Media Research 3 (2012): 57–69, 57. 88 Ibid., 60–61; Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, 2014 c. 4. 89 Ronald Levy, “Lucrative PR Opportunity: Lobbying,” Public Relations Quarterly 50 (2005): 15–18, 15. 90 Edward Bernays, “Viewpoint: Operatives & Lobbyists vs. PR Professionals,” Public Relations Quarterly 30 (1985): 27. 91 Cayce Myers, “Public Relations or ‘Grassroots Lobbying’?: How Lobbying Laws are Re-Defining PR Practice,” Public Relations Review 44 (2018): 11–21, 18–19. 92 Daniel Edelman, “Managing the Public Relations Firm in the 21st Century,” Public Relations Review 9 (1983): 3–10, 5. 93 Ibid., 9. 94 Neil Ford, “Sorting the Wheat from the PR Chaff,” New African, November 2017. Retrieved from https://newafricanmagazine.com/15840/

10 THE FUTURE OF THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public relations history has been criticized for being incomplete and not including certain figures and sectors of practice. However, when examining the current state of PR history, it is clear that public relations history has reached a state of maturity where it has an overarching viewpoint with solidified themes. While not monolithic in approach, the current status of public relations history embraces a diversity of theoretical perspectives while approaching public relations in a more inclusive and diverse way. Even though there is still much to be done to complete the historical record, the richness of theoretical debates and the depth of public relations histories show that, as a field, PR history actually knows quite a lot about PR’s past. This chapter addresses eight aspects of public relations history that are important to the field. They include analysis of how PR practice was spread to various countries, the role and status of pro-public relations work, how sectors of public relations practice grew in tandem, the important of the post-World War II era to PR, the role politics played in PR’s past, the relationship between propaganda and PR history, and the current gaps in public relations history that should be addressed. The chapter concludes with an analysis of how public relations history shines insight into contemporary public relations identity and the future growth of the field.

Public Relations Is Not Exclusively Imported or Exported to a Country One of the biggest movements in public relations literature has been the national history movement. These histories claim that public relations emerged distinctly in each country, and that the political, economic, cultural, and social systems of each country bring about a unique set of public relations practices.1 For the United States, the major

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force in public relations is the capitalist corporate system,2 for the United Kingdom, the force has been the government’s influence on public relations work,3 in Germany, it is the residual effects of National Socialism and World War II,4 in China, it has been the growth of international trade and consumerism,5 and in Saudi Arabia, it is the rise of oil exports, coupled with a restrictive government control over speech.6 To be sure, all of these histories represent a unique growth of public relations practice, and they demonstrate how important national experiences can be for public relations growth. They also show how idiosyncratic public relations practice can be. Public relations as a practice does have core foundational practices. For example, most public relations has to do with media relations, reputation management, relationship building with publics, organizational communication, and some level of a self-identified profession. Because of that, public relations practice, broadly speaking, is quite similar in every country in the twenty-first century. Given that commonality, the question is, where did PR come from? How is it exported, and how is it imported? History shows several examples of exports and imports of PR. For example, fundraising tactics in the United States were largely imported from Great Britain.7 African public relations practice is heavily influenced by the colonial legacy of Western Europe. The growth of Asian public relations was affected by large U.S.-based multinational corporations.8 Moreover, large U.S.-based PR firms expanded into other countries during the mid-twentieth century taking with them their norms, customs, and practices. While these imports were certainly retooled by the importer, it remains a historical truth that public relations practice has spread from country to country. It is true that there is no one exporter of PR, and it is also true that the United States is not the “inventor” of the field. However, when examining public relations practice, it is important for historians to look globally to see how this field’s practices have expanded from nation to nation over time.

Public Relations Existed Before the Profession One of the larger historiographic questions in public relations history is, when did PR begin? There is the view that certain activities and practices may have been “like” public relations, but that the real practice of public relations did not emerge until there was a solidified profession. However, historical evidence shows that public relations has been around for a long time, and although a selfidentified practice of public relations did not exist until the early twentieth century and did not gain real widespread traction until after World War II, public relations as a craft had been used regularly for centuries.9 Moreover, the “practice” and “profession” of public relations are important for understanding what is included in PR history. Even in the era when professionalized public relations existed, many people were practicing public relations in an organic way. That is, they did not identify as PR practitioners, join PR organizations, gain

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accreditation as PR practitioners, nor engage with the “professional” PR community. Nowhere is this more evident than in social movements. Consider the Gay Rights Movement of the 1970s.10 This movement was largely hidden from its inception in the 1950s. The people working in the movement frequently had to hide their own identities for fear of reprisal from others and even criminal prosecution. However, the movement produced a long-term public relations campaigns centered around rights and equality. The movement formed its own organizations that centered around identity rather than professional practice, yet those groups were heavily involved in public relations work. Given the level of sophistication of their communication, it would be difficult to argue the Gay Rights Movement of the 1970s, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, or even the Temperance Movement of the 1890s and early 1900s were not public relations.11 Instead, these movements merely reflect the reality of their own public relations norms.

Public Relations Grew in Several Sectors at Once The linear narrative of public relations has been criticized by scholars as overly simplistic and too rooted in the false periodization of the four models of public relations created by James Grunig and Todd Hunt.12 What public relations history shows is that the field grew in tandem in many different sectors. In the late nineteenth century, corporate public relations was responding to criticism of industrialization, and by the early twentieth century muckrakers were creating problems for capitalists over their treatment of factory workers.13 Corporations used publicity to combat these criticisms at the same time that publicity was used by entertainment press and publicity agents. The strategies used may have varied slightly, but the underlying approach was understanding the press and the newsmaking process. Similarly, in World War I and World War II, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom employed public relations efforts to whip up patriotism on the home front.14 However, at the same time, business public relations was using a deeper understanding of the public to persuade them to adopt new products and technology. Sometimes the government and businesses even worked together to persuade publics into attitudinal change. What this shows is the underlying fallacy of telling public relations history in a linear fashion. Many things in PR strategy and tactics were going on at once, and it is difficult to prove what historical causality is, but it can be inferred that the practices of one sector were perhaps affecting the practices in another. Because PR development did not neatly develop in one sector and then neatly be coopted into another says that other forces outside of PR must have been at work. One force, known but frequently not discussed in public relations history, is the press. Public relations strategies and tactics, and even its professionalized norms have a close relationship with the development of the press. For instance, the concept of publicity, corporate or entertainment, was in response to the new news-making process of the popular press. Journalists needed stories about events

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that would appeal to readers, so, in response, public relations practitioners (i.e., press agents, publicity agents, publicists) provided that content to them.15 It is that response to technological and communication changes that built public relations in multiple sectors at the same time.

Corporate PR Is Important to PR History but It Is Not the Only PR History Corporate public relations is a dominant narrative in the history of public relations. It has been both critiqued and criticized. The criticism frequently coalesces around the idea that corporate public relations does not give the field the legitimacy it seeks. It also is criticized for being an area of public relations that privileges the voices of a few figures, notably men, who worked for large corporations. Its narrative and type of practice seem at odds with grassroots movements, and its historical structure privileges the linear narrative of public relations history. Additionally, corporate public relations history is largely American, of the twentieth century, and focused on profitmaking rather than relationship management. Critics of the rise of corporate public relations also point out that, as a field, it used, at times, deceptive communication practices to mold public opinion to be pro-capitalist, pro-corporation, pro-government subsidization, and anti-worker.16 That being said, corporate public relations history is extremely important to the narrative of public relations. Its contribution to public relations is largely centered around the institutionalization of the PR practitioner. Sometimes this is in terms of professionalization of the field, but because that term is laden with the idea that corporate PR is professional and all other forms are unprofessional, a better term is institutionalization. This institutionalization of the PR practitioner is important because it allowed people to develop professionally and exclusively in public relations. That type of individualized identity is essential to PR practice because it provided depth to the field in terms of research, development of ethics and standards, and professional organizations. The history of corporate public relations is replete with examples of individuals grappling with the identity of public relations practice (e.g., Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles),17 and developing innovative public relations strategies (e.g., Arthur Page).18 It is this standardization of practice that is corporate PR’s lasting legacy to the field.

Post-World War II Is Essential to Understanding Modern Public Relations Public relations history has several pivotal moments when the nature of the industry and practice fundamentally changed. This includes the rise of the penny press, the introduction of muckraking journalists in the 1890s, World War I, and the 1920s development of public relations counsel.19 However, the post-World War II era is perhaps the most influential era for public relations practice. It was

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the period in which public relations as a profession was created, as evidenced by the many public relations organizations that were established then.20 It is also the era in which ethical standards and practices for the field were written, nearly simultaneously, in several countries.21 It also is the era when the phenomenon of globalization began, which led to the introduction of multinational corporate influence in many countries. The post-war decline of fascism and the rise of international trade changed the communication realities world-wide, and, as a result, public relations became a normalized field. This era also saw the rise of public relations firms with permanently established foreign offices.22 The growth of the PR firm is perhaps the most significant impact on standardization in the field of public relations, and it represents a type of practice that has held for nearly 70 years. In fact, the growth of PR firms is important for understanding public relations practice today, especially because many young practitioners begin their careers there. Current public relations history focuses largely on older firms, most of which are either defunct or have been absorbed into modern PR firms. The historical record of firm creation and growth is one area of public relations history that needs further development because of its significance to the field.

Political Public Relations Is Frequently the Starting Point of PR History In examining the national histories of public relations, there is a common theme that emerges in which politics plays an important role in public relations development. This is true in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.23 It is also the case in non-Western countries where colonial government relations impacted the public relations development. Totalitarian governments also had a major impact on public relations development. Those governments, such as Spain and Greece in the early to mid-twentieth century, used public relations tactics to influence and control public opinion of these dictatorial regimes.24 All of this shows that public relations development frequently starts with government, and the state’s role in creating public relations is a pattern that emerges in several countries’ narrative of public relations. This role of the government is important for PR historiography, which frequently eschews a starting point for PR practice. While there is no flashpoint in history for any nation’s public relations practice, there do seem to be key ingredients that are present. PR historians Karen Russell and Margot Lamme broke these down to the intentionality of communication and the agency of the receiver.25 This perhaps could become even more focused, saying that public relations frequently occurred when those in power need to communicate with the public as a means to take, retain, and maintain power and control. This transcends democracy or any other political system. The old concept that government requires the consent of the people who are governed comes in many forms that

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are seen in the American Declaration of Independence and even detailed by Edward Bernays’s 1955 The Engineering of Consent.26 However, this concept of acceptance or tolerance of government control requires a level of communication, and this recognition is something that spans centuries, representing the first awareness of the power of communication, publics, and public opinion.

Propaganda Is Not Public Relations, but It Is Essential to PR History Public relations practice and history are uncomfortable about the unsavory past stories of the field. Part of the reason is that public relations’ mantra of managerial function is rooted in the idea of professional respect. If history brings in discussions about propaganda and manipulation, then professional respect of the field may be eroded, thus losing the justification for the managerial function of public relations. To be sure, propaganda is not public relations, and manipulation is not an accepted part of public relations practice. However, PR historian Tom Watson challenges the writers of public relations history to “get dangerous” and write about all aspects of PR’s past.27 Part of this dangerous past is propaganda. While the term is loaded, in the twentyfirst century, PR histories show that propaganda is really the outgrowth of a much larger movement—understanding public opinion. Public opinion is, in many ways, the linchpin of public relations practice. The recognition that there is a public opinion, and that it has power, is the core of what public relations practice is about, even in the twenty-first century. The question that propaganda raises is, is it appropriate to persuade, influence, or even control public opinion?; can public relations achieve these objectives through any means necessary? The answer for propaganda is that any means, including lying, is permissible. Public relations’ answer is that honesty and transparency rule the day, and no amount of deception is ever permissible. However, those answers have been debated and analyzed throughout public relations history with some figures arguing that differences between propaganda and public relations were shades of gray, not black and white. Despite this, propaganda’s history is an essential part of public relations development. The harmful results of propaganda spurred PR practice to establish its norms and ethics. The examination of public opinion led scholars and early public relations professionals to have a deeper understanding of the nuances and power of opinion making.

Much of PR History Is Known, but More Needs to Be Known In their 2010 historiography of public relations history, Margot Lamme and Karen Russell concluded that no sector of public relations history had been “adequately researched.”28 Looking at the field 10 years later, the answer has changed. Much is known about certain sectors of public relations practice. Political PR, corporate PR,

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and even grassroots movement public relations are well researched. There is a concerted movement to acknowledge the contributions of those overlooked by public relations history: women, minorities, and non-Western countries. While that record has not been totally corrected, there have been major advances in that area. Public relations today is more complete and inclusive than it has ever been, and its gaps are slowly, but methodically, being filled with scholarship. However, there are still glaring gaps in the historical record that seem surprising. One area that has little research done is the development of entertainment public relations. Perhaps this is because of the issue with P.T. Barnum and the troubling legacy of press agentry.29 However, entertainment public relations is an area of public relations that is one of the oldest and most established sectors of the field. Acknowledging its contribution and influence on the larger PR profession is important. Another area in need of attention is non-profit public relations practice. Scott Cutlip wrote an impressive history of American fundraising, but unlike the development of corporate PR, non-profit PR, even when done for large non-profits, seems to be unexamined.30 A similar critique can be made of public relations firms whose growth in the later twentieth century helped to create the modern concept of public relations practice. In fact, late twentiethcentury history is something relatively unexamined, perhaps because it is so recent. PR historians should take advantage of their proximity in time to this important era and create an accurate and inclusive historical narrative.

The Future of Public Relations History Public relations history has undergone many trends in the past 50 years. Today’s trend is for more inclusive PR histories, the recognition of national histories of PR, a critical assessment of leading figures in PR practice, and a more theoretically rich history that embraces a variety of critical cultural perspectives. There have also been major achievements in the field of PR history. The four models of public relations have been largely debunked as a historical periodization of public relations.31 The influence of early histories of public relations, particularly that by Edward Bernays, has been questioned and corrected. The list of leading figures of public relations history has been expanded to include many more previously unknown and overlooked men and women who contributed to the rich history of public relations. The future of public relations history requires historians to continue to fill in the gaps in the historical literature. To be sure, this is not an easy task because the gaps in public relations history today require looking at microhistories of the field, examining previously unknown people and events, and expanding the scope of PR history to include social movements and small organizations. Those types of histories require tedious research in archives and books long overlooked. Closing the gap in public relations history also requires a certain acknowledgment that many histories will never be told, because the record is not there. Because of that,

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the great (more inclusive) figures of public relations will still be those who were deemed important enough during their lives to leave behind a record. That leaves many of those who worked in public relations lost to the history of the field. Public relations history in the 2020s has reached a point of maturity. It has gone through a long period of introspection and identified problems, advocated new theoretical approaches, and cast off those theoretical perspectives that were inaccurate and problematic. However, this maturity signals a new phase of PR research where public relations history will retain the histories of the past and add to them to formulate a complete picture. P.T. Barnum, Ivy Lee, Arthur Page, Edward Bernays, and Carl Byoir will always be part of PR’s history. Early political PR will still acknowledge Samuel Adams and Amos Kendall. Alongside them, however, will be other figures, such as Inez Kaiser, Muriel Fox, Ofield Dukes, Randy Wicker, and Edward Clayton. American public relations history will continue to be a well-developed area of PR research, but the national PR histories outside the United States and Western Europe will likely be filled in, providing a more complete narrative of the development of the field. The famous line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue” is taken to mean the future is foretold by the past.32 Today public relations is undergoing a convergence with other forms of communication. The ubiquitous PESO model (paid, earned, shared, owned) shows that public relations is not about any single means of communication. PR history shows that public relations was never about one type of communication. It was about using the appropriate tools to achieve the appropriate results. Core fundamentals of PR practice, media relations, communications, public opinion, and persuasion, have not changed. Looking at PR history, the field can see its own identity and likely where it is heading in the future.

Discussion Questions     

What is the importance of national histories of public relations? How do they affect the overall history of public relations? What are the major challenges to filling the gaps in current PR history? What role should older histories play within public relations history? What is the importance of inclusivity within public relations history? What is the common thread in the history of public relations between PR sectors?

Notes 1 Tom Watson, ed., Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Tom Watson, ed., Latin American and Caribbean Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Eastern European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave

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2

3

4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13

14 15

16

Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., Asian Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Tom Watson, ed., North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Cayce Myers, “Reconsidering the Corporate Narrative in U.S. PR History: A Critique of Alfred Chandler’s Influence on PR Historiography,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 676–683; Karen Miller, “U.S. Public Relations History: Knowledge and Limitations,” Communication Yearbook 23 (2000): 381–420. Jacquie L’Etang, “United Kingdom,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations, ed. Tom Watson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Jacquie L’Etang, Public Relations in Britain: A History of Professional Practice in the 20th Century (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 30. Günter Bentele, “Germany,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations, ed. Tom Watson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Baijing Hu, Yi Hui Huang, and Di Zhang, “Public Relations and Chinese Modernity: A 21st Century Perspective,” Journal of Public Relations Research 27 (2015): 262–279, 272–274. Khayrat Ayyad and Ahmed Farouk, “Egypt,” in Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 35–37. Scott Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States: Its Role in America’s Philanthropy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 13. Hu, Huang, and Zhang, “Public Relations and Chinese Modernity;” Watson, Asian Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations. Tom Watson, “Creating the Culture of a Saint: Communication Strategies in 10th Century England,” Public Relations Review 34 (2008): 19–24; Scott Cutlip, Public Relations History from the 17th to the 20th Century: The Antecedents (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995). Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 171–187. Ibid.; Vanessa Murphree, “The Selling of Civil Rights: The Communication Section of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,” Journalism History 29 (2003): 21–31; Linda Hon, “ ‘To Redeem the Soul of America’: Public Relations and the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Public Relations Research 93 (1997): 163–212; Margot Lamme, “Tapping into War: Leveraging World War I in the Drive for a Dry Nation,” American Journalism 21 (2004): 63–91. James Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1984), 13. Nicholas Browning, “Ethics and the Profession: The Crystallizing of Public Relations Practice from Association to Accreditation, 1936–1964,” American Journalism 35 (2018): 140–170, 147; Genevieve McBride, “Ethical Thought in Public Relations History: Seeking a Relevant Perspective,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 4 (1989): 5–20, 16. L’Etang, Public Relations in Britain, 40–41; Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–134. Karen Russell and Cayce Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent,” Public Relations Review 45 (2019): 246–257; Cayce Myers, “Early US Corporate Public Relations: Understanding the ‘Publicity Agent’ in American Corporate Communications, 1902–1918,” American Journalism 32 (2015): 412–433; Marvin Olasky, “A Reappraisal of 19th Century Public Relations,” Public Relations Review 11 (1985) 3–12; Marvin Olasky, “Public Relations vs. Private Enterprise: An Enlightening History Which Raises Some Basic Questions,” Public Relations Quarterly (Winter 1985): 6–13; Marvin Olasky, Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987), 15–23.

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17 Sherman Morse, “An Awakening in Wall Street: How the Trusts after Years of Silence, Now Speak through Authorized and Acknowledged Press Agents,” American Magazine 62 (1906): 457–463, 460. 18 Noel Griese, “He Walked in the Shadows: Public Relations Counsel Arthur W. Page,” Public Relations Quarterly (Fall 1976): 8–15; Karen Russell, “Arthur Page and the Professionalization of Public Relations,” in Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of Practice and Profession, ed. Burton St. John, Margot Lamme, and Jacquie L’Etang (London: Routledge, 2014). 19 Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 287–295. 20 Tom Watson, “IPRA Code of Athens—The First International Code of Public Relations Ethics: Its Development and Implementation since 1965,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 707–714; L’Etang, “United Kingdom,” 149; Browning, “Ethics and the Profession,” 148. 21 Amy Thurlow, “Canada,” in Western European Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 44. 22 Natalia Rodrígues-Salcedo and Beatriz Gómez-Baceiredo, “A Herstory of Public Relations: Teresa Dorn, from Scott Cutlip to Burson-Marsteller Europe (1974–1995),” Journal of Public Relations Research 29 (2017): 16–37. 23 Cayce Myers, “United States Antecedents and Proto-PR,” in North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, ed. Tom Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); L’Etang, “United Kingdom,” 142–146; Bentele, “Germany,” 46–47. 24 Anastasios Theofilou and Tom Watson, “The History of Public Relations in Greece from 1950 to 1980: Professionalization of the ‘Art,’” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 700–706, 702; Natalia Rodrígues-Salcedo, “Public Relations before ‘Public Relations’ in Spain: An Early History (1881–1960),” Journal of Communication Management 12 (2008): 279–293, 285. 25 Karen Russell and Margot Lamme, “Theorizing Public Relations History: The Roles of Strategic Intent and Human Agency,” Public Relations Review 42 (2016): 741–747, 744–745. 26 Edward Bernays, The Engineering of Consent (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955). 27 Tom Watson, “Let’s Get Dangerous—A Review of Current Scholarship in Public Relation History,” Public Relations Review 40 (2014): 874–877. 28 Margot Lamme and Karen Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History,” Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, 11 (2010): 281–357, 356. 29 Russell and Myers, “The Misunderstood Nineteenth Century Press Agent.” 30 Cutlip, Fund Raising in the United States. 31 Lamme and Russell, “Removing the Spin,” 354–356. 32 William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1.

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INDEX

Entries in italics denote figures. ABCA (Army Bureau for Current Affairs) 67 accreditation 6, 57, 84, 123, 131–2 Ackerman, William 97 ACPR (American Council on Public Relations) 129–30 ACS (American Cancer Society) 79, 88n23 Adams, Charles Kendall 81 Adams, Samuel 31–2, 43, 145 advertising: and entertainment PR 114, 116, 118; professionalization of 100 advertorials 105 advocacy: and propaganda 57, 72; and public relations 4, 20, 71; and publicists 113, 118 Aethelwold, Bishop 85 Africa, public relations practice in 139 African-American practitioners 7, 92 Agronsky, Gershon 68–9 Akerson, George 36 Aldrich, Winthrop 100 Allen, Whiting 117 American Colonization Society 38 American Political Science Association 54 American Railroad Journal 95–6 American Red Cross 64, 78–9 American Revolution: fundraising for commemorations of 77; propaganda in 57; public relations in 3, 31, 43 American Tobacco Company 103 Anthony, Susan B. 39

anti-business attitudes 104 anti-German newspaper 40, 66–7 Anti-Saloon League 39–40 anti-Semitism 32, 68 anti-slavery movement 38 anti-suffrage organizations 39 A&P 92 APR (Accreditation in Public Relations) 6, 57, 131–2 Aristotle 1 Arthur Page Society 7, 18 Asia, public relations in 139 Asociación de Relacionistas Profesionales de Puerto Rico 132 Atlee, Clement 67 AT&T 18, 92; and corporate PR 98–9, 102, 105; and publicity agents 118 Augustus, Caesar 43 autocratic governments 42, 62–3; see also totalitarian governments Avineri, Shlomo 32 Baker, Ella 40 Baker, James 37 Baker, Joseph 7 Baker, Purley 40 Baker, Ray Stannard 39 Barbara Weinstock Lectures 83 Barnum, P. T. 5, 96; as ethical low point 7, 119–21; and PR history 16, 18–20, 25, 112, 116–17, 144–5; as publicist 114–15; and usury 121n10

Index 163

BBC 67 BBD&O 37 Beard, Charles 55 Beaverbrook, Lord 66 Beckley, John 33 behavioral change, eliciting 2, 4 Bell, Alexander Graham 98 Bell Pottinger 133 Bentele, Günter 23, 67 Bernays, Edward ix, 11, 17–18, 145; and corporate PR 92; and CPI 71; critiques of 22, 117; and Goebbels 50; on government 143; and history of PR 7, 18, 23, 25, 144; on licensing 131; on morale 55; on the NAACP 40; and nomenclature of PR 6, 9, 103; and psychology 20; on public opinion and propaganda 52–4, 56, 58–9, 60n53, 129; on publicity 113–14; on social responsibility 128; teaching career 83 Bidault, Georges 68 Billings, George 96 Biography of an Idea (Bernays) 18, 110n108 BIP (Bureau d’Information et de Presse) 68 black propaganda 65 Blackwell, Henry 39 Bleyer, Willard 82 Block, Etienne 131 Bogle, Lori 45n28 Boorstin, Daniel 56–7, 61n69 Boston Massacre 30, 43 Boston Tea Party 31, 44n5 Boston University 84 Bracken, Brendan 67 Brexit 42 British Commonwealth 126 Brookhart, Ron 41 Brown, Ernest 66 Brown, John 69 Bruno, Harry 103 Bryan, William Jennings 34 Buntline, Ned 115 Buñuel, Luis 68 Burke, John 115 Burson, Harold 1, 92 Burson-Marstellar 1, 92, 105 business cycle 104 business propaganda 54 Byoir, Carl 79, 92, 104, 145 Byron, Lord 116 California Association of Public Information Officials 132

Canfield, Bruce 80 Cantril, Hadley 50, 56 Carnegie, Andrew 78 Carter, Jimmy 37 CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) 82 Cass, George Washington Jr. 96 Center, Alan see Cutlip, Scott and Center, Alan Certificate in Principles of Public Relations 84 chain stores 100 Chandler, Alfred 21 charitable fundraising 78 Charity Organization Society 78 China 127, 139 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 65 cigarettes 103 CIPR 131 Civil Rights Movement 40–1, 130, 140 Clarke, Edward Young 70 Clarke, Joseph Ignatius Constantine 88n14, 92 Clayton, Edward 40, 145 Cleveland, Grover 34, 45n24, 97 Club de la maison de verre 131 Code of Athens 130–1, 136n63 Cody, “Buffalo Bill” 115 COI (Central Office of Information) 67 college fundraising 80–2 Colombo, Joe 42 colonialism 23, 57, 126, 133, 139 commercial speech 125 The Common School Journal 80 Common Sense (Paine) 31 communication: deceptive practices 141; intentionality of 142; two-way 11, 20, 126, 130, 136n61 communication professions 4 communication strategies 18; in American Revolution 57; for political campaigns 32; terrorist 69; wartime 64–5 communism 50, 65 company towns 129 confidentiality 125 conflict 62, 71 Congregatio de propaganda fide 49 consent, engineering of 128 constituent services 29 consumerism 100, 105, 139 Cooke, Jay 78 Coolidge, Calvin 36 corporate communications 10–11, 99, 128

164 Index

corporate culture 91, 94 corporate propaganda 64 corporate public relations 91–3, 105–6, 140–1; and corporate power 17–18, 99–100; Olasky’s critique of 21–2; and PR history 19, 25; professionalization of 100–5; and Progressive movement 38–9; publicity agents as 6; and state propaganda 71 corporate regulation 124 corporate social responsibility (CSR) 128–30 corporations: exporting PR practice 139, 142; growth of 64, 93–5, 124, 133; structure of 1, 94, 100, 106; trust in 99–100 Cortelyou, George 34–5 Counter-Reformation 85 CPI (Committee for Public Information) 73n9, 125; Bernays in 5–6, 53; and corporate public relations 71; creation of 17, 36; and propaganda 50, 64–5 CPRS (Canadian Public Relations Society) 9–10, 131 Crawford, Remsen 101, 117 Creel, George 17–18, 50, 64–5 Creel Committee see CPI crisis management 71 crowd psychology 35, 51 Crystallizing Public Opinion (Bernays) 17, 50, 52–3, 59n9, 103 C-suite access 92 Cutlip, Scott 3, 7, 9; academic career of 84; on American Revolution 31; on Barnum 114; on gift giving 88n19; on non-profits 77–8, 144; on PR history 3, 22; on Rockefeller 88n14 Cutlip, Scott and Center, Alan 7, 83–4, 115–17; on non-profits 80; on PR as management function 9–10 Daily Express 66 Daily Mirror 66 Dale, Edgar 55–6 Dam, Colby Dorr 55 Davis, Elmer 65 Davison, Henry 79 deadheading 96–7, 114 Deaver, Michael 37 Declaration of Principles (Lee) 7, 9, 11, 17, 101, 127, 141 democracy: and corporate PR 105; and professional PR 125–8, 133; and propaganda 49, 53, 55–6, 66, 72; and

public opinion 51; and public relations 29, 33, 42, 62–3, 71 department stores 100, 115 Deutsche Public Relations Gesellschaft 131 Dewey, John 56 Dickens, Charles 116 Dinan, William 105 disinformation 54, 62, 115–16 Douglas, Stephen 33 Dukes, Ofield 7, 92, 145 Dupont 102, 118 duty, legal concept of 124 earned media 38, 41–2 Eastern Europe 132 Edelman, Daniel 133 Edison, Thomas 97 education: public relations as 104; public relations for 76, 80–3, 87; for public relations practitioners see public relations education Effective Public Relations (Cutlip and Center): and education 83–4; and four models 21; and historical narrative 7, 18; on non-profits 80; and press agentry 9, 114–17 Egypt 126–7 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 37 Eliot, Charles 82 Ellsworth, James D. 99, 102 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 50 eminent domain 83, 95, 124 emotional appeals 1, 56 employee publications 128; see also corporate communications entertainment: public relations professionals in 5, 116–19; and publicity 113–15 entertainment and public relations 112–13, 119–21 ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) 42 ethics 127–9; codes and standards of 2–3, 6–7, 123, 125, 130–1, 142; lapses in 92, 133; and press agents 116; and propaganda 57–8 EUPRERA (European Public Relations Education and Research Association) 9 Europe, debates on PR in 130–1 evangelical movement 86 Excellence Theory 9–10, 21, 130, 136n61 fascism 56, 68, 125–6, 133, 142 Federal Trade Commission 54 Federalist Papers 31

Index 165

Filene, Edward 55 films: propaganda 48, 50, 64, 66–8,74n41; see also United States, film industry in Finney, Lydia 86 First Amendment law 125, 128 Fleischman, Doris 7, 103 Fleishman Hillard 105 Florida Public Relations Association 132 Folsom, Frances 34 Ford, Henry 118 Four Minute Men 65 Fox, Muriel 92, 145 Franco, Francisco 68, 125 Franklin, Benjamin 31, 81 Frantz, Joe 127 French Resistance 68 Freud, Sigmund 17, 52 Freudian psychology 20, 103 front groups 98 FTC (Federal Trade Commission) 125, 128 Fund Raising in the United States (Cutlip) 77 fundraising: for charitable causes 76–80, 87; Cutlip’s history of 144; for education 80–1; imported tactics of 139 Garber, William 56 Gay Rights Movement 40–1, 140 Germantown Experiment 78 Germany: and public relations 23, 139, 142; state propaganda in 50, 67–8 Gifford, Walter S. 99 Ginzberg, Carlo 88n1 GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) 41 Gladden, Washing 88n14 globalization 125, 133, 142 Goebbels, Joseph 50, 59n9, 68 Goldman, Eric 38, 103–4 governmental public relations 66, 68, 72 governments, consent for 142–3 GPO (Government Printing Office) 35 Graham, Billy 86 Gras, N. S. B. 93, 104 grassroots movements 40, 141, 144 Grayson, Carey 36 Great Depression 45n39, 79, 99, 102, 104 Greece: ancient 63; public relations in 125–6, 142 Gregory XV, Pope 49 Griffin, Junius 40 Griswold, Glen and Denny 130 Griswold, Rufus Wilmot 114 Group Attitudes Corporation 105

group behavior 48, 53 Gruening, Ernest 60n49 Grunig, James 19–20, 140 Hagner, Belle 35 hair nets 18, 103 Hale, David 81 Halpin, Maria 34 Hamilton, Alexander 31 Hamilton Wright Organization 102 Hanna, Mark 34 Harding, W. G. 36, 119 Harding, W. G. n36 45 Harlow, Rex 83, 129–30 Harper, William Rainey 81 Harris, W. W. 102 Hart, M. Martyn 78 Harvard University 80–2 Hayes, Will 119 The Herald of Freedom 114 Herzl, Theodor 32 Heth, Joice 16, 114–15 Hill & Knowlton 92, 103, 105, 127 historical narratives 7, 23–4 historicity 7, 15, 22, 24–5 historiography 23–4; see also public relations historiography Hitler, Adolf 51, 56, 67–8 Hollywood 119 Hoover, Herbert 36, 45n39 Hope, Constance 92–3 Hopkinson, Tom 130 Howe, Samuel Gridley 78 HPRA (Hellenistic Public Relations Association) 125, 131 Hughes, John 80 human agency 1, 4 human character, understanding 1 Hunt, Todd 19–20, 140 Hunter, Barbara 92 Hyde, Grant D. 82 Hyde, Howard 39 IBM 105 ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) 97 identity formation 19 Illinois Central Railroad 96–7 Illinois Committee on Public Utility Information 98 image making 35 image management: corporate 95, 99; in early modern Europe 85; in political PR 37, 42; and terrorist groups 71–2

166 Index

industrialization: criticism of 96, 140; laws on 124 information model of public relations ix, 20 Ingraham, Prentiss 115 Insull, Samuel 97–8 IPA (Institute for Propaganda Analysis) 55–8 IP&C (Information Presse and Communication) 9 IPR (Institute for Public Relations) 9, 132, 136n67 IPRA (International Public Relations Association) 2, 9, 123, 130–1, 136n63 ISIS 70 Israel 68–70 Israeli PR Association 131 issues management 41 Italian-American Civil Rights League 42 Italy, public relations in 126 Ivy Lee & Associates 102 Jackson, Andrew 31–2 James, Saint 84–5 Jay, John 31 Jefferson, Thomas 31, 33 John Deere 102 John Price Jones Corporation 79, 103 John Robinson’s Circus and Menagerie 116 Joslin, Ted 36 journalism: muckraking see muckrakers; yellow 16, 26n10; see also the press Journalism Quarterly 128 Joy, Jason 119 Kahn, Otto 100 Kaiser, Inez 7, 92, 145 Kendall, Amos 18, 31–2, 44n11, 145 Kendrix, Moss 7 Kennedy, John F. 37, 65 King, Martin Luther Jr. 41 Knowlton, Don 102 Ku Klux Klan 69–70 labor movements 94–5 Lamme, Margot 4, 24, 40, 85, 142–3 Lamont, Thomas 82 Lavine, Harold 56 law: and film industry 119; and government PR 73n17; and PR practice 123–5; and the railroads 95–7 lawsuits see litigation lawyers, and corporate PR 104–5 Le Bon, Gustave 45n28, 51

Lee, Ivy 7, 9, 11, 18, 145; and corporate PR 38, 99–103; detractors of 122n46; and duty 124; and ethics of PR 127; in film industry 118–19; informational model of PR 20; and non-profit fundraising 79; and propaganda 64; and Rockefeller 17, 78, 92, 101; see also Declaration of Principles Lee, Mordecai 73n17 Lee, Wideman 102 licensing 18, 131–2 Lincoln, Abraham 33, 44n19 Lindeman, Eduard 56 Lippmann, Walter 51–2, 58, 129 litigation 93, 119, 125 lobbying 29, 39, 96, 132 Locke, John 31 Loeb, William Jr. 35 logical reasoning 1 Ludlow Massacre 17, 101 Luther, Martin 85 Lyman, Levi 114 Lyon, Mary 81 Madison, James 31, 33, 96 mail order 100 Mailer, Norman 37 Maine Public Relations Council 132 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Wilson) 91 management function of public relations 2, 9–11, 15, 94–5, 98, 130, 143 Managing Public Relations (Grunig and Hunt) 19 Mann, Horace 80 March of Dimes 79 Marshall Plan 125–6 Marsteller, Bill 92 Martin, Everett Dean 51 Massey Manufacturing Company 128 Masterman, Charles 66 Mather, Kirtley 55 Mattachine Society 41 McKinley, William 34–5 media relations 5, 72, 139, 145; and conflict 62; and entertainment 113, 120; and non-profits 77; in political PR 30; of terrorist groups 69–71 media relations professionals 116 Mein Kampf 51, 56, 67 Methodism 81, 86 Michaelis, George V. S. 102 Michelangelo 85

Index 167

micro-histories 8, 24, 76, 88n1 middle management 17, 94 Miller, Clyde 55–6 Miller, Mark 49 Milton, John 31, 85 Ministry of Information 66–7, 125 minorities, contributions to PR 7, 16, 21, 23, 105, 144 Mobil Oil 105 monopolies 18, 54, 93, 97–8 Moon, Henry Lee 7 Morgan, J. P. 79, 99–100, 117 Morrow, Dwight 100 Moskowitz, Belle 92, 107n16 Moulin, Jean 68 MPPDA (Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America) 119 Mubarak, Hosni 127 muckrakers 35, 39, 45n29, 141; and corporate PR 78, 91, 95, 97, 115, 140; former 127; and propaganda 64 Murrow, Edward R. 65 Mutual Life Insurance 102 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) 7, 40 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 126 nation building 30–2 National Association of Government Communicators 132 National Association of Manufacturers 55, 94, 104 National School Public Relations Association 132 National Service 67 National Socialism 23, 67–8, 139 Nazi Party 59n9, 67–8 negligence law 124 NELA (National Electric Light Association) 98, 127–8 New York University 83 New Zealand 126 Newman, John Henry 85 news, Lippmann on 51–2 newspaper editors 30–2; peddling influence with 98–9 Newton, Carroll 37 Nixon, Richard 37 non-profit organizations 5, 11, 23; and the CPI 64; fundraising by 77–9; historical records of 77, 87 non-profit public relations 76–80, 86, 144 Northcliffe, Lord 66

Norton, Dyer 35 Nuremburg Rallies 68, 74n41 Obama, Barack 38 O’Donnell, Victoria 49 OEX (Office of International Exchange) 65 OGR (Office of Government Reports) 73n17 OIC (Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs) 65 OII (Office of Information) 65 Olasky, Marvin 21–2, 95–8, 118 Olds, Irving 105 Olympic Games, 1936 Berlin 68 organizational communication 139 organizational consciousness 92 O’Ryan, William J. 78 OSS (Office of Strategic Service) 65 OWI (Office of War Information) 65 Pacific Railroad 115 Page, Arthur W. 7, 18, 92, 99, 141, 145 “The Page Principles” 18, 99 paid content 6 Paine, Thomas 18, 31 pamphleteers 18, 43 Parker & Lee 102 Parks, Rosa 41 Parliamentary Recruiting Committee 66 patriotism 78, 105, 140 Paul, Saint 86, 89n65 PCA (Production Code Administration) 119 PDRG (German Public Relations Association) 9 Peace Corps 65 Pendleton Dudley and Associates 102 penny press 114, 141 persuasion 1, 9, 145; ethics of 96 PESO (paid/earned/shared/owned) media 57, 145 philanthropy 45n39, 76, 78–9, 88nn14,19, 129 Pierce, Daniel T. 102 Pilgrim Publicity Association 118, 127 Pinchot, Gifford 64 Plank, Betsey 105 Plant Railway and Steamship System 101, 117 PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) 70 political campaigns 30–4, 38 political psychology 52 political public relations 29, 42–3, 142; and democracy 62–3; language of 29–30;

168 Index

and nation-building 30–2; in US history 32–8 Political Warfare Executive (PWE) 67 pooling 97 Poor, Henry Varnum 95 Pope, Bayard F. Jr 79 popular press: and propaganda 48; and publicity 115; use of term “public relations” 103 PRCA (Public Relations and Communications Association) 2, 9 presentism 8 the press: legitimacy of 128; and PR history 140–1; and public opinion. 35, 130; see also newspaper editors; popular press press agentry 4–5, 11, 116–17; Barnum and 7, 16, 20, 114–15; and development of PR 9, 11, 20, 95; and Gay Liberation 41; negative views of 93, 144; and publicists 117; Tedlow on 21 press agents 112 press conferences 35–6 press relations, and US presidency 34–7 press secretary, White House 35–7 Price, W. W. 34 printing, and religious public relations 85 PRINZ (Public Relations Institute of New Zealand) 126 pro-business narratives 55, 93, 141 professionalization 15, 130; and corporate PR 133, 141; ethics in 123, 128; of managers 94; and nomenclature 103; worldwide 124–6 Progressive Era, and corporate PR 38–9, 91, 95, 115 propaganda 4, 48–9, 57–9; Bernays on 6, 49, 53–5, 128–9; fascist use of 126; history of term 49–50, 68; increasing awareness of 55–7; and public relations 43, 50, 52, 63, 71, 143; wartime 63–9, 71–2 Propaganda (Bernays) 17, 49, 53 proselytizing 3, 24, 84, 117 Protestant Reformation 85 PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) 2, 63; and accreditation 131 (see also APR); and definitions of PR 10; and education 84; and ethics 19, 127, 130; founding of 9, 105, 123 pseudo-events 31, 56, 103, 116 pseudo-lobbying 97 psychographic information 18, 20, 52 psychology 17, 51–3, 56, 100

public awareness 30, 48, 72 public opinion 145; Bernays on 6, 9, 52–4; and conflict 62–3; corporate manipulation of 96; managing 18; and political PR 29–33, 38, 40, 42–3; and the press 35, 130; and propaganda 48–9, 56–8, 65–6, 68, 143; study of 50–2; and terrorist groups 71 Public Opinion (Lippmann) 51–2, 103 Public Opinion Quarterly 54, 56, 105 Public Relations (Bernays) 18, 113–14 public relations: bad actors using 62–3, 70; definitions of 1–2, 8, 10–11, 129; exports and imports of 138–9; foundational practices of 139; four models of ix–x, 19, 20–1, 144; governmental use of see governmental public relations; heroes and founders in 6–8; industry definitions of 8–10; institutionalization in education of 82–3; negative associations of 117, 133; outside U.S. 8, 22–3, 125–6; pre-professional forms of 139–40; as profession and practice 2–4 (see also professionalization; public relations professionals); and public opinion 52, 54; use of term 6, 33, 103 public relations agencies, independent 82, 102–3 public relations counsel 4; and propaganda 53–4; use of term 5–7, 9, 17, 52, 103 public relations education 76, 83–4, 87, 129 public relations firms: Cutlip on 22; lack of history of 144; multinational 93, 105, 127, 139, 142; and non-profit fundraising 79; practitioners outside 23 public relations historiography ix–x, 2, 15, 21, 78, 142 Public Relations History (Cutlip) 3, 22 public relations history: and corporate growth 91–2, 106; critiques of 21–4; current debates in 24–5; eras of 3; forces in ix–x; and four models 21; future of 138, 144–5; importance of 15–16; multiple sectors of 140–1; national 138–9, 144–5; non-corporate 141–2; and non-profits 76–7; older narratives of 16–19; overlooked contributions to 143–4; post-World War II 141–2; press agentry in 117; propaganda in 57–8; and publicity 114–15; and terrorist groups 69–71 Public Relations Institute 63

Index 169

Public Relations Institute of South Africa 131 public relations journals 83–4, 130 Public Relations News 105, 130 public relations practitioners 1; institutionalization of 141; names of 4–6; overlooked 23 (see also minorities; women); self-identification of 3; see also accreditation; ethics; licensing public relations professionals: engagement with public 20; entertainment 112, 117; organizations of 127, 129–31, 133; professional listings for 105; training 84 (see also public relations education); see also professionalization publicists 4, 6, 120; corporate 92; in entertainment 112–13, 117–19; at universities 81 publicity: by educational institutions 81–2; history of term 113; and PR 19 publicity agents 4–6, 120; corporate 102; in entertainment 112–13, 115, 117–18 The Publicity Bureau 22, 82, 99, 102 publicity director, use of term 81, 83, 113 Publicity is Broccoli (Hope) 92 public-private partnerships 22, 95–7, 99, 124 puffery 81, 96, 98, 114 Al-Qaeda 70 R.R. Blythe and Associates 103 railroads 17; and corporate PR 94–7, 100–1; and press agentry 116–17; and publicity 115 Rantoul, Robert Jr. 96 Rappe, Virginia 119 Reagan, Ronald 37 relationship building 42, 139 relationship management 72; and donors 87; and entertainment 113; and political PR 29; and US presidency 36 religion and public relations 76–7, 84–7 Religion Communicators Council 132 religious movements 24, 84, 86 reputation management 80, 139 respect, professional 143 Riefenstahl, Leni 68, 74n41 Rockefeller, John D. 17, 78, 88n14, 101 Rogers & Cowan PMK 119 Rome, ancient 43, 63 Roosevelt, Franklin 36, 79 Roosevelt, Theodore 34–5, 39, 45n29, 64, 115, 127

Rove, Karl 34 Russell, Karen 4, 24, 85, 142–3 Sadat, Anwar 127 saints 84–5 Salinger, Pierre 37 Salvage, James 104 Saudi Arabia 126, 139 SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) 40–1 Second Great Awakening 24, 86 Shakespeare, William 15, 145 Shaw, Albert 83 Shriver, Sargent 65 Simmons, Williams 70 Sinn Féin 70 Skelton, Oscar D. 81 Sklar, Paul 104 Small, Herbert 102 Smith, Hugh 50, 96 Smith and Walmer 102 SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) 40–1 social capital 69 social media management 6 social movements, and public relations 23–4, 30, 38–42, 140 social responsibility 128–30 social science 84, 103, 130 socialism 50, 98 SOE (Special Operations Executive) 67 Sousa, John Phillip 116 South Africa 126 Southern Public Relations Federation 132 Southern Publicity Association 70 Soviet Union: collapse of 23; propaganda against 65 Spain, public relations in 125–6, 134n11, 142 Spanish Civil War 68 spin 130 Standard Oil 17, 88n14, 92, 126–7 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 39 Star Chamber 85 stereotypes 52 Stewart, Jane 105 Stickney, William 44n11 Stone, Lucy 39 Stonewall raid 41 strategic intent 4 strategic management 10 stratification model of public relations 23

170 Index

Stritmatter, Rodger 35 stunts 16, 114, 116 Swithun, Saint 84–5 symmetry theory 89n65 Taft, W. H. 35 Tamblyn, George 82–3 Tarbell, Ida 39 Tarde, Gabriele 51 Taylor, Myron 105 Taylor, William Desmond 119 Tedesco, John 44n5 Tedlow, Richard 21 telegraph advertisement 118 telephone industry see utility companies temperance movement 7, 39–40, 140 Tenney, E. P. 81 terrorist organizations, propaganda of 62–3, 69–72 Thomas, Norman 55 Thomas R. Shipp and Co. 102 Thorndike, Edward 52, 100 Thorsen, J. Mitchel 103 Tillman Act 124 Toledano, Margalit 32 tort law 124 totalitarian governments 55–6, 125, 142 transparency: between utilities and government 83; corporate 57, 99, 115; Lee on 9, 127; legally mandated 124; in propaganda 54, 143 Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl) 68, 74n41 Trump, Donald 37–8 Tumulty, Joseph 36 Turkey 69 Twain, Mark 116 Twitter 38 two-way public relations: asymmetrical 20; symmetrical ix, 19–21 Two-Way Street (Goldman) 103–4, 113 Tyler, Elizabeth 70 UAB (Universal Accreditation Board) 132 Union Trust Company 102 United Fruit Company 18, 92 United Kingdom: accreditation of PR practitioners in 132; government influence on PR 139; lobbying in 132; political PR in 142; wartime PR of 66–7, 140; see also British Commonwealth

United States: corporate development in 22, 106, 138–9; election of Senators 44n19; exporting public relations practice 58; film industry of 118–19; news media in 128; non-profits in 76; presidency and political PR of 33–8, 142; professionalization of PR in 131; public relations in history of 31–2; social movements in history of 38–9; wartime propaganda of 63–6, 140; see also American Revolution United States Information Service 126 University of Chicago 55, 81–2 University of Illinois 82–3 University of Pennsylvania 80–1 University of Wisconsin 81–2 The Unseen Power (Cutlip) 3, 22 USAID 65 USIE (Office of International Information and Education Exchange) 65 USO (United Service Organizations) 79 usury 114, 121n10 utility companies: and corporate PR 83, 95, 97, 103; financial reporting by 124; propaganda for 54, 128 Vail, Theodore 98–9 Vanderbilt, Cornelius 17 Vernon, Norma 56 Vietnam War, propaganda in 69 VOA (Voice of America) 65 von Wiegand, Karl 59n9 Walker, S. H. 104 Wallace, Irving 121n10 Walther von der Vogelweide 67 war 62; see also propaganda, wartime Ward & Hill Associated 79 Ward, Charles Sumner 78–9 Watson, Tom 13n32, 70, 143 Weber Shandwick 105, 127 Wehsler, James 56 welfare, corporate 129 Wesley, John 86 West Cork Railroad Company case 129 Western Union 102, 118 Westernization 23, 69 Weston, William 63 Whig histories 1–2, 23 Whigs, militant 30 Whitefield, George 81, 86 Wicker, Randy 41, 145

Index 171

William Morris Agency 119 Wilson, Sloan 91 Wilson, Woodrow 17, 36, 39, 64 Wittenmyer, Annie 86 women: contributions to PR 7, 16, 21, 23, 105, 144; in religious movements 86; smoking 18, 20, 103 women’s suffrage movement 7, 38–9 Woods, James 40 World War I: British propaganda in 66; fundraising in 79; and propaganda 20, 50, 54; and public opinion 51, 53; and public relations 5–6, 9, 17, 20, 64, 71;

and temperance movement 40; US propaganda in 64–5 World War II: and propaganda 48–9; resistance propaganda in 68; US and UK public relations in 65–7, 140 Xerox 105 YMCA movement 78–9, 86, 129 ZAPRA (Zambia Public Relations Association) 126 Zionist movement 32, 69