History of Public Relations. or group could be considered public relations. Certainly such behavior is part of the

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1 History of Public Relations The precise advent of public relations is open to debate, since any effort that an individual or a group has made to promote a cause, an idea, or another individual or group could be considered public relations. Certainly such behavior is part of the human condition and stretches back to the dawn of speech and public discourse. Lattimore, Baskin, Heiman, and Toth (2009, pp.19-22) recognize these ancient roots when he puts forth four traditions of public relations, the first being rhetorician and press agent. He points to Gorgias of Leontinium in Sicily, who unlike his better-known contemporary, Plato, was less concerned with the truth or falsity of an argument and more focused on his ability to persuade his listeners to accept his point of view. In keeping with this first tradition, Lattimore et. al also note the Crusades, the antics of Lady Godiva, and the posting of Martin Luther s anti-papist principles as public relations activities, as all can be seen as dramatic and even brutal means of bringing one s message before the public. In revolutionary America, slogans such as Give me liberty or give me death and Taxation without representation is tyranny rallied the populace to oppose British rule. During Andrew Jackson s presidency ( ), Amos Kendall served as what was essentially the first presidential press secretary and congressional liaison. Perhaps the most famous press agent of all was circus promoter P.T. Barnum, who shamelessly exaggerated the attributes of his performers. Lattimore et. al s journalistic and publicity tradition (2009, pp ) was a natural outgrowth of the urbanization of America and the exploitation of workers.

2 Businesses were making money, and behemoth monopolies were making a lot of money, but they were continually besieged by workers and social activists who were demanding a share of the wealth and decent workplace conditions. In short, businesses had a public relations problem and turned to professionals to clean up their image in the public s mind. The term public relations made its first appearance in 1882, and former newspapermen found new careers in the field. In 1900, George V.S. Michaelis founded the Publicity Bureau in Boston to gather information on his clients and distribute it to newspapers. Though near the end of his life Ivy Ledbetter Lee was disgraced for having assisted the Nazis, his other work especially with the railroads and with John D. Rockefeller did much to nurture the fledgling profession. He maintained that public relations professionals should never withhold the truth from the public about their clients wrongdoings or failures, holding that honesty is always the best policy. As early as the 1880s, large firms like American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and Mutual Life Insurance Company established public relations departments to build goodwill with their customers, and during the early 1900s, notfor-profit organizations and colleges began using public relations firms to improve their image and to fund-raise. George Creel and Edward L. Bernays typify Lattimore et. al s third tradition that of the persuasive communication campaign (2009, pp ). Exjournalist Creel was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 to head the Committee on Public Information, what was essentially a pro-war propaganda machine that used modern psychological techniques of mass manipulation. Bernays shared Creel s vision of public relations as propaganda, expounding his philosophy in

3 the seminal Crystallizing Public Opinion, in which he saw his task as the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses. Bernays had an obsessive desire for recognition (Stauber & Rampton, 1999) and so saved numerous documents that chronicled his career. These papers, writes biographer Larry Tye (1998), provide illuminating and sometimes disturbing background on some of the most interesting episodes of twentieth-century history, from the way American tobacco tycoons made it socially acceptable for women to smoke to the way other titans of industry persuaded us to pave over our landscape and switch to beer as the 'beverage of moderation.' The companies involved aren't likely to release their records of those campaigns, assuming they still exist. But Bernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took in.... In so doing, he let us see just how policies were made and how, in many cases, they were founded on deception (p. ix). Lastly, Lattimore et. al present a fourth tradition of relationship building and two-way communication (2009, pp ). Arthur W. Page, who headed public relations at AT&T, insisted on a new way of approaching the profession based on transparency in business operations. His principles demand two-way communication between the organization and its publics: tell the truth; prove it with action; listen to the customer; manage for tomorrow; conduct public relations as if the whole company depended on it; and remain calm, patient, and good-humored.

4 Public relations as a field of academic pursuit, as opposed to public relations as a profession, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Edward L. Bernays (Cutlip, Center, & Broom, 2000) taught the first public relations course at New York University in 1923, but universities only began to offer public relations courses as a field of study in the 1930s. Rex Harlow, who died in 1993 at the age of 100, is believed to have been the first full-time professor of public relations, teaching at Stanford University from 1940 to 1944 (Rex F. Harlow, 1993). In 1939, he founded the American Council on Public Relations (Wilcox, 2007, p. 57), which became the Public Relations Society of America in 1947 (Buffalo State College, 2008; Oklahoma Historical Society), thereby giving testament to the strong ties between academics who teach public relations and the working professionals who put classroom theories into practice on a daily basis. Public relations courses are usually taught in departments of communication or journalism, though sometimes they are also offered in schools of business. In the early 1950s, only a dozen institutions of higher learning allowed students to major in public relations, whereas today more than 200 programs in journalism or communication studies have public relations concentrations and some 300 others offer at least one course in public relations (Seitel, 2007, p.36). Public relations If ever there was a term that means wildly different things to different people, public relations is it. Public relations practitioners are often thought of as flacks and spin doctors; as such, public relations is the purview of those who know how to lie and twist or spin issues during press conferences and other public forums to take the heat off of the organizations they represent (Heath &

5 Coombs, 2006, p. 7). Granted, such unscrupulous people are found in public relations, but they do not define the field. Rather, public relations is the management function that entails planning, research, publicity, promotion, and collaborative decision making to help any organization s ability to listen to, appreciate, and respond appropriately to those persons and groups whose mutually beneficial relationships the organization needs to foster as it strives to achieve its mission and vision (Heath & Coombs, 2006, p. 7). Cutlip, Center, and Broom (2006, p. 5) offer a more succinct definition, which served the purposes of this dissertation: the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.