Text A History of PR

Early specialists in public relations specialized in promoting circuses, performances, and other public shows. Later, most PR practitioners were recruited from journalism. Highly paid PR positions are a popular career choice for many journalists. PR historians say the first PR firm, the Publicity Bureau, was established in 1900 by former newspapermen. Their first client was Harvard University.

The First World War also helped to stimulate the development of public relations as a profession. Many of the first PR professionals, including Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays and Carl Byoir started their careers with the Committee for Public Information, which organized publicity on behalf of US during World War I (One). Some histo­rians see Ivy Lee as the first real practitioner of public relations, but Edward Bernays is considered today as the profession's found­er. In describing the origin of the term Public Relations, Bernays wrote, «When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And propaganda was a bad word because of the Germans using it. So what I did was to try to find some other words, so we named our organizaion Council on Public Relations».

Ivy Lee was a man who developed the modern news release (also called a «press release»). He introduced a philosophy of the «two-way street» public relations, in which PR consists of helping clients listen as well as communicate messages to their publics. In prac­tice, however, Lee often worked in one-way propaganda on behalf of clients with bad image, including John D. Rockefeller.

Bernays was the profession's first theorist. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays took many of his ideas from Freud's theories about the irrational, unconscious motives of human behavior. Bernays wrote several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947). Bernays

saw public relations as an «applied social science» that uses psy­chology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manipu­late the irrational public. «The conscious and intelligent manip­ulation of the opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,» he wrote in Propaganda. «Those who manip­ulate this unseen mechanism of society form an invisible govern­ment which is the true ruling power of our country.»

One of Bernays' early clients was the tobacco industry. In 1929, he managed a legendary publicity event aimed at persuad­ing women to start smoking cigarettes. Bernays arranged a march of women smoking cigarettes as a form of protest against the norms of a society. Photographs of what Bernays called the «Torches of Liberty Brigade» were sent to newspapers, persuading many wom­en to equate smoking with women's rights.

From www.wikipedia.com