The management function most often confused with public relations is

21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook

History and Concepts of Public Relations

Contributors: Glen M. Broom Edited by: William F. Eadie Book Title: 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook Chapter Title: "History and Concepts of Public Relations" Pub. Date: 2009 Access Date: February 12, 2019 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Print ISBN: 9781412950305 Online ISBN: 9781412964005 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412964005.n76 Print pages: 689-697

© 2009 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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History and Concepts of Public Relations Much like atmospheric pressure, the practi ce of public relations affects all of us even though we usually are not aware of its presence. What you read, what you see, and what you hear in the media are often the di- rect or indirect effects of organizations trying to establish and maintain relationships with those important to their success or failure. The organizations include corporations, nonprofits, associations, health care organi- zations, educational institutions, governmental agencies, military branches, and many more.

Archeologists have found evidence of public relations activity in ancient Iraq, India, Greece, and Italy. His- torians documented that kings in England several centuries ago had the Lord Chancellor to attend to their relationships with “the people.” The Catholic Church employed “propaganda” in the 17th century when it es- tablished the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith). U.S. historians have documented what was likely the first systematic fund-raising campaign by Harvard College in 1614, how the revolutionaries stirred public opinion to fight a war against England and to form a new government and promoted the expansion and settlement of the new country (Basham, 1954; Cutlip, 1995; Davidson, 1941; Nevins, 1962).

Much of contemporary practice, however, can be traced to early practitioners in the 20th century, with two “founding fathers” typically credited with much of the emerging profession's “DNA” and its evolution from press agentry to public relations—Ivy Ledbetter Lee and Edward L. Bernays.

Origins of Modern Public Relations Public relations today reflects the evolving roles of organizations in society, the growing power of the media and public opinion, the increasing interest in applying the findings of the social sciences, and the never-end- ing march of social and cultural change. Contemporary public relations developed during four eras: (1) public- be-damned, (2) public-be-informed, (3) mutual understanding, and (4) mutual adjustment (Broom, 2009, pp. 92–93).

Public-Be-Damned Era

This era took its name from the infamous remark allegedly made by William Henry Vanderbilt, son of the wealthy shipping and railroad businessman “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt: “The public be damned.” Al- though this was reported by a Chicago freelance writer in 1882, the young Vanderbilt denied having made the remark disparaging the public interest versus the rights and privileges of the wealthy titans of industry. Nevertheless, the words epitomized the tone of the time and the often abusive power of big business in the 19th century.

For example, Bank of the United States president Nicholas Biddle and his associates attempted to influence public opinion in their political battles with the popular President Andrew Jackson and his adviser, Amos Kendall. By making loans to editors and buying advertisements in their papers, banks were able to influence many newspapers and silence others in the public debate.

Biddle's publicist, Mathew St. Clair Clarke, decided to promote “a brash, loud-talking Tennessee Congress- man, the colorful Colonel Davy Crockett and to build him up as a frontier hero to counter Old Hickory's [Pres- ident Andrew Jackson's] appeal to the frontiersmen” (Cutlip, 1995, p. 100). As Scott Cutlip reported, “The transmogrification of Davy Crockett from a boorish, backwoods boob into a colorful frontier statesman was the work of several ghostwriters and press agents,” when in fact Crocket “spent four years loafing and boasting at the Congressional bar” (p. 101).

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The Crockett campaign included ghostwritten books, widely distributed ghostwritten speeches (not the words he actually spoke!), and ghostwritten letters to editors. The strategy failed, however, to keep Jackson from winning a second term as president and to prevent the election of his successor, Martin Van Buren, in 1836. After failing to get himself reelected, Crockett headed to Texas, where he was killed by Santa Ana's troops in the siege of the Alamo. It was Walt Disney who revived the legend and polished the “Legend of Davy Crock- ett” to cash in on the creative work done by press agents more than 100 years earlier.

Press agents also introduced many practices to promote circuses and traveling road shows:

Today's patterns of promotion and press agentry in the world of show business were drawn, cut, and stitched by the greatest showman and press agent of all time—that “Prince of Humbug,” that mighti- est of mountebanks, Phineas Taylor Barnum. (Cutlip, 1995, p. 171)

Barnum employed his own press agent, Richard F. “Tody” Hamilton, whom he credited with much of the suc- cess of his circus (now known as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus). Likewise, Colonel William F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”) used press agentry and hyperbole to promote his “Wild West Show.” As a result of such successful promotions, press agentry spread from show business to closely related enterprises, includ- ing powerful business interests.

Westinghouse Electric Company created the first corporate department to engage in press agentry in 1889. George Westinghouse and his new electric corporation were promoting his revolutionary alternating-current (AC) system of electricity. The “battle of the currents” followed as Thomas A. Edison's Edison General Electric Company, which used direct current, tried to prevent the adoption of Westing-house's AC technology (Cutlip, 1995, pp. 199–200).

Edison and his business associate, Samuel Insull, launched a propaganda scare campaign against the “lethal” AC, including the electrocution of stray cats and dogs:

Edison General Electric attempted to prevent the development of alternating current by unscrupu- lous political action and by even less savory promotional tactics…. The promotional activity was a series of spectacular stunts aimed at dramatizing the deadliness of high voltage alternating current, the most sensational being the development and promotion of the electric chair as a means of exe- cuting criminals. (McDonald, 1962, pp. 44–45)

Westinghouse recognized the need for specialized help to counter the scare campaign and to get his story to the public. He hired Pittsburgh journalist Ernest H. Heinrichs, who moved quickly to challenge the misrepre- sentations of AC. When Westinghouse's system won public acceptance despite the Edison-Insull propaganda scare campaign, it demonstrated “that performance and merit are the foundation stones of effective public relations” (Cutlip, 1995, p. 203).

As press agents' exploits became more outrageous, it was not surprising that they would arouse the hostility and suspicion of editors and an increasing skeptical public. Pressures for change led to changes in how public relations' predecessors would deal with both the media and the public in the 20th century.

Public-Be-Informed Era

Powerful business interests in the early 1900s employed publicists to defend themselves and their monopo- lies against muckraking journalists and a growing push for change and regulation. Thus, the first public rela- tions firms—actually publicity agencies—were established to serve such clients. The strategy was to tell their

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side of the story and to counterattack to influence public opinion. The goal was to prevent increased govern- mental regulation of business.

The nation's first publicity agency—The Publicity Bureau—was founded in Boston in mid-1900. Although it would take on corporate clients later, Harvard University was the Publicity Bureau's first client and was paid on what was surely the first fixed-fee-plus-expenses arrangement:

In the matter of payment, we understand that you are to pay the Bureau $200 a month for our pro- fessional services, and those of an artist where drawings seem to be required. That this sum is to include everything except the payment of mechanical work, such as printings and the making of cuts, and the postage necessary to send out the articles themselves to the various papers, which items are to be charged to the University. (Cutlip, 1994, p. 11)

The Publicity Bureau came into national prominence in 1906, when it was employed by the nation's railroads to head off adverse regulatory legislation then being pushed in Congress by President Theodore Roosevelt. Operating in secret, the firm used the tools of fact-finding, publicity, and personal contact to saturate the na- tion's weeklies with railroad propaganda. In spite of the Publicity Bureau's effort, a moderately tough regu- latory measure—The Hepburn Act—was passed in 1906, after President Roosevelt had used the press and his “bully pulpit” to argue a more persuasive case. The Publicity Bureau faded from the scene in 1911 (Cutlip, 1995, p. 16).

Also early in the public-be-informed era, the former Buffalo reporter and veteran political publicist George F. Parker and a young Ivy Ledbetter Lee established Parker & Lee in New York in 1904. They worked together in the Democratic Party headquarters handling publicity for Judge Alton Parker's unsuccessful presidential race against Theodore Roosevelt. The firm lasted less than 4 years, but the junior partner—Lee—was to become one of the most influential pioneers in the emerging craft of public relations.

The Princeton graduate and former New York newspaper business reporter, Ivy Ledbetter Lee, was among the first to recognize the potential of honest publicity and helping corporations tell their story. Even though this former journalist had difficulty labeling what he did for clients, he changed public relations forever.

Going against the prevailing feeling on Wall Street that “the public be damned,” Lee declared that the public was no longer to be ignored, in the traditional manner of business, or fooled, in the manner of the press agent. It was to be informed. Unlike the Publicity Bureau, which operated in secrecy, Lee sent a “declaration of prin- ciples” to all city editors in 1906 and introduced what would later become the “press release”:

This is not a secret press bureau. 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…. 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 sub- jects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about. (Morse, 1906, p. 460)

The oil and mining magnate John D. Rockefeller, then the world's richest man and one of its most reviled, would become one of Lee's clients. Ida Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company (1904/1987), described at the time as “a fearless unmasking of moral criminality masquerading under the robes of respectability and Christianity,” exposed abusive practices and energized calls for breaking up the oil monopoly. In 1911, up- holding the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and trust-busting President William Howard Taft's attempt to break up the Standard Oil Trust, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trust to break with 33 affiliated companies

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and to distribute stock to each company's shareholders.

The unpopular Rockefeller was finally persuaded to retain Ivy Lee in 1914 after a disastrous strike and killings at the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in Ludlow, Colorado. Rockefeller and his family were blamed for “Bloody Ludlow”—the massacre of women and children living in the tent city set up by the striking miners. In the years that followed, Lee used his journalistic skills and reputation for dealing with the press to highlight Rockefeller's generosity and philanthropy. By the time Rockefeller died in 1934, 2 months short of age 98, he was known for his philanthropy and the many foundations, universities, and medical schools he had endowed.

Lee was still working for the Rockefeller family when he also died in 1934. He sometimes described what he did as “publicity,” but he also counseled his clients, thus establishing the principle that performance de- termines what is said in the publicity written by others. But the journalist publicity model was not the only approach.

Preparing the nation to enter World War I, President Woodrow Wilson appointed a presidential commission, the “Committee on Public Information.” George Creel headed a staff of young propagandists whose goal was to unite public opinion supporting the United States entering the war. During those early years, public relations took the form of one-way persuasive communication—“propaganda.” Some staff members, having learned new skills, formed public relations firms after the “Great War.” Even today, many practitioners work with man- agers and clients who think that public relations is simply one-way communication to persuade others.

Mutual-Understanding Era

One of the Creel staff members who did not subscribe to the one-way communication concept was Edward L. Bernays. Thus began what Bernays labeled the era of mutual understanding.

Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, had translated his uncle's books on psychology and psychiatry into English, so he had background in early behavioral science that he had not acquired as a forestry major at Cornell University. He, like Lee, recognized that there was a business opportunity in what he called engineer- ing public consent. Based on his propaganda work with the World War I Creed Committee, he was ready to apply the lessons learned to the needs of paying clients. Bernays also wrote the first public relations book, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923/2004), and with his wife and business partner, Doris E. Fleischman, intro- duced the term public relations counsel. If Lee and Bernays are to be called the “fathers of public relations,” which they are, Fleischman surely deserves recognition as the “mother of public relations.”

Bernays saw public relations as an applied social science, drawing on the newly available findings of psy- chology, sociology, and political science. He was not a publicist. Rather, he sought ways to change public views of what was acceptable or desirable and to change public behavior. For example, he is credited with and was greatly remorseful in his last years for having helped make smoking in public acceptable behavior for women in the 1920s. He also is credited with introducing orange juice as a staple with breakfast, to help Florida growers have a market for their produce that otherwise was fed to pigs. During his long career until he retired from active practice in 1962, he counseled the heads of major corporations, U.S. presidents, and uncounted practitioners aspiring to his status and position in the field. Before he died in 1995 at age 103, Life Magazineincluded Bernays in its 1990 special issue as one of “The 100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century.”

Doris Fleischman, an early feminist, also left her mark on the field and society. After marrying Bernays, she used her maiden name long before the feminist movement made that fashionable:

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During the next three decades, Fleischman continued to sign into hotels—and twice into maternity hospitals—as “Miss Doris E. Fleischman,” and in 1925 she received the first U.S. passport granted to a married woman under her birth name. That was her name on the 1928 book she edited on careers for women and on the seven magazine articles and book chapters she published between 1930 and 1946. (Henry, 1998, p. 1)

Although Bernays credited her as being an equal partner in their firm, Fleischman struggled for professional equality during a time when women simply did not advise males in leadership positions. As she wrote in one of her books, written after she adopted her married name:

Many men resented having women tell them what to do in their business. They resented having men tell them, too, but advice from a woman was somewhat demeaning. I learned to withdraw from sit- uations where the gender of public relations counsel was a factor or where suggestions had to be disassociated from gender. If ideas were considered first in terms of my sex, they might never get around to being judged on their own merits. (Fleischman Bernays, 1955, p. 171)

No list of the pioneers shaping today's practice would be complete without the name Arthur W. Page. Page had three successful business careers yet found time to contribute his considerable talent to many public ser- vice efforts. He was a writer and editor at the publishing company he was being groomed to lead, Doubleday, Page and Company, from 1905 until 1927. Then, he accepted an offer to become vice president of American Telephone and Telegraph Co., from fellow Harvard graduate and AT&T president, Walter Gifford.

Page made it clear, however, that he would accept only on the conditions that he was not to serve as a publici- ty man, that he would have a voice in policy, and that the company's performance would be the determinant of its public reputation. As a result, Page is widely recognized as having been the first corporate vice president of public relations. He was among the first to use systematic public opinion polling to probe public perceptions in order to help shape company policy. He later summarized his philosophy in this statement:

All business in a democratic country begins with public permission and exists by public approval. If that be true, it follows that business should be cheerfully willing to tell the public what its policies are, what it is doing, and what it hopes to do. This seems practically a duty. (Griswold, 1967, p. 13)

Even while vice president of AT&T during World War II, he devoted muchof his timetothe war effort. As Page's biographer Noel Griese reported, Page's most widely distributed news release, written for President Harry S. Truman, was issued in Washington, D.C., at 11:00 a.m., Monday, August 6, 1945:

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British “Grand Slam” which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the his- tory of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manyfold…. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its powers has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. (Griese, 2001, pp. 229–230)

Page retired on January 1, 1947, after integrating public relations concepts and practices into the Bell System. He died in 1960 at age 77. However, Page's precepts and principles not only endure in the companies that used to be part of AT&T (broken up in 1984 by court order to foster competition) but also are renewed and promoted by the Arthur W. Page Society, an association of senior corporate public relations executives and

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leaders.

Although sophisticated opinion measurement methods were not introduced until the 1930s, the postwar work of social scientists contributed much to advance behavioral research and communication science. Page was among the first to apply the new skills and knowledge to public relations practice.

Mutual-Adjustment Era

Even before World War II, research on media effects did not appear to support assumptions about powerful media effects, instead suggesting a limited-effects model with more active and more resistant audiences. More realistic concepts of public relations evolved to include notions of two-way communication and rela- tionships. Definitions began to include words such as reciprocal, mutual, and between, indicating a maturing view. For example, an interactive concept appeared in Webster's Third New International Dictionary's defini- tion: “The art or science of developing reciprocal understanding and goodwill.” The British Institute of Public Relations defined the practice as an effort to establish and maintain “mutual understanding between an orga- nization and its publics.”

Early editions of the field's leading text also defined public relations as an interactive concept—“the planned effort to influence opinion through good character and responsible performance, based on mutually satisfac- tory two-way communications” (Cutlip & Center, 1952/1984). Another influential text published in 1984 pre- sented yet another version of the interactive concept—“the management of communication between an orga- nization and its publics” (Grunig & Hunt, 1984, p. 6).

Ahead of his time, Yale professor and Public Opinion Quarterly founder Harwood L. Childs introduced an even more advanced concept in the late 1930s. Childs concluded that the goal of public relations “is not the presentation of a point of view, not the art of tempering mental attitudes, nor the development of cordial and profitable relations.” Instead, he said the basic function “is to reconcile or adjust in the public interest those aspects of our personal and corporate behavior which have a social significance” (Childs, 1940, pp. 3, 13). Childs saw the function of public relations as helping organizations adjust to their social environments, a con- cept that reemerged many decades later in contemporary public relations. “Consumerism,” “environmental- ism,” “racism,” and “sexism” became serious issues on the public agenda beginning in the 1960s. Add to those “isms,” “peace.” A new breed of investigative muckrakers and powerful new advocacy groups pushed for social change, new social safety nets, and increased government oversight of business and industry. Pro- tecting the environment and securing civil rights became the flagship causes of this era.

Reminiscent of the early part of the 20th century, books led the charge against “big business.” For example, many credit Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, with beginning the environmental movement. Presi- dent John F. Kennedy directed his science advisory committee to study the book's documented charges that DDT indiscriminately killed all manner of insects and animals when applied tocrops as a pesticide and that DDT had contaminated the entire food chain. Public apathy soon changed to public demand to regulate the pesticide industry and to protect the environment.

General Motors also became a target of protest and public scrutiny, opening the door to greater corporate accountability. Ralph Nader gave birth to the consumer movement in 1965, when he wrote Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. Nader charged that the Chevrolet Corvair's suspension system made the car subject to rolling over. GM's legal department responded by investigating Nader's private life. Subsequently, the company's president had to appear before a Senate subcommittee and apologize to Nader for resorting to intimidation. In addition, the company settled lawsuits out of court for invading Nader's privacy and agreed to change the Corvair suspension system. Nader used the cash settle-

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ment and his book royalties to establish the Project on Corporate Responsibility, staffed by young lawyers and investigators. Corporations suffered many setbacks as “Nader's Raiders” continued to press for corporate ac- countability for decades. For example, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 spelled out safety standards for all vehicles. Congress also mandated safety in the workplace when it passed the Occu- pational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) in 1970.

However, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the icon of this era of social change and empowerment. His rise to national leadership began in 1955, when he stood up for Rosa Parks, who was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white passenger. He gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Dr. King gave his prophetic last speech, “I've Been to the Mountain Top,” in Memphis, Tennessee, the day before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. He became the martyr and symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, which produced, among many other changes, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Open Housing Law of 1968. Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement played a major role in defining this as the era of change and empowerment.

Surely the Vietnam War protests were the most divisive of this era, contributing to the “generation gap,” “hip- pies,” the “sexual revolution,” and—ultimately—Watergate and the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. A popular saying of the time “Power to the People” surely captured the essence of this era.

Public relations textbooks written during this era also reflected a major change in public relations practice from the “journalist-in-residence” model based on telling our story. The changed balance of power in society required a new role for public relations in organizations responding to the heightened change pressures. For example, the sixth edition of Effective Public Relations by Cutlip, Center, and Broom (1985) introduced “ad- justment and adaptation” as the basis of contemporary practice. Research courses became part of the public relations curriculum on many campuses, and practitioners who engaged in information gathering joined the management decision-making teams in many organizations.

Contemporary public relations deals with adaptation and adjustment both inside and outside organizations, whereas the one-way concept of public relations relies almost entirely on propaganda and persuasive com- munication. Typically in the form of publicity, the two-way concept emphasizes communication exchange, rec- iprocity, and mutual understanding. Additionally, the two-way concept includes counseling management on changes needed within the organization. Although old concepts still dominate in many settings, contempo- rary practice is increasingly a management-level function that has a major role in determining both corrective action and two-way communication strategy. As the Burson-Marsteller cofounder Harold Burson (1990) ob- served, early in his firm's history, clients' questions changed from “How do I say it?” to “What should I say?” Beginning in the 1980s, however, clients began asking, “What should I do?” That question is a fitting transition to defining contemporary practice.

Concept and Definition of Contemporary Practice People enter into relationships with others to satisfy mutual wants and needs. The continuum of social sys- tems formed by these relationships runs from the smallest—the dyad, two people—to the largest—the global community of nations. Because these relationships are essential to meeting common needs, establishing and maintaining relationships at all levels of social systems are important areas of scholarly study and profession- al practice.

For example, human relations, marital relations, and interpersonal relations describe the study and manage- ment of relationships between individuals. Professionals specialize in counseling individuals and couples to

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resolve relational problems and improve relationships. At the other extreme, international relations deals with relationships among nations in the largest social system. Likewise, there are specialists and political leaders who practice the art and science of helping nations deal with their ever-changing and sometimes threatening relationships. Courses and books are devoted to the study of all these relationships, as well as relationships in families, work teams, groups, organizations, and other social entities. Public relations deals with the rela- tionships between organizations and their stakeholder publics—people who are somehow mutually involved or interdependent with particular organizations. The social system of interest comprises organization-public relationships, and public relations deals with establishing and maintaining those relationships. It is one of the fastest-growing fields of professional practice worldwide.

Elements of the Concept

Hundreds have attempted to capture the essence of public relations by listing the activities that make up the practice—what public relations does. Such lists provide little guidance to help define public relations concep- tually. A blue-ribbon panel of Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) leaders in 1982 wrote a definition that stresses public relations' contributions to society—the “Official Statement on Public Relations.” The many definitions suggest elements common to the underlying concept. Public relations

1. holds membership on an organization's management team; 2. focuses on the organization's relationships with its stakeholder publics; 3. monitors knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and behavior inside and outside the organiza-

tion; 4. assesses the impact of the organization's policies, procedures, and actions on stakehold-

er publics; 5. counsels management on the establishment of new policies, procedures, and actions that

benefit both the organization and its stakeholders; 6. facilitates two-way communication between the organization and its stakeholder publics

to change knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and behavior both inside and outside the orga- nization; and

7. produces new and/or maintains relationships between the organization and its publics.

Public Relations Defined Definitions help us understand the world around us and to argue for a particular worldview of how one concept relates to other concepts (Gordon, 1997, p. 58). Consequently, the following definition of public relations de- scribes what public relations is and does, as well as sets parameters for deciding what is not public relations. “Public relations is the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends” (Broom, 2009, p. 7). This definition positions the practice of public relations as a management function and implies that management in all organizations must attend to public relations. It also identifies building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics as the moral and ethical basis of the profession. And finally, it suggests criteria for determining what is and what is not public relations.

Relationship to Marketing Marketing is the management function most often confused with public relations. Whereas public relations is charged with taking into account all of an organization's stakeholders, marketing typically focuses on cus- tomers or clients. It is as if marketing uses a telephoto lens to zero in on the target customers, while public

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relations uses a wide-angle lens to scan the scene for all the stakeholders.

Confusion is common, however, as job openings for “public relations representatives” turn out to be positions as sales representatives or telephone solicitors. In many small organizations, the same person does both public relations and marketing, often without distinguishing between the two. Practitioners add to the confu- sion themselves when their business cards say that they do “marketing communications” (often referred to as “marcom”) or “integrated marketing communications.” Some public relations firms have “marketing communi- cations” or “marketing public relations” in their titles and on their letterheads.