INTRODUCTION TO MASS MEDIA

PUBLIC RELATIONS
A Short History of Public Relations

The history of this complex field can be divided into four stages: early public relations, the propaganda-
publicity stage, early two-way communication and advanced two-way communication. These four stages
have combined to shape the character of this industry.
EARLY PUBLIC RELATIONS

Archaeologists in Iraq have uncovered a tablet dating from 1800 B.C. that today we would call a

public information bulletin. It provided farmers with information on sowing, irrigating, and

harvesting their crops. Julius Caesar fed the people of the Roman Empire constant reports of his

achievements to maintain morale and to solidify his reputation and position of power. Genghis

Khan would send “advance men” to tell stories of his might, hoping to frighten his enemies into

surrendering.

Public relations campaigns abounded in colonial America and helped to create the colonies.

Merchants, farmers and others who saw their own advantage in a growing colonial population

used overstatement, half-truths, and lies to entice settlers to the new world. A brief and True

Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, by John White, was published in 1588 to lure

European settlers. The Boston Tea Party was a well-planned media event organized to attract

public attention for a vital cause. Today we’d call it a pseudo-event, an event staged specifically

to attract public attention. Benjamin Franklin organized a sophisticated campaign to thwart the

Stamp Act, the Crown’s attempt to limit colonial press freedom (Chapter 3), using his

publications and the oratory skills of criers. The federalist Papers of John Jay, James Madison,

and Alexander Hamilton were originally a series of 85 letters published between 1787 and 1789,

which were designed to sway public opinion in the newly independent United States toward

support and passage of the new Constitution, an early effort at issue management. George

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Washington employed the public relations skills of Mason Weems in 1800 to burnish his

reputation in a glowing and often fictitious biography of the Father of our country. (Among

Weems’s inventions was the cherry tree “I cannot tell a lie” myth.) In all these examples, people

or organizations were using communication to inform, to build an image, and to influence public

opinion.

THE PROPAGANDA-PUBLICITY STAGE

Mass circulation newspapers and the first successful consumer magazines appeared in the 1830s,

expanding the ability of the people and organizations to communicate with the public. In 1833,

for example, Andrew Jackson hired former newspaperman Amos Kendall as his publicist and the

country’s first presidential press secretary in an effort to combat the aristocrats who saw Jackson

as too common to be president.

Abolitionist sought an end to slavery. Industrialists needed to attract workers, entice customers,

and enthuse investors. P.T. Barnum convinced that “a sucker is born every minute,” worked to

lure them into his shows. All used the newspaper and the magazine to serve their causes.

Politicians recognized that the expanding press meant that a new way of campaigning was

necessary. In 1896 presidential contenders William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley both

established campaign headquarters in Chicago from which they issued news releases, position

papers, and pamphlets. The modern national political campaign was born.

It was during this era that public relations began to acquire its deceitful, huckster image. PR was

associated more with propaganda than with useful information. A disregard for the public and

the willingness of public relations began to establish itself as a profession during this time. The

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burgeoning press was its outlet, but westward expansion and rapid urbanization and

industrialization in the United States were its driving forces. As the railroad expanded to unite

the new nation, cities exploded with new people and new life. Markets, once small and local,

became large and national.

As the political and financial stakes grew, business and government became increasingly corrupt

and selfish – “The public be damned” was William Vanderbilt’s official comment when asked in

1882 about the effects of changing the schedule of his New York Central Railroad. The muck-

rakers’ revelations badly tarnished the images of industry and politics. Massive and lengthily

coal strikes led to violence and more antibusiness feeling. In the heyday of the journalistic

expose and the Progressive movement (Chapter 5), government and business both required some

good public relations.

In 1889 Westinghouse Electric established the first corporate public relations department, hiring

a former newspaper writer to engage the press and ensure that company positions were always

clear and in the public eye. Advertising agencies, including N.W. Ayer & Sons and Lord and

Thomas, began to offer public relations services to their clients. The first publicity company,

The Publicity Bureau, was opened in Boston in 1906 and later expanded to New York, Chicago,

Washington, St. Louis, and Topeka to help the railroad industry challenge federal regulations

that it opposed.

The railroads had still other problems, and they turned to New York World reporter Ivy Lee for

help. Beset by accidents and strikes, the Pennsylvania Railroad usually responded by

suppressing information. Lee recognized, however, that this was dangerous and

counterproductive in a time when the public was already suspicious of big business, including

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the railroads. Lee escorted reporters to the scene of trouble, established press centers, distributed

press releases, and assisted reporters in obtaining additional information and photographs.

When a Colorado coal mine strike erupted in violence in 1913, the press attacked the mine’s

principal stockholder, New York’s John D. Rockefeller, blaming him for the shooting deaths of

several miners and their wives and children. Lee handled press relations and convinced

Rockefeller to visit the scene to talk (and be photographed) with the strikers. The shrike ended,

and Rockefeller soon was being praised for his sensitive intervention. Eventually Lee issued his

Declaration of Principles, arguing that public relations practioners should be providers of

information, not purveyors of publicity.

Not all public relations at this time damage control. Henry Ford began using staged such as auto

races to build interests in his cars, started Ford Times (an in-house employee publication), and

made heavy use of image advertising.

Public relations in this stage was typically one-way, from organization to public. Still, by

outbreak of World War 1, most of the elements of today’s large-scale, multifunction public

relations agency were in place.

EARLY TWO-WAY COMMUNICTION

Because the U.S. public was not particulrily enthusiastic about the nation relations in support of

the war effort (Zinn, 1995, pp. 355-357). In 1917 he placed former newspaperman George Creel

at the head of the newly formed Committee on Public Information (CPI). Creel assembled

opinion leaders from around the country to advise the government on its public relation efforts to

and to help shape public opinion. The committee sold Liberty Bonds and helped increase

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membership in the Red Cross. It engaged in public relations on scale never before seen, using

movies, public speakers, articles in newspapers and magazines, and posters.

About this time public relations pioneer Edward Bernays's began emphasizing the value of

assessing the public’s feelings toward an organization. He would then use this knowledge as the

basis for the development of the public relations effort. Together with Creel’s committee.

Bernays’s work was beginning to a two-way communication in public relations that is, public

relations talking to people and, in return, listening to them when they talked back. Public

relations professionals began representing their various publics to their clients, just as they

represented their clients to those publics.

There were other advances in public relations during this stage. During the 1930s, President

Franklin D. Roosevelt, guided by advisor Louis McHenry Howe, embarked on a sophisticated

public relations campaign to win support for his then radical New Deal policies. Central to

Roosevelt’s effort was the new medium ion of radio. The Great Depression that plagued the

country throughout this decade once again turned public opinion against business and industry.

To counter people’s distrust, many more corporations established in-house public relations

departments; General Motors opened its PR operation in 1931. Public relations professionals

turned increasingly to the newly emerging polling industry founded by George Gallup and Elmo

Roper to better gauge public opinion as they constructed public relations campaigns and to

gather feedback on the effectiveness of those campaigns. Gallup and Roper successfully applied

newly refined social science research methods advances in sampling, questionnaire design, and

interviewing to meet the business needs of clients and the publics.

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The growth of the industry was great enough and its reputation sufficiency fragile that the

National Association of Accredited Publicity Directors was founded in 1936. The American

Council on Public Relation was established three years later. They merged in 1947, creating the

Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the principal professional group for today’s public

relations professionals.

World War II Saw the government undertake another massive campaign to bolster support for

the effort, this time through the office of War Information (OWI). Empowering techniques that

had proven successful during World War I, the OWI had the additional advantage of public

opinion polling, fully established and powerful radio networks and their stars, and Hollywood

eager to help. Singer Kate Smith’s war bond radio telethon raised millions, and director Frank

Capra produced the Why We Fight film series for OWI.

During this era both public relations and Ivy Lee suffered a serious blow to their reputations.

Lee was the American public relations spokesman for Germany and its leader, Adolf Hitler. In

1934 Lee was required to testify before the Congress to defend himself against the charge that he

was a Nazi sympathizer. He was successful, but the damage had been done.

As a result of Lee’s ties with Germany Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act in

1938, requiring anyone who engages in political activities in the United States on behalf of a

foreign power to register as an agent of that power with the Justice Department.

ADVANCED TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION

Post –World War II u.s. society was confronted by profound social change and expansion of the

consumer culture. It became increasingly important for organizations to know what their clients

were thinking, what they liked and disliked, and what concerned and satisfied them. As a result,

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public relations turned even more decidedly toward integrated two-way communication,

empowering, employing research, advertising, and promotion.

As the public relations industry became more visible, it opened itself to closer scrutiny. Best-

selling novels such as The Hucksters and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (and the hit movies

made from them) painted a disturbingly negative picture of the industry and those who worked in

it. Vance Packard’s best-selling book The Hidden Persuaders, dealing with both public relations

and advertising, further eroded PR esteem. As a result of public distrust of the professional,

Congress passed the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act in 1946, requiring, among other things,

that those who deal with federal employees on behalf of private clients disclose those

relationships. And as the industry’s conduct and ethics came under increasing attack, the PRSA

responded with a code of ethics in 1954 and an accreditation program in 1962. Both, with

modification and improvement, stand today.

The modern era of public relations is characterized by other events as well. More people buying

more products meant that greater numbers of people were coming into contact with a growing

number of businesses.

As consumer markets grew in size, the basis for competition changed. Texaco, for example,

used advertising to sell its gasoline. But because its products were not all that different from

those of other oil companies, it also sold its gasoline using its good name and reputation.

Increasingly, then, advertising agencies began to add public relations divisions. This change

served to blur the distinction between advertising and PR.

Women, who had proved their capabilities in all professional settings during World War II,

became prominent in the industry. Anne Williams Wheaton was associate press secretary to

President Eisenhower, Leone Baxter. Companies and their executives and politicians

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increasingly turned to television to burnish their images and shape public opinion. Nonprofit,

charitable, and social activist groups also mastered the art of public relations. The latter used

public relations especially effectively to challenge the PR power of targeted businesses.

Environmentalist, civil rights, and women’s rights groups and safety and consumer advocate

organizations were successful in moving the public toward their positions and, ion many cases,

toward action.

SHAPING THE CHARACTER OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

Throughout these four stages in the development of public relations, several factors combined to

shape the identity of public relations, influence the way the industry does its job, and clarify the

necessity for PR in the business and political world. These factors include:

Advances in technology. Advances in industrial technology made possible mass production,

distribution, and marketing of goods. Advances in communication technology (and their

proliferation) made it possible to communicate more efficiently and effectively with ever larger

and more specific audiences.

Growth of the middle class. A growing middle class, better educated and more aware of the

world around it, required information about people and organizations.

Growth of organizations. As business, organized labor, and government grew bigger after

World War II, the public saw them as more powerful and more remote. As a result, people were

naturally curious and suspicious about these forces that seemed to be influencing all aspects of

their lives.

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Better research tools. The development of sophisticated research methodologies and statistical

techniques allowed the industry to know its audiences better and to better judge the effectiveness

of public relations campaigns.

Professionalization. Numerous national and international public relations organizations helped

professionalize the industry and clean up its reputation.

Public Relations and Its Audiences

Virtually all of us consume public relations messages on a daily basis. Increasingly, the video

clips we see on the local evening news are provided by a public relations firm or the PR

department of some company or organization. The content of many of the stories we read in our

daily newspaper or hear on local radio news comes directly from PR-provided press releases. As

one media relations firm explained in a promotional piece sent to prospective clients, “The media

are separated into two categories. One is content and the other is advertising. They’re both for

sale. Advertising can be purchased directly from the publication or through an ad agency, and

the content space you purchase from PR firms”. In addition, the charity food drive we support,

the poster encouraging us toward safe sex, the corporation-sponsored art exhibit we attend, and

the 5K race we run are all someone’s public relations effort. Public relations professionals

interact with seven categories of publics (Arens, 1999):

Employees. An organization’s employees are its life blood, its family. Good public relations

begins at home with company newsletters, social events, and internal and external recognition of

superior performance.

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Stockholders. Stockholders own the organization (if it is a public corporation). They are

“family” as well, and their goodwill is necessary for the business to operate, annual reports and

tock holder meetings provide a sense of belonging as well as information.

Communities. An organization has neighbors where it operates. Courtesy, as well as good

business sense requires that an organization’s neighbors be treated with friendship and support.

Information meetings, company-sponsored safety and food drives, and open houses strengthen

ties between organizations and their neighbors.

Media. Very little communication with an organization’s various public can occur without the

trust and goodwill of professionals in the mass media. Press packets, briefings, and facilitating

access to organization newsmakers build that trust and goodwill.

Government. Government is “the voice of the people” and, as such, deserves the attention of

any organization that deals with the public. From a practical perspective, governments have the

power to tax, regulate, and zone. Organizations must earn and maintain the goodwill and trust of

the government. Proving information and access through reports, position papers, and meetings

with personnel keeps government informed and builds its trust in an organization. The

government is also the target of many PR efforts, as organizations and their lobbyists seek

favorable legislation and other action.

Investment community. Corporations are under the constant scrutiny of those who invest their

own money, invest the money of others or make recommendations on investment. The value of

a business and its ability to grow are functions of the investment community’s respect for and

trust in it. As a result, all PR efforts that build an organization’s good image speak to that

community.

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Customers. Consumers pay the bills for companies through their purchase of products or

services. Their goodwill is invaluable. That makes good PR, in all its forms, invaluable.

Scope and Structure of the Public Relations Industry

Today some 200,000 people identify themselves as working in public relations, and more than

80% of major U.S. companies have public relations departments, some housing as many as 400

employees (figure 11.1). There are over 4,000 public relations firms in the United States, the

largest employing as many as 2,000 people. Most, however, have fewer, some as few as four

employees.

There are full-service public relations firms and those that provide only special services. Media

specialists for company CEOs, newspaper clipping services, and makers of video new releases

are special service providers. Public relations firms bill for their services in a number of ways.

They may charge an hourly rate for services rendered, or they mat be on call, charging clients a

monthly fee to act as their public relations counsel. Hill and Knowlton, for example, has a

minimum $5,000 a month charge. Third are fixed-fee arrangements, wherein the firm performs a

specific set of services for a client for a specific and prearranged fee. Finally, many firms bill for

collateral materials, adding a surcharge as high as 17.65% for handling printing, research, and

photographs. For example, if it costs $3,000 to have a poster printed, the firm charges the client

$3,529.50 [$3,000 x 1765] = $3,000 + $529.50).

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES

Regardless of the way public relations firms bill their clients, they earn their fees by offering all

or some of these 13 interrelated services identified by the PRSA (2002). The PRSA alphabetizes

the presentation of these functions to indicate that none is more important than the others (Public

Relations Society of America, 2002).

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1. Community relations. This type of public affairs work focuses on the communities in

which the organization exists. If a city wants to build a new airport, for example, those

whose land will be taken or devalued must be satisfied. If they are not, widespread

community opposition to the project may develop.

2. Counseling. Public relations professionals routinely offer advice to an organization’s

management concerning policies, relationships, and communication with its various

publics. Management must tell its publics “what we do,” public relations helps in the

creation, refinement and presentation of that message.

3. Development/fund raising. All organizations, commercial and non-profit, survive

through the voluntary contributions in time and money of their members, friends,

employees, supporters, and others. Public relations helps demonstrate the need for those

contributions.

4. Employee/member relations. Similar to the development function in that the target

public is employees and members, this form of public relations responds specifically to

the concerns of an organization’s employees or members and its retirees and their

families. The goal is maintenance of high morale and motivation.

5. Financial relations. Practiced primarily by corporate organizations, financial PR is the

enhancement of communication between investor owned companies and their

shareholders, the financial community (for example, banks, annuity groups, and

investment firms”), and the public. Much corporate strategy, such as expansion into new

markets and acquisition of other companies, is dependent upon good financial public

relations.

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6. Government affairs. This type of public affairs work focuses on government agencies.

Lobbying-directly interacting to influence elected officials or government regulators and

agents-is often a central activity.

7. Industry relations. Companies must interact not only with their own customers and

stockholders but also with other companies in their line of business, both competitors and

suppliers. In addition, they must also stand as a single voice in dealing with various state

and federal regulators. For example, groups as disparate as the Texas restaurant

Association, the American Petroleum Institute, and the national Association of

manufactures all require public relations in dealing with their various publics.

8. Issues management. Often an organization is as interested in influencing public opinion

about some larger issues that will eventually influence its operation as it is in

improvement of its own image. Issues management typically uses a large-scale public

relations campaign designed to move or shape opinion on a specific issue. Usually the

issue is an important one that generates deep feelings. Death penalty activists, for

example, employ a full range of communication techniques to sway people to their side.

9. Media relations. As the number of media outlets grows and as advances in technology

increase the complexity of dealing with them, public relations clients require help in

understanding the various media, in preparing and organizing materials for them, and in

placing those materials. In addition, media relations requires that the public relations

professional maintain good relationships with professionals in the media understand their

deadlines and other restraints, and earn their trust.

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10. Marketing communication. This is a combination of activities designed to sell a

product, service, or idea. It can include the creation of advertising; generation of

publicity and promotion; design of packaging, point-of-sale displays, and trade show

presentations; and design and execution of special events. It is important to note that PR

professionals often use advertising but that the two are not the same. The difference is

one of control. Advertising is controlled communication-advertisers pay for ads to

appear in specific media exactly as they want. PR tends to be less controlled. The PR

firm cannot how or when its press release is used by the local paper. It cannot control

how the media react to Nike’s ongoing insistence that it has rectified reported worker

abuses in its overseas shops. Advertising becomes a public relations function when its

goal is to build an image or to motivate action, as opposed to the usual function of selling

products. The Smokey Bear forest fire prevention campaign is a well-known successful

public relations advertising campaign.

Advertising and public relations obviously overlap even for manufacture of consumer

products. Chevrolet must sell cars, but it must communicate with its various publics as

well. Exxon sells gasoline. But in the wake of the Valdez disaster, it needed serious

public relations help. One result of the overlap of advertising and public relations is that

advertising agencies increasingly own their own public relations departments or firms or

associate closely with a PR company. Nine of the top 10 highest-earning public relations

firms are subsidiaries of advertising agencies. For example, Burson-Marsteller is owned

by Young & Rubican.

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 Another way that advertising and public relations differ is that advertising people

typically do not set policy for an organization. Advertising people implement policy after

organization leaders set it. In contrast, public relations professionals usually are part of

the policy decision process because they are the liaison between the organization and its

publics. Effective organizations have come to understand that even in routine decisions

the impact on public opinion and subsequent consequences can be of tremendous

importance. As a result, public relations has become a management function, and a

public relations professional typically sits as a member of a company’s highest level of

management.

11. Minority relations/multicultural affairs. Public affairs activities are directed toward

specific racial minorities in this type of work. When Denny’s restaurant chain was beset

by numerous complaints of racial discrimination during the 1990s, it undertook an

aggressive campaign to speak to those who felt disenfranchised by the events. A

secondary goal of its efforts, which were aimed largely at the African American

community, was send a message to its own employees and the larger public that this was

the company line, that discrimination was wrong, that everybody was welcome in

Denny’s.

12. Public affairs. The public affairs function includes interacting with officials and leaders

of the various power centers with whom a client must deal. Community and government

officials and leaders of pressure groups are likely targets of this form of public relations.

Public affairs emphasizes social responsibility and building goodwill, such as when a

company donates money for a computer lab to the local high school.

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 13. Special events and public participation. As you saw in the opening vignette, public

relations can be used to stimulate interest in an organization, person, or product through a

well-planned, focused “happening,” activities designed to facilitate interaction between

an organization and its publics.

ORGANIZATION OF A PUBLIC RELATIONS OPERATION

Public relations operations come in all sizes. Regardless of size, however, the typical PR firm or

department will have these types of positions (but not necessarily these titles):

Executive. This is the chief executive officer who, sometimes with a staff, sometimes alone,

sets policy and serves as the spokesperson for the operation.

Account executives. Each account has its own executive who provides advice to the client,

defines problems and situations, assesses the needs and demands of the client’s publics,

recommends a communication plan or campaign, and gathers the PR firm’s resources in support

of the client.

Creative specialists. Theses are the writers graphic designers, artists, video and audio

producers, and photographers-anybody necessary to meet the communication needs of the client.

Media specialists. Media specialists are aware of the requirements, preferences, limitations, and

strengths of the various media used to serve the client. They find the right media for clients’

messages.

Larger public relations operations may also have these positions as need demands:

Research. The key to two-way public relations communication rests in research-assessing the

needs of a client’s various publics and the effectiveness of the efforts aimed at them. Polling,

one-on-one interviews, and focus groups, in which small groups of a targeted public are

interviewed, provide the PR operation and its client with feedback.

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Government relations. Depending on the client’s needs lobbying or other direct

communication with government officials may be necessary.

Financial services. Very specific and sophisticated knowledge of economics, finance, and

business or corporate law is required to provide clients with dependable financial public

relations.

Trends and Convergence in public Relations

GLOBALIZATION AND SPECIALIZATION

As it has in the media industries themselves, globalization has come to public relations, both in

the form of foreign ownership and in the reach of PR firms’ operations into foreign countries.

For example, three of the world’s top-10-earning PR firms, despite their U.S. roots, are owned by

London-based WPP Group-Hill and Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller, and Ogilvy PR Worldwide.

Hill and Knowlton alone has 2,000 employees working in 66 offices in 35 countries on all the

inhabited continents. Rowland Company Worldwide is owned by English advertising agency

Saatchi &Saatchi. Weber Shandwick, the highest-earning PR firm in the United States is based

in London.

A second trend in public relations is specialization. As we’ve seen, the PRSA identifies 13

activities of public relations professionals, but it also acknowledges that specialization could

expand the list. This specialization takes two forms. The first is defined by issue.

Environmental public relations is attracting ever larger numbers of people, both

environmentalists and industrialist. E. Bruce Harrison consulting attracts corporate clients in

part because of its reputation as a firm with superior green washing skills. That is, Harrison is

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particularly adept at countering the public relations efforts aimed at its clients by

environmentalists.

CONVERGENCE

The second impetus driving specialization has to do with the increasing number of media outlets

used in public relations campaigns that rely on new and converging technologies. Online

information and advertising are a growing part of the total public relations media mix, as are

video news releases (see \Figure 11.3) and videoconferencing. Television, in the form of the

satellite-delivered media tour, in which spokespeople can be simultaneously interviewed by a

worldwide audience connected to the on-screen interviewee via telephone, has further extended

the reach of public relations. In addition, desktop publishing has greatly expanded the number

and type of available print outlets. All require professionals with quite specific skills.

The public relations industry is responding to the convergence of traditional media with the

Internet in other ways as well. One is the development of integrated marketing communication

(IMC). We saw earlier how advertising and PR often overlap, but in IMC, firms actively

combine public relations, marketing, advertising, and promotion functions into a more or less

seamless communication campaign that is as at home on the web as it is on the television screen

and magazine page. The goal of this integration is to provide the client and agency with greater

control over communication (and its interpretation) in an increasingly fragmented but synergized

media environment. For example, a common IMC tactic is to employ viral marketing, a strategy

that relies on targeting specific Internet users with a given communication and relying on them to

spread the word through the communication channels with which they are most comfortable.

This is IMC and it is inexpensive and effective.

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The industry has had to respond to the internet in another way. The Net has provided various

publics with a new, powerful way to counter even the best public relations effort (chapter 10).

Tony Juniper of the British environmental group Friends of the earth calls the internet “the most

potent weapon in the toolbox of resistance.” As Peter Verhille of PR giant Entente International

explains, “One of the major strengths of pressure groups-in fact the leveling factor in their

confrontation with powerful companies-is their ability to exploit the instruments of the

telecommunication revolution. Their agile use of global tools such as the Internet reduces the

advantages that corporate budgets once provided” (both quotes from Klein, 1999,pp. 395-396).

The Internet, for example, was central in activists’ 1999 efforts to shame Nike into improving

conditions for its overseas workers; and in 1995 use of the net played a prominent part in forcing

Shell Oil to find environmentally sensitive ways to dispose of its outdated Atlantic Ocean

drilling platforms. Public relations agencies and in-house PR departments have responded in a

number of ways. One is IMC. Another is the hiring of in-house Web monitors.

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