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Thoughts

The preface to the 1961 edition gives a look back at the history of propaganda from about the first world war until the 1960s. Early on it gives the example of spreading the idea of public relations the same way other ideas are spread, through repetitious promotion in newspapers. The idea is also spread on radio, in lectures, at school or church, in magazines, on the stage, in music or motion pictures, and every other media.

“Articles about public relations appeared in magazines of general circulation, such as The Atlantic Monthly and The American Mercury and in Business Week, Nation’s Business and other similar journals. A profile of Ivy Lee appeared in The American Mercury in the late 1920’S. The Atlantic Monthly of May, 1932, and The American Mercury of February, 1930, carried profiles of me. Business Week published its first special report on public relations on January 23, 1937, and another on October I, 1939. The Columbia Encyclopedia, published in 1935, had no article on the profession, but listed books about it in the bibliography of the article on propaganda. Fortune regarded 1938 as the big year for professional public relations. Scarcely a convention, trade magazine or meeting of a board of directors failed to discuss it. In 1939, Fortune, in an article entitled, “The Public Be Not Damned,””

I wonder who was in control of these magazines at the time?

There are many examples provided for how public relations was used to sway the masses, from selling apartments to allaying Italy’s suspicion that the USA was not going to support her after the war. From increasing hair-net sales by countering the bobbed cut fashion to projecting ideas that lead to Lithuanian independence. Even promoted League of Nations. These cursory case studies don’t offer much depth. They are all basically the same idea, relentless promotion of a particular viewpoint in as many forms of media as can be recruited.

One of the examples Bernay’s uses is the promotion of his own play, “Damaged Goods.” He points out that such a sexually charged play, concerning syphilis, was made acceptable because it was spun as bringing safe sexual education to the masses. From where I am standing, with the advantage of hindsight, it seems to have simply been another rung on the ladder to sexual degeneracy.

It is stated that men have opinions on everything, even that which they know nothing of, a priori, based on some authority such as parents, teachers, or government. To change these opinions you must either introduce a new authority or discredit the old one. On one hand he is saying that you can’t argue facts, and that you need to appeal to emotion. On the other hand he clearly states that logical fallacies are to be avoided.

A few of the names that crop up in the work include Margaret Sanger (eugenicist, Planned Parenthood), George Creel (WW1 propagandist, Bernay served under), and Walter Lippmann (“Public Opinion”). Lippmann’s “Public Opinion” is cited constantly throughout the book.

Lippmann’s theory of stereotypes states that people see things differently depending on their position and presentation. A capitalist and communist see the same thing differently. One might see an exploitive railroad and the other sees a fairly compensated public service. This is the basis for the belief in the relativity of truth. Truth here being tortured into belief, there is only one truth no matter how you might, or might not, perceive it.

Between the instilled beliefs of authority and the varying stereotypical viewpoint it is concluded that there is a crowd mind. This is the mind of a people not aggregated physically but with the same beliefs. This, again with the advantage of hindsight, seems to be the precursor to group think, the hive mind, and the concept of egregor.

It is claimed that those who dominate today do so not because of wealth/power but because they are established and unified whereas the opposition is neither. Consider the 2 party system or the incumbent. This is true, but I don’t believe for a second wealth, power, and influence don’t play a huge role. Later the book outlines precisely this when it considers starting a newspaper or radio station from scratch. The proposed capital requirements are completely out of the reach of the common man.

The idea of money influencing who comes to and maintains power is also clearly seen in the following example:

‘“The North American.” says Mr. Irwin, “had declared for local option. A committee of brewers waited on the editor; they represented one of the biggest groups in their business. ‘This is an ultimatum,’ they said. ‘You must change your policy or lose our advertising. We’ll be easy on you. We don’t ask you to alter your editorial policy, but you must stop printing news of local-option victories.’ So the deepest and shrewdest enemies of the body politic give practical testimony to the ‘power of the press’ in its modern form.” In the case of the brewers of Philadelphia it is my own opinion that if they had been well advised, instead of attempting to interfere with the policy of the North American, they would have made it a point to bring to the attention of the North American every instance of the defeat of local option.’ The newspaper would undoubtedly have published both sides of the story, as far as both sides consisted of news.’

This is essentially going after the income of a newspaper with pressure from the advertisers.

What is news anyway? It is that which deviates from the norm or has some kind of personal interest to the reader. The latter is the basis for the prevalence of human interest stories we see today. A person is hooked into a story by a person in the story that they can identify with. Facts and figures are boring, drama is addicting.

‘In Mr. Irwin’s opinion, the four outstanding factors making for the creation or enhancement of news value are the following:

1. “We prefer to read about the things we like.” The result, he says, has been the rule; “Power for the men, affections for the women.”
2. “Our interest in news increases in direct ratio to our familiarity with its subject, its setting, and its dramatis persona.’
3. “Our interest in news is in direct ratio to its effect on our personal concerns.”
4. “Our interest in news increases in direct ratio to the general importance of the persons or activities which it affects.”’

This is taken from “What is News?” by Will Irwin, Collier’s March 18 1911 (pages 17-18).

The take away as the main objective for a public relations counsel is that it doesn’t report or distort the news, it creates it.

The last statement of the book is absolutely mind-blowing. It asserts that the upper class must inject morality into public to change public opinion into public conscience.

‘“The future of public opinion,” says Professor Tonnies, “is the future of civilization. It is certain that the power of public opinion is constantly increasing and will keep on increasing. It is equally certain that it is more and more being influenced, changed, stirred by impulses from below. The danger which this development contains’ for a progressive’ ennobling of human society and a progressive heightening of human culture is apparent. The duty of the higher strata of society-the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual-is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion. Public opinion must become public conscience.”’

Books of interest:

• 1925, Abram Lipsky, Man the Puppet-the Art of Controlling Minds

• Bernay’s “Memoirs”

• W. Trotter’s “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.”

• Lippmann’s “Public Opinion”

• “What is News?” by Will Irwin, Collier’s March 18 1911 (pages 17-18)

Exceptional Excerpts

“Sculpture, painting, oratory, became tools in affecting attitudes and actions of the public. The open market place became a living symbol of the free discussion of competitive ideas."

“The theatre was second only to oratory as an influence in developing opinions of the Athenian public."

“Lincoln expressed his concept of the vital nature of these activities when he said, ‘In this and like communities public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who accepts or makes decisions.’"

“In 1876, Jacques Offenbach, a traveler to the United States, found advertising was ‘playing upon the brain of man like a musician does upon a piano.’"

“World War I gave emphasis to the development of planned techniques in professional public relations. The Committee on Public Information, the war agency initiated in 1917, focused attention on the importance of ideas as weapons. I was a staff member of the organization”

“Any idea could be built up if dealt with skillfully."

“The Hays Office was going strong. It was attempting to defend the motion picture industry against attacks that had been made upon it for immorality after the Fatty Arbuckle episode."

“his [John Q. Public] judgments, not on a basis of research and logical deduction, but for the most part dogmatic expressions accepted on the authority of his parents, his teachers, his church, and of his social, his economic and other leaders."

“from the New York Evening Post of July, 1922, as to the important interaction of these forces: ‘The importance of the press in guiding public opinion and the cooperation between the members of the press and the men who express public opinion in action, which has grown up since the Peace Conference at Paris, were stressed by Lionel Curtis, who arrived on the Adriatic yesterday to attend the Institute of Politics, which opens on July 27 at Williamstown. ‘Perhaps for the first time in history,’ he said, ’the men whose business it is to make public opinion were collected for some months under the same roof with the officials whose task in life is the actual conduct of foreign affairs. In the long run, foreign policy is determined by public opinion. It was impossible in Paris not to be impressed by the immense advantage of bringing into close contact the writers who, through the press, are making public opinion and the men who have to express their opinion in actual policy.’’"

“No idea or opinion is an isolated factor. It is surrounded and influenced by precedent, authority, habit and all the other human motivations."

“2. ‘He is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any other influence.’ Mr. Trotter illustrates this characteristic in a paragraph which is worth quoting in its entirety. He says: ‘It (the voice of the herd) can inhibit or stimulate his thought and conduct. It is the source of his moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage, and endurance, and can as easily take these away. It can make him acquiesce in his own punishment and embrace his executioner, submit to poverty, bow to tyranny, and sink without com- plaint under starvation. Not merely can it make him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly, but it can make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly preventable afflictions are sublimely just and gentle. It is this acme of the power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the most absolutely incontestable proof of the profoundly gregarious nature of man.’"

” The average citizen is the world’s most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own ’logic-proof compartments,’ his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction."

“A debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture."

“The tedious business of teaching reading in public schools has become chiefly a training to consume newspapers."

“The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ’education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education, The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda."

"‘The relativity of truth,’ 1 says Mr. Elmer Davis, ‘is a commonplace to any newspaper man, even to one who has never studied epistemology;"

"‘The future of public opinion,’ says Professor Tonnies, ‘is the future of civilization. It is certain that the power of public opinion is constantly increasing and will keep on increasing. It is equally certain that it is more and more being influenced, changed, stirred by impulses from below. The danger which this development contains’ for a progressive’ ennobling of human society and a progressive heightening of human culture is apparent. The duty of the higher strata of society-the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual-is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion. Public opinion must become public conscience.’

Table of Contents

• 1961 Preface
• Forward

Part 1: Scope and Functions


• 1-1: The Scope Of The Public Relations Counsel
• 1-2: The Increased And Increasing Importance Of The Profession
• 1-3: The Function Of A Special Pleader

Part 2: The Group and the Herd


• 2-1: What Constitutes Public Opinion?
• 2-2: Is Public Opinion Stubborn Or Malleable?
• 2-3: The Interaction Of Public Opinion With The Forces That Help To Make It
• 2-4: The Power Of Interacting Forces That Go To Make Up Public Opinion
• 2-5: An Understanding Of The Fundamentals Of Public Motivation Is Necessary To The Work Of The Public Relations Counsel
• 2-6: The Group And Herd Are The Basic Mechanisms Of Public Change
• 2-7: The Application Of These Principles

Part 3: Technique and Method


• 3-1: The Public Can Be Reached Only Through Established Mediums Of Communication
• 3-2: The Interlapping Group Formations Of Society, The Continuous Shifting Of Groups, Changing Conditions And The Flexibility Of Human Nature Are All Aids To The Counsel On Public Relations
• 3-3: An Outline Of Methods Practicable In Modifying The Point Of View Of A Group

Part 4: Ethical Relations


• 4-1: A Consideration Of The Press And Other Mediums Of Communication In Their Relation To The Public Relations Counsel
• 4-2: His Obligations To The Public As A Special Pleader

· 1961 Preface

page 5:

• During the past thirty-eight [1923-1961] years the professional public relations concept has penetrated most important activities in the United States, and spread over the free world.

page 6:

• Sculpture, painting, oratory, became tools in affecting attitudes and actions of the public. The open market place became a living symbol of the free discussion of competitive ideas.

• State coinage, said to have originated in Lydia in the seventh century B.C., enabled governments to issue coins whose nominal value exceeded their value as metals.

• In the market place, where the assemblies were usually convened, oratory proved itself as the best technique for affecting individuals and public opinion.

• The theatre was second only to oratory as an influence in developing opinions of the Athenian public.

• Public opinion was swayed by oral impact, a method still potent as shown in the use of television, radio and public appearances by candidates for political offices and by the champions of causes.

page 10:

• Most of these early papers were filled with intelligence from abroad. Domestic news, if any, was usually passed from hand to hand in news bulletins. Thus journalism was born, an influential factor in the shaping of public opinion.

page 14:

• The abolitionists formed a national organization of anti-slavery societies, boycotted the products of slave labor,…

page 15:

• The newly formed Republican Party backed the abolitionists. “Throughout the North,” the Encyclopaedia Britannica reports, “under such leaders as Seward, Lincoln, Chase, Henry Ward Beecher, and Horace Greeley, all the resources of the press, the platform, the pulpit, and the lyceum or citizens debating club, were fully enlisted in the propaganda.”

• Lincoln expressed his concept of the vital nature of these activities when he said, “In this and like communities public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who accepts or makes decisions."

• The expression of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad man, “The public be damned,” described the times. Rapid industrial expansion of the country under leaders of great individualism who stressed laissez faire, dominated the country’s post-war development. Industrialists sincerely believed that private business was nobody else’s business. Exploitation went on without inter- ference by Government. Technology moved faster than society’s ability to cope with it.

• N.S.B. Gras, the economic historian, has said of this period, “American business in the 19th Century went back to the exclusiveness of the medieval guilds in its attitudes toward the public."

• In 1876, Jacques Offenbach, a traveler to the United States, found advertising was “playing upon the brain of man like a musician does upon a piano."

page 16:

• Collective behavior, for some reason, did not receive the attention of students until the late 19th Century. LeBon’s La Foule reflected the beginning of social scientists’ concern with the psychology of the crowd. This was followed. by Gabriel Tarde in 1898, who wrote about the public and the crowd, trying to distinguish between them. Tarde thought of the public as composed of individuals not in immediate contact, and public opinion as the product of the printing press.

• There was a growing awareness at this time that publicity could be utilized to bring about social control by government of industrial activities, as well as for stimulating the interest of the public in an individual or organization, and building goodwill.

page 19:

• World War I gave emphasis to the development of planned techniques in professional public relations. The Committee on Public Information, the war agency initiated in 1917, focused attention on the importance of ideas as weapons. I was a staff member of the organization

• The giant scale propaganda on the part of the nations at war resulted in heightened recognition of the possibility of shaping events…

page 20:

• Stanley Walker, onetime City Editor of the ‘New York Herald Tribune, in his book City Editor, said, “Bernays has taken the sideshow barker and given him a philosophy and a new and awesome language… He is no primitive drum-beater … He is devoid of swank and does not visit newspaper offices; and yet, the more thoughtful newspaper editors, who have their own moments of worry about the mass mind and commercialism, regard Bernays as a possible menace, and warn their colleagues of his machinations."

page 21:

• [Post WW1] Education and literacy spread. The agencies of mass communication increased in size and number.

• Though the first radio message was sent in 1902, radio broadcasting, as we know it, began only in 1924. National magazines increased their circulation. Among newspapers, 55 chains controlled 230 dailies.

• Any idea could be built up if dealt with skillfully.

• in 1925, Abram Lipsky, in Man the Puppet-the Art of Controlling Minds, still thought of the public relations counsel in the old way, calling him a new pied piper,…

page 23:

• Propaganda and public relations became interchangeable terms in this period. [mid 1930s]

page 25:

• The Hays Office was going strong. It was attempting to defend the motion picture industry against attacks that had been made upon it for immorality after the Fatty Arbuckle episode.

page 26:

• During this decade the public opinion poll came into being. George Gallup launched his American Institute of Public Opinion in 1935, thus emphasizing a scientific approach to questions of what the public really thought about an idea or object.

• Articles about public relations appeared in magazines of general circulation, such as The Atlantic Monthly and The American Mercury and in Business Week, Nation’s Business and other similar journals. A profile of Ivy Lee appeared in The American Mercury in the late 1920’S. The Atlantic Monthly of May, 1932, and The American Mercury of February, 1930, carried profiles of me. Business Week published its first special report on public relations on January 23, 1937, and another on October I, 1939. The Columbia Encyclopedia, published in 1935, had no article on the profession, but listed books about it in the bibliography of the article on propaganda. Fortune regarded 1938 as the big year for professional public relations. Scarcely a convention, trade magazine or meeting of a board of directors failed to discuss it. In 1939, Fortune, in an article entitled, “The Public Be Not Damned,”

• The same tactic of spreading your ideas through media was used to spread the idea of propaganda as public relations. I wonder who was in control of the magazines at the time?

page 27:

• The importance and the circulation of these magazines gave the field widespread publicity and played a part in breaking down the tabu of many editors against discussing what many of them still thought of as press agentry.

• Similarly targeting other editors to then propagate the message. Propaganda is good.

• The [WW2 era] Office of War Information in this country and overseas gave national recognition to the importance of good public relations.

• And just before the War ended, with hopes for a brave new world, many institutions in society, profit and non-profit, looked closely at what their relationships to society had been, and considered more carefully what they were to be in the future.

• Meanwhile the term public relations became more widely accepted. In 1943 it was included in the Dictionary of Sociology.

• the dictionary defined it as “the body of theory and technique utilized in adjusting the relationships of a subject with its publics. These theories and techniques represent applications of sociology, social psychology, economics and political science as well as of the special skills of journalists, artists, organizational experts, advertising men, etc. to the specific problems involved in this field of activity.”

page 28:

• In the same work a public relations counsel was defined as an expert in “analyzing public relations maladjustments; locating probable causes of such maladjustments in the social behavior of the client, and in the sentiments and opinions of publics; and advising the client on suitable social theories and tested techniques in solving many of the problems of society."

• In November 1947 a motion picture entitled “Public Relations” in the “March of Time” series was shown throughout the country, but it portrayed a figure for the most part much like that of the old time press agent.

• The following year Reginald Clough, in The Encyclopedia Americana, described public relations as “the art of analyzing, influencing and interpreting a person, idea, group or business, so that its behavior will conform to the greatest degree possible with the public good."

page 29:

• But when the War was over, many captains of industry had come to view public relations as one of the most important forces in the dynamics of business advance. Such men as Frank W. Abrams of Standard Oil of New Jersey, Paul Garrett of General Motors, Santa Fe’s Fred Gurley and Monsanto’s Edgar Queeny echoed the principle stated in Fortune that, “Good business public relations is good performance-publicly appreciated."

• In this post-war period, professional public relations techniques have worked toward eliminating maladjustments in many phases of our society…

• They have also assisted social forces such as medicine and education to overcome the cultural time lag by making necessary adjustments to meet the changing needs of the times.

• Nothing but culture change, adjustment, influencing. Make everyone believe whatever you want them to believe in the name of progress and the changing times….

page 30:

• in many cases the governmental departments, in order to avoid public accusation that they are propagandizing, call their public relations and public information employees by other names.

• If propaganda is so good, why the need to hide it?

• Time will undoubtedly provide clarification, the development of ethical concepts and the licensing and registration of practitioners as in other professions.

• In 1952, I reformulated my 1923 definition in a new book, Public Relations. I now defined the term as “( I) information given to the public, (2) persuasion directed at the public to modify attitudes and actions, and (3) efforts to integrate attitudes and actions of an institution with its publics and of publics with those of that institution.”

page 31:

• New in relation to the older professions, it has harnessed the findings of the social sciences and in a world of growing complexity and constant change has proven a useful force for adjustment.

· Forward

Part 1: Scope and Functions

· Chapter 1-1: THE SCOPE OF THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL

page 35:

• advice is given not only on actions which take place, but also on the use of mediums which bring these actions to the public it is desired to reach, no matter whether these mediums be the printed, the spoken or the visualized word-that is, advertising, lectures, the stage, the pulpit, the newspaper, the photograph, the wireless, the mail or any other form of thought communication.

page 43:

• An interesting illustration of the broad field of work of the public relations counsel to-day is noted in the efforts which were exerted to secure wide commendation and support among Americans for the League of Nations. Obviously a small group of persons, banded together for the sole purpose of furthering the appeal of the League, would have no powerful effect.

• Unless that small group was headed by Milner and they had access to numerous influential publications…

• functions of the public relations counsel-how, for example, the production of “Damaged Goods” in America became the basis of the first notably successful move in this country for overcoming the prudish refusal to appreciate and face the place of sex in human life;

· Chapter 1-2: THE INCREASED AND INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF THE PROFESSION

page 47:

• Walter Lippmann of the New York World in his volume “Public Opinion” declares that “the significant revolution of modern times is not industrial or economic or political, but the revolution which is taking place in the art of creating consent among the governed." He goes on: “Within the life of the new generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the only constants of our thinking have become variables, It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the cardinal dogma of democracy, that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.”

· Chapter 1-3: THE FUNCTION OF A SPECIAL PLEADER

page 53:

• The Fourth Estate, a newspaper for the makers of newspapers

page 54:

• First of all, there are the circumstances and events he helps to create. After that there are the instruments by which he broadcasts facts and ideas to the public; advertising, motion pictures, circular letters, booklets, handbills, speeches, meetings, parades, news articles, magazine articles and whatever other mediums there are through which public attention is reached and influenced.

Part 2: The Group and the Herd

· Chapter 2-1: WHAT CONSTITUTES PUBLIC OPINION?

page 59:

• his [John Q. Public] judgments, not on a basis of research and logical deduction, but for the most part dogmatic expressions accepted on the authority of his parents, his teachers, his church, and of his social, his economic and other leaders.

• Why is it difficult to fight for sex education?

• If we had to form our own judgments on every matter, we should all have to find out many things for ourselves which we now take for granted. We should not cook our food or live in houses - in fact, we should revert to primitive living.

• Unless someone tells you what to think, you are primitive?

• “If we examine the mental furniture of the average man,” says William Trotter, the author of a comprehensive study of the social psychology of the individual,’ “we shall find it made up of a vast number of judgments of a very precise kind upon subjects of very great variety, complexity, and difficulty. He will have fairly settled views upon the origin and nature of the universe, and upon what he will probably call its meaning; he will have conclusions as to what is to happen to him at death and after, as to what is and what should be the basis of conduct. He will know how the country should be governed, and why it is going to the dogs, why this piece of legislation is good and that bad. He will have strong views upon military and naval strategy, the principles of taxation, the use of alcohol and vaccination, the treatment of influenza, the prevention of hydrophobia, upon municipal trading, the teaching of Greek, upon what is permissible in art, satisfactory in literature, and hopeful in science.

• “The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have any opinion upon them at all. The rational method adequately used would have told him that on the great majority of these questions there could be for him but one attitude-that of suspended judgment.”

• 1 William Trotter, “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (page 36).

page 62:

• The counsel on public relations, after examination of the sources of established beliefs, must either discredit the old authorities or create new authorities by making articulate a mass opinion against the old belief or in favor of the new.

· Chapter 2-2: IS PUBLIC OPINION STUBBORN OR MALLEABLE?

page 64:

• H. L. Menoken, writing in the same magazine for March, 1914, declares that “one of the principal marks of an educated man, indeed, is the fact that he does not take his opinions from newspapers-not, at any rate, from the militant, crusading newspapers. On the contrary, his attitude toward them is almost always one of frank cynicism, with indifference as its mildest form and contempt as its commonest.…

• Everett Dean Martin’s volume on “The Behavior of Crowds.” He says: Every crowd-group has its magazines press agents, and special ’literature’ with which it continually harangues its members and possible converts. Many books, and especially certain works of fiction of the ‘best seller’ type, are clearly reading mob phenomena.”

• Crowd-group is synonymous with today’s echo chamber.

page 65:

• [Walter Lippmann states:] “It follows that in the reporting of strikes, the easiest way is to let the news be uncovered by the overt act, and to describe the event as the story of interference with the reader’s life. This is where his attention is first aroused and his interest most easily enlisted.

• Enlist the readers interest in interference with his life. Don’t tell the story of the strikers.

· Chapter 2-3: THE INTERACTION OF PUBLIC OPINION WITH THE FORCES THAT HELP TO MAKE IT

page 71:

• The press, the lecturer, the screen and the public lead and are led by each other,

· Chapter 2-4: THE POWER OF INTERACTING FORCES THAT GO TO MAKE UP PUBLIC OPINION

page 73:

• How many ‘trial balloons’ were sent up in this fashion, no- body can recall.

• from the New York Evening Post of July, 1922, as to the important interaction of these forces: “The importance of the press in guiding public opinion and the cooperation between the members of the press and the men who express public opinion in action, which has grown up since the Peace Conference at Paris, were stressed by Lionel Curtis, who arrived on the Adriatic yesterday to attend the Institute of Politics, which opens on July 27 at Williamstown. ‘Perhaps for the first time in history,’ he said, ‘the men whose business it is to make public opinion were collected for some months under the same roof with the officials whose task in life is the actual conduct of foreign affairs. In the long run, foreign policy is determined by public opinion. It was impossible in Paris not to be impressed by the immense advantage of bringing into close contact the writers who, through the press, are making public opinion and the men who have to express their opinion in actual policy.’"

• The Rockefeller Foundation, confronted with the serious problem of the hookworm in the South and in other localities, has brought about a change in the habits of large sections of rural populations by analysis, investigation, applied medical principles, and public education.

page 74:

• The New York Tribune, as an example of editorial bravery, points out in an advertisement published May 23. 1922, that though “news knows no order in the making” and though “a newspaper must carry the news, both pleasant and unpleasant," nevertheless, it is the duty of any newspaper to realize that there is a possibility of selective action, and that “in times of stress and bleak despair a newspaper has a hard and fast duty to perform in keeping up the morale of the community."

• Who’s stress and bleak despair?

page 75:

• Boast from the New York World newspaper in how the paper altered public policy and/or opinion.

page 76:

• No idea or opinion is an isolated factor. It is surrounded and influenced by precedent, authority, habit and all the other human motivations.

· Chapter 2-5: AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PUBLIC MOTIVATION IS NECESSARY TO THE WORK OF THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL

page 77:

• Psychological habits, or as Mr. Lippmann calls them, “stereotypes,” are shorthand by which human effort is minimized.

page 78:

• Mr. Martin pictures society as an aggregation of people who have sacrificed individual freedom in order to remain within the group.

page 80:

• [W. Trotter in “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.”] “The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity."

• It should be explained at the very outset that Mr. Trotter does not use the. term “herd” in any derogatory sense. He approaches the entire subject from the point of view of the biologist and. compares the gregarious instinct in man to the same instinct In lower forms of life.

page 81:

• Mr. Lippmann remarks: “For the most part we do not first see and then define, we define first and then see.”

page 82:

• Mr. Trotter, results in five characteristics which he displays in common with all gregarious animals.

• 1 “He is intolerant and fearful of solitude, physical or mental.” The same urge. which drives the buffalo into the herd and man into the city requires on the part of the latter a sense of spiritual identification with the herd. Man is never so much at home as when on the band wagon.

• I thought people went to the city for “action” and jobs.

• 2 “He is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any other influence.” Mr. Trotter illustrates this characteristic in a paragraph which is worth quoting in its entirety. He says: “It (the voice of the herd) can inhibit or stimulate his thought and conduct. It is the source of his moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage, and endurance, and can as easily take these away. It can make him acquiesce in his own punishment and embrace his executioner, submit to poverty, bow to tyranny, and sink without com- plaint under starvation. Not merely can it make him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly, but it can make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly preventable afflictions are sublimely just and gentle. It is this acme of the power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the most absolutely incontestable proof of the profoundly gregarious nature of man."

• 3 “He is subject to the passions of the pack in his mob violence and the passions of the herd in his panics.”

• 4 “He is remarkably susceptible to leadership.” Mr. Trotter points out that the need for leadership is often satisfied by leadership of a quality which cannot stand analysis, and which must therefore satisfy some impulse rather than the demands of reason.

• 5 “His relations with his fellows are dependent upon the recognition of him as a member of the herd.”

· Chapter 2-6: THE GROUP AND HERD ARE THE BASIC MECHANISMS OF PUBLIC CHANGE

page 86:

• Mr. Lippmann makes the same observation. He says: 1 “Every newspaper when it reaches the reader is the result of a whole series of selections as to what items shall be printed, in what position they’ shall be printed, how much space each shall occupy, what emphasis each shall have. There are no objective standards here. There are conventions.

· Chapter 2-7: THE APPLICATION OF THESE PRINCIPLES

page 87:

• the cause he [a propagandist] represents must have some group reaction and tradition in common with the public he is trying to reach. This must exist before they can react sympathetically upon one another. Given these common fundamentals, much can be done to capitalize or destroy them.

• Margaret Sanger, a leader in the fight for education on birth control, will evoke enthusiasm when she addresses an audience that approves of her sentiments. When, however, she injects her point of view into groups that have a preconceived aversion to them, she is in danger of abuse, if not of actual physical violence.

page 88:

• “Damaged Goods” was able to make the American public accept the word “syphilis” because the counsel on public relations projected the doctrine of sex hygiene through those groups and sections of the public which were prepared to work with him.

• Simply a way of presenting subversive messages in an educational light. Similar to the AIDS/sex education crammed into schools in the 1990’s. Both were used to publicize sexual promiscuity under the guise of safe sex/education.

page 89:

• The average citizen is the world’s most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own “logic-proof compartments,” his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction.

Part 3: Technique and Method

· Chapter 3-1: THE PUBLIC CAN BE REACHED ONLY THROUGH ESTABLISHED MEDIUMS OF COMMUNICATION

page 92:

• The public relations counsel, through the mediums chosen by him, presented to the public the information necessary to aid in understanding America’s war aims and ideals. George Creel and his organization reached vast groups, representing every phase of our national elements, in every modern method of thought communication.

page 94:

• Domination to-day is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of disunity.

• More specifically, why is it that the two par- ties, Republican and Democrat, have maintained themselves as the dominant force for so many years?

• Then the book goes on to talk about the cost of establishing a newspaper or radio station as being prohibitive. So the domination IS, at least partly, due to wealth.

page 97:

• The expert, therefore, must advise first upon the form of action desirable for his client and secondly must utilize the established mediums of communication, in order to present to the public a point of view.

· Chapter 3-2: THE INTERLAPPING GROUP FORMATIONS OF SOCIETY, THE CONTINUOUS SHIFTING OF GROUPS, CHANGING CONDITIONS AND THE FLEXIBILITY OF HUMAN NATURE ARE ALL AIDS TO THE COUNSEL ON PUBLIC RELATIONS

page 101:

• Target many groups on grounds that appeal to them in tandem to change the whole.

• It is precisely this interlapping of groups-the variety, the inconsistency of the average man’s mental, social and psychological commitments which makes possible the gradual change from one state of affairs or from one state of mind to another. Few people are life members of one group and of one group only. The ordinary person is a very temporary member of a great number of groups. This is one of the most powerful forces making for progress in society because it makes for receptivity and open-mindedness. The modification which results from the inconstancy of individual commitments may be accelerated and directed by conscious effort. These changes which come about so stealthily that they remain unobserved in society until long after they have taken place, can be made to yield results in chosen directions.

page 105:

• A debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture.

page 106:

• We have to be able to take sides.

• See: political campaigns.

· Chapter 3-3: AN OUTLINE OF METHODS PRACTICABLE IN MODIFYING THE POINT OF VIEW OF A GROUP

page 111:

• He [the propagandist] must visualize himself as a manufacturer, a retailer, an importer, an employer, a worker, a financier, a politician.

page 112:

• He must be able to generalize, as far as possible, from these points of view in order to strike upon the appeal or group of appeals which will be influential with as many sections of society as possible.

page 114:

• His ability to create those symbols to which the public is ready to respond; his ability to know and to analyze those reactions which the public is ready to give; his ability to find those stereotypes, individual and community, which will bring favorable responses; his ability to speak in the language of his audience and to receive from it a favorable reception are his contributions. The appeal to the instincts and the universal desires is the basic method through which he produces his results.

Part 4: Ethical Relations

· Chapter 4-1: A CONSIDERATION OF THE PRESS AND OTHER MEDIUMS OF COMMUNICATION IN THEIR RELATION TO THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL

page 118:

• The tedious business of teaching reading in public schools has become chiefly a training to consume newspapers.

page 119:

• “The North American.” says Mr. Irwin, “had declared for local option. A committee of brewers waited on the editor; they represented one of the biggest groups in their business. ‘This is an ultimatum,’ they said. ‘You must change your policy or lose our advertising. We’ll be easy on you. We don’t ask you to alter your editorial policy, but you must stop printing news of local-option victories.’ So the deepest and shrewdest enemies of the body politic give practical testimony to the ‘power of the press’ in its modern form.” In the case of the brewers of Philadelphia it is my own opinion that if they had been well advised, instead of attempting to interfere with the policy of the North American, they would have made it a point to bring to the attention of the North American every instance of the de- feat of local option.’ The newspaper would undoubtedly have published both sides of the story, as far as both sides consisted of news.

• Essentially going after the advertisers.

page 121:

• In Mr. Irwin’s opinion, the four outstanding factors making for the creation or enhancement of news value are the following:

• 1 “We prefer to read about the things we like.” The result, he says, has been the rule; “Power for the men, affections for the women.”

• 2 “Our interest in news increases in direct ratio to our familiarity with its subject, its setting, and its dramatis persona.’

• 3 “Our interest in news is in direct ratio to its effect on our personal concerns.”

• 4 “Our interest in news increases in direct ratio to the general importance of the persons or activities which it affects.”

• “What is News?” by Will Irwin, Collier’s March 18 1911 (pages 17-18)

page 125:

• Mr. Lippmann’s observation on this point deserves comment. He says: ’ “This is the under- lying reason for the existence of the press agent. The enormous discretion as to what facts and what impressions shall be reported is steadily convincing every organized group of people that whether it wishes to secure publicity or to avoid it the exercise of discretion cannot be left to the reporter. It is safer to hire a press-agent who stands between the group and the newspapers. The really important function of the public relations counsel, in relation to the press as well as to his client, lies even beyond these considerations. He is not merely the purveyor of news; he is more logically the creator of news.

· Chapter 4-2: HIS OBLIGATIONS TO THE PUBLIC AS A SPECIAL PLEADER

page 133:

• The only difference between “propaganda” and “education,” really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education, The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.

• “The relativity of truth," 1 says Mr. Elmer Davis, “is a commonplace to any newspaper man, even to one who has never studied epistemology;

• Truth relative? Surely you can be ignorant and the truth evades you, or you can foster varied beliefs in your perception of the truth, but there is no relativity.

page 134:

• There is a different set of facts on every subject for each man. Society cannot wait to find absolute truth. It cannot weigh every issue carefully before making a judgment. The result is that the so-called truths by which society lives are born of compromise among conflicting desires and of interpretation by many minds.

page 135:

• “The future of public opinion,” says Professor Tonnies, “is the future of civilization. It is certain that the power of public opinion is constantly increasing and will keep on increasing. It is equally certain that it is more and more being influenced, changed, stirred by impulses from below. The danger which this development contains’ for a progressive’ ennobling of human society and a progressive heightening of human culture is apparent. The duty of the higher strata of society-the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual-is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion. Public opinion must become public conscience.”