PR NOTABLES OF AMERICAN

EDWARD L. BERNAYS APR, Fellow PRSA

campaign purposes. Notably President Woodrow Wilson’s Western Tour promoting the League of Nations utilized a series of staged events and scripted speeches to garner American support for joining the League.

By the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration established new norms of presidential communication. These included the famed fireside chats, which helped Roosevelt gain popular support for his New Deal.

With the economic disparity caused by the Great Depression, corporate public relations strived to fashion a company voice that would resonate with Americans during the 1930s. This led to the rise of public relations counsels hired by companies to craft and maintain their corporate image. Nonprofits also gained a level of sophistication in public relations work. The March of Dimes, one of the most successful fundraising campaigns, began in 1938 and was an innovative example of small-donation fundraising.

By the 1940s, public relations had become part of almost every major American business. The formal study of public relations also grew with Rex Harlow becoming an early PR academic. According to Harvard Business School historian N.S.B. Gras, by 1945 trade publications

1891–1995

Edward Louis Bernays is referred to as “the father of public relations.” He’s generally considered to have been the first to develop the idea of the professional public relations counselor (someone who draws on the social sciences to motivate and shape the response of a general or particular audience). As Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Bernays combined psychology with public relations to promote everything from bacon to cigarettes. His 1923 book “Crystallizing Public Opinion” helped define and shape the profession. In 1990, LIFE magazine named Bernays one of the “100 Most Influential Americans of the 20th Century.” He received PRSA’s Gold Anvil Award in 1976. He was in the inaugural class of the College of Fellows. (Courtesy of the Museum of Public Relations) including Public Relations News and The Public Relations Directory and Yearbook (containing 6,000 names), demonstrated how the PR field had proliferated.

Public Relations History and Its Impact On Today’s Profession

This is only a brief overview of American PR history prior to 1947. There are so many events and figures that played a role in public relations development that an entire book could have been written about each of them. It is important to note that the history of public relations, like many histories, struggles to be complete. There are many men and women whose contributions have been lost to history and, unfortunately, we will never know their stories.

It’s also critical to know that the contributions of women and people of color to the formative years of the profession were commonly overlooked in historical accounts, an omission that must continue to be addressed. Historians today work to include their overlooked contributions to the field to create a more inclusive, diverse and comprehensive public relations history.

Of course, a key point here is to showcase where the field has been and where it is going. So many of the issues of the past are still with us today, including transparency, relationship management, ethics, technology, PR practitioners’ role within organizations and the evolving definition and role of public relations. Perhaps most timely is the role of ethics in the profession and how, as practitioners, our duties to clients and publics, regardless of the era, enable informed decision-making.

The history of public relations also demonstrates the power of the field. Public relations work has been at the forefront of many of the major moments of American history, including presidential elections, social change and corporate growth.

Like any powerful force, communication can be used for good and bad. Because of that, we made a conscious choice in the pages that follow to showcase what is good and right about public relations. We want readers to see how public relations promotes change for good, embraces the new, strives for innovation for positive impact, gives voice to the voiceless and provides communication that preserves and enhances democracy.

About the Author: Cayce Myers, Ph.D., J.D., APR, is director of graduate studies and an associate professor at Virginia Tech’s School of Communication, where he teaches public relations and communication law.

PUBLIC RELATIONS SOCIETY OF AMERICA

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