PR NOTABLES OF AMERICAN

GLEN M. BROOM Ph.D.

1961

In the post-World War II years, Americans developed an insatiable demand for consumer goods. Truckers began hauling more and more tons of products on the nation’s byways and back roads — and they lobbied state legislatures to allow them to put heavier trucks on the roads.

The truckers’ new political muscle irked another powerful force: the railroads. And in 1949, the Eastern Railroads Presidents Conference hired public relations professionals to promote its cause, including the successful but controversial publicist Carl Byoir.

To stir concerns about raising truck weight limits in Pennsylvania and other states, Byoir planted articles in major magazines about “The Giants That Wreck Our Highways.” The PR campaign enlisted “grassroots” groups, which were actually funded by the railroads, and smeared truckers as a threat to public safety. The truckers hired their own PR firm to counter the claims.

“The Railroad-Truckers Brawl,” as Fortune magazine called it, culminated in an anti-trust lawsuit by the truckers against the Eastern Railroads Presidents Conference and Carl Byoir & Associates. A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled for the truckers in 1957, calling the campaign by the railroads and Byoir PR firm “one large, ever-growing conspiracy” to stifle competition and a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Byoir’s firm and the railroads appealed. In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion that gave constitutional protection to public relations efforts to change laws. Justice Hugo Black wrote that while the PR campaign fell “far short of the ethical standards generally approved in this country,” the First Amendment gave the railroads the right to petition — to use publicity materials and news articles to try to influence legislation.

1941–2019

Glen M. Broom was the lead author for the last six editions of “Effective Public Relations.” When Broom died, an obituary in the Chicago Tribune stated, “Through his work as a professor and administrator at San Diego State University, and through his co-authorship of a textbook that has been the industry’s bible for almost 70 years, Broom ushered PR from the realm of press releases into the daily decision-making of companies, the military, nonprofits and other institutions.”

(Courtesy of Glen M. Broom Center for Professional Development in Public Relations)