CONTRIBUTIONS OF FATHERS OF PR.

26TH OCTOBER 2009
QUESTION: P. T. BARNUM, EDWARD BERNAYS, IVY LEE AND ARTHUR PAGE HAVE BEEN TOUTED AS HAVING CONTRIBUTED TO PUBLIC RELATIONS THOUGHT AND PRACTICE.
(A) OUTLINE THEIR VARIOUS CONTRIBUTIONS.
(B) CLEARLY DELINEATE THE PR TRADITIONS EACH OF THEM BELONG TO.


Professor James E. Grunig, an expert in public relations in (1992) succeeded in categorizing the phases of PR into four traditions or models. According to Prof. Grunig, who has over 20years of PR practice and lecturing, the first PR tradition is called Press Agentry.
This tradition emerged from the 1830s and was in vogue till the early days of 1900s.This tradition actually gave birth to the subsequent traditions. The cardinal characteristics of the press agentry period were lies and deceptions embedded in entertainments. The master and the perfect practitioner of this tradition was Phineas Taylor Barnum also known as showman. P.T Barnum was a multifaceted, dynamic, and supremely creative individual who never ceased to amaze the public with his initiatives.
His catch phrase was “the public be fooled, the public be damned”. Press Agents threw the issue of ethics to the wind. Mr. Barnum made excessive use of oddities and extremists for most of his shows. He defended his usage of tricks, lies and half truths to promote ideas, products and politicians by stating that;’ the public at the end of the day got value for money in terms of satisfaction’.
Barnum, born on July 5, 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut, in the United States of America, was a writer, publisher, businessman, showman, philanthropist, and sometimes a politician. He set up circus (concert) to facilitate his programmes. He again established a newspaper called “The Herald of Freedom” to enhance his publicity work. Barnum also bought museums to preserve historical records and artifacts. He renovated the museum buildings where he used hoaxes and oddities like “Feejee” mermaid, midgets, albinos, giants, menagerie of animals that attracted thousands guests to the museum. In one of the numerous tricks, he presented General Tom Thumb, a 4year boy as an 11year boy who could do a whole lot of things normally preserved for the aged like smoking and drinking. Again, 70year blind slave woman Joice Heth was staged as a 160year who could sing and dance youthfully and had been a nurse to ex-US president, George Washington.
P.T Barnum died in his sleep in 1891, April 7 and was buried in mountain Groove cemetery Bridgeport, Connecticut. The London Times in a tribute said P. T. was a ‘harmless deceiver”. This comment in itself received mixed reactions from the public. Ironically, press agentry is still being practised in our body politics.
The second phase of PR has been christened Journalistic model or Public information model. From 1920 upwards, there was a general industrial boom across Europe and America. During this period, industries made huge sums of profit from their operations that industry owners became very rich and powerful. But for some reasons employees and customers were not happy about the way businessmen and industrialists carried themselves. This eventually led to low public rating and approval for the image of the companies and the organizations. Employees and customers in their attempt to get their pound of flesh engaged in activities that brought total and complete anarchy and destruction of social harmony and order.
This chaotic environment did not promote the interest and corporate image of the organizations and companies. It was during this period that the term journalists-in-residence was coined to depict the new role journalists had to perform. Industry owners in a desperate move to salvage the dwindling fortune of their image decided to hire journalists to tell their side of the story. This period was more of one-sided information delivery. Journalists acting as Public Relations Officers just gave one – sided information to the public though a significant departure from the pseudo-events and half truths that characterized the press agentry. They told the stories of their clients with regards to the publics. The practitioners often used tools like, press releases, brochures and sometimes static web content in sending out their information.
They usually tell story with the hope that someone out there is listening. This period also saw the emergence of another group of journalists called the muckrakers. This group rose in defense of the poor innocent employees and customers who the muckrakers believed were being shortchanged by the journalists-in-residence. The background of Ivy Ledbetter Lee as a PR practitioner and a pioneer of the profession placed him squarely in this particular model. Ivy Lee was born in Cedartown, Georgia, USA (July 16, 1877). Lee studied at the Emory College and then graduated from Princeton. He began work as newspaper reporter and a stringer. Ivy Lee in collaboration with George Parker founded the third PR firm by name Parker and Lee in 1904. The PR firm did works for then US presidential candidate Alton Parker against Theodore Roosevelt. Though the firm did last, Lee rose through the ranks and became an instrumental figure in the history of PR practice.
Lee’s conviction of being truthful with your publics all the time was put into a document called “The Declaration of Principles”. Lee was employed by an American Railroad company as PR officer. In 1906, one of the trains was involved in a fatal accident. For first time in the history of PR practice, he was able to convince management on the need to invite the press to the accident scene. Hitherto, the company would have just sent information to the public and press without them to make their own assessment of the situation.
In 1919, he founded the public relations counseling office, Lee and Associates. Lee entered into much more PR prominence when he was retained by the Rockefellers as a family PR consultant. That responsibility included their business interests like standard oil. Lee’s catch phrase advice to the family was: ‘tell the truth, because the public will find out anyway’. Lee really championed a philosophy consistent with what has been described as two-way street approach to PR. But in practice Lee, indulged in one-way propagandizing on behalf of his clients. He died in New York at the age of 57 in 1934.
The aftermath of World War II saw the rise of a new tradition in the practice of PR in the world. This tradition was called the persuasive model and the leading advocate was Edward Louis Bernays. The post-war days saw a rise in consumer products that created a need for scientific marketing. Prof. Grunig called it ‘scientific persuasion’. It is also known as two-way asymmetrical model. This period can be likening to a communication model called The Hypodermic or Bullet communication model. That is pushing information until the masses accept it without considering feedback.
Bernays, born in Nov. 22, 1891, was extremely intelligent. His relationship with his uncle Sigmund Freud, a psycho-analyst actually affected his thought processes and behavioral judgement of people’s conduct. He graduated from Cornel University with a degree in agriculture but chose to practice journalism as his career.
Bernays married Doris E. Fleischman in 1922 to and did most of his PR works with her. Doris was a PR practitioner, and indeed the first to have written a PR newsletter. Bernays was a member of Creel committee set up by the US president Woodrow Wilson and was charged with the responsibility of managing the information flow of US involvement in the Second World War. In 1919, he opened an office and called himself a PR counsel in New York. He organized and taught the first PR course in the University of New York in 1923. Bernays again authored the PR book called ‘Crystallizing Public Opinion’ in 1923. He mainly used the “third party authorities” as the principle to persuade the public. And this is if you are able to influence the leaders indirectly you will automatically sway their followers. PR industry historian Scot Cutlip described Bernays in the following words: “perhaps the most fabulous and fascinating individual in public relations”. One his cardinal stands was, how he clearly and strongly differentiated between advertising and PR.
Edward worked for many companies and non-profit organizations across US as PR counsel. Just to mention a few, the Jewish Mental Health Society, the Book Publishers Institute, the American Tobacco Company, General Electrical and Dodge Motors. Former US president Coolidge was his client (1924). This model was more of one way communication without regards to feedback. He died at the age of 103 in 1994.
Then entered the 4th and current state of PR practice, known as two-way symmetrical model. The period is also called ideal state. The two-way communication is hinged on research which is critical and paramount to its success. Here, whoever prepares information to be sent out expects a feedback from the recipient of the information. Hence scientific research is carried out from the outfit of the PR practitioner to ascertain the level of impact of the message. It also means assembling the concerns of your publics to be factored into organization’s policies and programmes. That is responding to the concerns of your publics proactively. This tradition again uses communication to resolve conflicts or misunderstanding that may arise among the various publics.
Moreover, this kind of communication is reciprocal and very balanced. It deals with two levels of publics, internal and external. The chief advocate of this tradition is Arthur W. Page. Page was offered the position of vice president of American Telephone and Telegraph Company in charge of Public Relations; he only agreed to accept the job on the basis that, the company will operate on the principle of PR that he later outlined. He was the first PR officer to serve as a board member of a major public corporation. He was with the corporation from 1927 to 1946. Arthur Page was responsible for the organization’s 21 branches in the Bell System companies and ensured that all 21 branches were headed by PR officers who were in senior management positions.
During his tenure as PR officer for AT & T, it became the largest publicly held organization in the world. One of his principal philosophies on PR was: tell the truth all the time, let the public know what is happening in the organization; update the character of the organizations and its ideals regularly. He was a board member of numerous organizations and companies. He believed in relationship building between publics and the organization. As a special confidant to Henry L. Stimson who was then a cabinet Minister, he is believed to have written Truman’s speech that announced the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan by the United States of America in 1945.
According to Page, “all business in a democratic country begins with public permission and exists by public approval. If this is true, it follows that a business should cheerfully willing to tell the public what its policies are and what it hopes to do. This seems practically a duty. He died in 1960 at the age of 77.