PR! - A Social History of Spin

The early years of the twentieth century were a difficult period for Big Business. Corporate monopolies, the brutal exploitation of labor, and unscrupulous business practices were the target of blistering attacks from a muckraking press and an increasingly resentful public. Corporate giants were no longer able to operate free from the scrutiny of the masses. “The crowd is now in the saddle,” warned Ivy Lee, one of America’s first corporate public relations men. “The people now rule. We have substituted for the divine right of kings, the divine right of the multitude.” Unless corporations developed means for counteracting public disapproval, he cautioned, their future would be in peril. Lee’s words heralded the dawn of an era in which corporate image management was to become a paramount feature of American society. Some corporations, such as AT&T, responded inventively to the emergency. Others, like Standard Oil of New Jersey (known today as Exxon), continued to fumble the PR ball for decades. The Age of Public Relations had begun. In this long-awaited, pathbreaking book, Stuart Ewen tells the story of the Age unfolding: the social conditions that brought it about; the ideas that inspired the strategies of public relations specialists; the growing use of images as tools of persuasion; and, finally, the ways that the rise of public relations interacted with the changing dynamics of public life itself. He takes us on a vivid journey into the thinking of PR practitioners—from Edward Bernays to George Gallup—exploring some of the most significant campaigns to mold the public mind, and revealing disturbing trends that have persisted to the present day. Using previously confidential sources, and with the aid of dozens of illustrations from the past hundred years, Ewen sheds unsparing light on the contours and contradictions of American democracy on the threshold of a new millennium. Stewart Ewen is professor of media studies and chair of the Department of Communications at Hunter College. He is also a professor in the Ph.D. programs in history and sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author of the acclaimed Captains of Consciousness, Channels of Desire, and All Consuming Images, the last of which provided the basis for Bill Moyers's award-winning PBS series The Public Mind. He lives in New York City.

PR! is Stuart Ewen’s pathbreaking history of public relations. It begins with the First World War when Ivy Lee, one of the nation’s first corporate PR men, helped create a new climate in which public relations and corporate image management would become paramount in American society. Ewen chronicles the development of a culture we now take for granted. He examines the social conditions that spawned public relations and the ideas that inspired its strategists, and the increasing use of images as tools of persuasion. Using previously confidential sources, and with the aid of dozens of rare illustrations from the past hundred years, PR! lays bare the contours and contradictions of American democracy as we enter a new millennium.

Publishers Weekly

Is there any difference between PR and propaganda? Ewen (All Consuming Images), a professor of media studies at Hunter College in Manhattan, doesn't think so. Accordingly, his account of the rise of the public relations industry begins with the U.S. Committee on Public Information, a government-sponsored organization dedicated to maintaining domestic morale during WWI. In the aftermath of the war, Ewen argues, public relations developed largely out of a corporate fear that genuine democracy would obstruct the workings of big business, with PR pioneer Edward Bernays offering, as he phrased it, lessons in "the engineering of consent." As corporations like AT&T began to perceive the importance of utilizing public relations in the face of a public increasingly suspicious of monolithic companies, the PR industry hit its stride by learning to incorporate many of the tactics and iconography of the New Deal while simultaneously opposing its progressive politics. Ewen's book trails off after the 1940s; he doesn't substantially probe the colossal impact of television or the incursion of PR methods into politics in more recent times. And although he presents a convincing portrait of a business elite attempting to use techniques of persuasion to distort and mold public opinion, he doesn't fully address the question of PR's effectiveness. (Nov)

The early years of the twentieth century were a difficult period for Big Business. Corporate monopolies, the brutal exploitation of labor, and unscrupulous business practices were the target of blistering attacks from a muckraking press and an increasingly resentful public. Corporate giants were no longer able to operate free from the scrutiny of the masses. "The crowd is now in the saddle," warned Ivy Lee, one of America's first corporate public relations men. "The people now rule. We have substituted for the divine right of kings, the divine right of the multitude." Unless corporations developed means for counteracting public disapproval, he cautioned, their future would be in peril. Lee's words heralded the dawn of an era in which corporate image management was to become a paramount feature of American society. Some corporations, such as AT&T, responded inventively to the emergency. Others, like Standard Oil of New Jersey (known today as Exxon), continued to fumble the PR ball for decades. The Age of Public Relations had begun. . In this long-awaited, pathbreaking book, Stuart Ewen tells the story of the Age unfolding: the social conditions that brought it about; the ideas that inspired the strategies of public relations specialists; the growing use of images as tools of persuasion; and, finally, the ways that the rise of public relations interacted with the changing dynamics of public life itself. He takes us on a vivid journey into the thinking of PR practitioners - from Edward Bernays to George Gallup - exploring some of the most significant campaigns to mold the public mind, and revealing disturbing trends that have persisted to the present day. Using previously confidential sources, and with the aid of dozens of illustrations from the past hundred years, Ewen sheds unsparing light on the contours and contradictions of American democracy on the threshold of a new millennium. WHEN I BEGAN the research for this book-attempting to dis the social and historical roots that would explain the boundless role of public relations in our world-one of my first stops along the way was a sojourn with Edward L. Bernavs, a man who, beginning in the 1910s, became one of the most influential pioneers of American public relations, a person whose biography, though not widely known, left a deep mark on the configuration of our world. This history of public relations shows how the art of PR has moulded the "public mind" and warped the contours of American democracy. The story began during World War I when Ivy Lee sounded the dawn of an era in which public relations would become a paramount feature of society. A history of public relations, this work begins with World War I, when Ivy Lee, one of America's first corporate PR men, helped create a new climate in which public relations and corporate image management would become paramount in American society.