Crystallizing Public Opinion

by Edward L. Bernays

For the great mass of activities there is no machinery of record whatever. How these are to be recorded when they are important is the real problem for the press.

In this field the public relations counsel plays a considerable part. His is the business of calling to the public attention, through the press and through every other available medium, the point of view, the movement or the issue which he represents. Mr. Lippmann has observed that it is for this reason that what he calls the “press agent” has become an important factor in modern life.

Mr. Lippmann’s observation on this point deserves comment. He says:[42] “This is the underlying 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.

An amateur can bring a good story to the average newspaper office and receive consideration, although the amateur is only too likely to miss precisely those features of his story which give it news value, and to overlook precisely that element of the story which will make it interesting to the particular newspaper he is approaching.

The New York hotel proprietors were enforcing the prohibition law in relation to their own establishments, but saw that certain restaurants were violating the law with impunity. Realizing the injustice to them of this situation, they built a definite news event by going over the heads of the local law enforcement offices and wired an appeal direct to President Harding, asking for enforcement. This naturally became news of the first order.

The opening of a shop by prominent women in which were shown graphic examples of the effect of the tariff on women’s wear was an event created to intensify interest in this subject.

The launching of battleships with ceremony; the laying of corner stones; the presentation of memorials; demonstration meetings, parties and banquets are all events created with a view to their carrying capacity in the various mediums that reach the public.

The departments of a modern newspaper will show the great variety of possible approaches on any subject from the standpoint of the press. When this is correlated to the possible approaches on any subject from the standpoint of human psychology, we see the diversification of methods to which the public relations counsel can have recourse to construct events.

In the metropolitan press, for instance, there are the news departments, the editorial departments, the letter-to-the-editor department, the women’s department, the society department, the current events department, the sport department, the real estate department, the business department, the financial department, the shipping department, the investment department, the educational department, the photographic department and the other special feature writers and sections, different in different journals.