Crystallizing Public Opinion

by Edward L. Bernays

In a valuable study on the “Newspaper Reading Habits of Business Executives and Professional Men in New York” compiled by Professor George Burton Hotchkiss, Head of the Department of Advertising and Marketing, and Richard B. Franken, Lecturer in Advertising at New York University, there are several tables setting forth the features of morning and evening newspapers preferred as a whole by the group to whom the questionnaires were sent, and by various smaller groups within the main group.

The counsel on public relations not only knows what news value is, but knowing it, he is in a position to make news happen. He is a creator of events.

An organization held a banquet for a building fund to which the invitations were despatched on large bricks. The news element in this story was the fact that bricks were despatched.

In this capacity, as purveyor and creator of news for the press as well as for all other mediums of idea dissemination, it must be clear immediately that the public relations counsel could not possibly succeed unless he complied with the highest moral and technical requirements of those with whom he is working.

Writing on the profession of the public relations counsel, the author of an article in the New York Times[43] says “newspaper editors are the most suspicious and cynical of mortals, but they are as quick to discern the truth as to detect the falsehood.” He goes on to discuss the particular public relations counsel whom he has in mind and whom he designates by the fictitious name Swift, and remarks that: “Irrespective of their position on ethics, Swift & Co. won’t deal in spurious goods. They know that one such error would be fatal. The public might forget, but the editor never. Besides, they don’t have to.”

Truthful and accurate must be the material which the public relations counsel furnishes to the press and other mediums. In addition, it must have the elements of timeliness and interest which are required of all news—and it must not only have these elements in general, but it must suit the particular needs of each particular newspaper and, even more than that, it must suit the needs of the particular editor in whose department it is hoped that it will be published.

Finally, the literary quality of the material must be up to the best standards of the profession of journalism. The writing must be good, in the particular sense in which each newspaper considers a story well written.

In brief, the material must come to the editorial desk as carefully prepared and as accurately verified as if the editor himself had assigned a special reporter to secure and write the facts. Only by presenting his news in such form and in such a manner can the counsel on public relations hope to retain, in the case of the newspaper, the most valuable thing he possesses—the editor’s faith and trust. But it must be clearly borne in mind that only in certain cases is the public relations counsel the intermediary between the news and the press. The event he has counseled upon, the action he has created finds its own level of expression in mediums which reach the public.

The radio stations offer an avenue of approach to the public. They are controlled by private organizations, large electrical supply companies, department stores, newspapers, telegraph companies and in some cases by the government. Their programs broadcast information and entertainment to those within their radius. These programs vary in different localities.

To the public relations counsel there is a wide opportunity to utilize the means of distribution the radio program affords. In partisan matters, the controllers of the radio insist upon the presentation of all points of view in order to have the onus of propaganda removed from their shoulders. The public relations counsel is therefore in a position to suggest to the broadcasting managers a symposium treatment of the subject in which he happens to be interested. Or in the case of information, which has not this partisan character, he is in a position to assure treatment of his subject by embodying his thesis in the form of a speech delivered by some individual of standing and reputation.