Industry of Propaganda?

If public relations is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, then what differs it from propaganda?  Well, not much.  Edward Bernay’s, who grapples with Ivy Lee over the title of “Father of Public Relations,” explains the ‘difference’ between public relations and propaganda.

The term ‘Propaganda’ didn’t necessarily have a negative connotation, as Bernay’s mentions.  It wasn’t until The First World War, thanks to the German propagandists, that it was looked at unfavorably—thus the need for a different, less militant term.  As Noam Chomsky noted in a speech at the Z Media Institute, “The country was becoming wealthier and more people could participate and a lot of new immigrants were coming in.  So what do you do?...you have to control what people think.  There had been a public relation specialist, but there was never a public relations industry…this public relations industry, which is a U.S. invention and a monstrous industry, came out of the first World War.”

This is how a wartime tactic became an American institution.  J.W. in The Big Money even draws the connection between public relations and blatant jingoism: “Of course selfservice, independence, individualism is the word I gave the boys in the beginning.  This is going to be more than a publicity campaign, it’s going to be a campaign for Americanism” (396).  The irony here, is of course, that the words “selfservice,” “independence,” and “individualism” mean very little when you’re dealing with manipulating public opinion.  They’re basically reducing the fundamental tenants that the United States was founded upon to hegemonic buzzwords and ineffectual jargon.  The ‘monstrous industry of U.S. invention’, according to Chomsky, was systematically stripping away American freedom.

The Big Money isn’t relying on hyperbole, either.  The opening pages of Bernay’s Propoganda, a book released in 1928 that explored controlling the public’s collective conscious, suggest the powerful “peaceful” influence public relations possess: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of” (Bernays).  And men we have heard of, too.

Dos Passos devotes and entire section the media’s influence of public opinion during wartime in his “Poor Little Rich Boy” section of tongue-in-cheek biographies, examining the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and his use of yellow journalism.  “When there’s no news, make news,” Dos Passos writes, “’You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war, [Hearst’s] supposed to have wired Remington in Havana” (Dos Passos 378) (It’s possible that this is a myth).  Dos Passos mentioning “Remember The Maine” is fitting; it was a popular headline used by Hearst and his newspaper to stir American fervor over the mysterious sinking of The Maine stationed at Cuba in 1989.  Though it is doubtful that Americans would sink their own ship, the likelihood of Spanish covert Spanish actions, it was used as a powerful tool to turn public opinion in favor of a war that would otherwise have seemed Imperialistic.  Dos Passos also mentions a moment where Hearst forced unarmed Spanish sailors to kneel and kiss an American flag, but it’s difficult to corroborate, and I couldn’t turn up a picture, or photograph that portrays this moment.