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Chapter 12
Public Relations and Framing the Message
In this chapter, we will:
• Study the impact of public relations and the historical conditions that affected its
development as a modern profession
• Look at nineteenth-century press agents and the role that railroad and utility companies
played in developing corporate PR
• Consider the rise of modern PR, particularly the influences of former reporters Ivy Lee and
Edward Bernays
• Explore the major practices and specialties of public relations
• Examine the reasons for the long-standing antagonism between journalists and members of
the PR profession, and the social responsibilities of public relations in a democracy
Preview Story: America’s biggest sport is having major public relations problems. While the
NFL continues to deal with the fallout from concussion and CTE-related incidents and research
findings, the league has also had to react to public scrutiny from the #MeToo and Black Lives
Matter movements. The NFL has often responded to bad press by downplaying the incidents or
covering them up, which has led critics to call the NFL’s public relations strategy a fiasco. In
addition, the NFL’s ratings are in decline. The NFL’s ongoing difficulties illustrate a key
difference between advertising (bought, controlled publicity) and public relations (“earned”
media publicity), which is much more difficult to control.
I. Early Developments in Public Relations
A. P. T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill
B. Big Business and Press Agents
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C. The Birth of Modern Public Relations
1. Ivy Ledbetter Lee
2. Edward Bernays
II. The Practice of Public Relations
A. Approaches to Organized Public Relations
B. Performing Public Relations
1. Research: Formulating the Message
2. Conveying the Message
3. Media Relations
4. Special Events and Pseudo-Events
5. Community and Consumer Relations
6. Government Relations and Lobbying
C. Public Relations Adapts to the Internet Age
D. Public Relations during a Crisis
III. Tensions between Public Relations and the Press
A. Elements of Professional Friction
1. Undermining Facts and Blocking Access
2. Promoting Publicity and Business as News
B. Shaping the Image of Public Relations
C. Alternative Voices
IV. Public Relations and Democracy
Examining Ethics: Public Relations and “Alternative Facts”
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Global Village: Public Relations and Bananas
Media Literacy and the Critical Process: The Invisible Hand of PR
LECTURE IDEAS
I. Early Developments in Public Relations
• Describe the roles of P. T. Bamum, Buffalo Bill, and railroads and utility companies in the
development of corporate public relations.
• Detail the rise of modern public relations, noting various PR tactics pioneered by Ivy Lee and
Edward Bernays.
• John Stauber, who runs the Center for Media and Democracy, said that Ivy Lee would
probably have shared the mantle of “Father of Public Relations” with Edward Bernays “if he
hadn’t made the fatal career mistake of going to work with the Nazis, and then dying before
he could clean up his own image.”
II. The Practice of Public Relations
• According to Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter (one of the industry’s touchstones), PR firms have
recently begun to have relationships with their clients that are much more like those of ad
agencies (indeed, more and more PR firms are actually owned by ad agencies). That means
unbridled enthusiasm for a client’s goals and complete client confidentiality. In fact, the
world of PR has become increasingly insular.
• The median annual salary for PR managers in January 2016 was $96,294 according to
salary.com.
• Because the PR industry has tended to skew female in the last two decades, men have an
advantage when applying for jobs and promotions.
• Successful PR professionals have developed their digital skills, including:
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1. understanding how to use the analytical tools that capture what is being said on social
media sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Snapchat, and
Instagram) and how to interpret the results of these social media measurement tools and
connect them to traditional media measurement results;
2. knowing how to manage an online community so that it feels as though the client is
interacting and engaging with its audiences;
3. knowing how to create content that is suited for a variety of digital platforms, going
beyond text and understanding how to effectively use video, audio, and images; and
4. understanding search-engine optimization (SEO) and knowing how to optimize text,
images, and video so that people can find them easily.
(Adapted from a September 21, 2010, blog post by Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen, a
holding company for a group of worldwide PR consultancies. Available at:
https://timdyson.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/what-digital–skills-should-a-pr-pro–have.)
• Today, most PR departments are almost universally called “communications” departments,
an indication that PR firms are detecting bad vibes from their own name. So instead of PR
campaigns, communications departments now create “communication programs” or
“communication efforts.”
The name “public relations” has also evolved into “strategic communication.”
• Review today’s PR tactics (including the use of social media), and discuss their
effectiveness.
• Corporations use a variety of ways to make their “corporate social responsibility” (CSR)
visible and to give the public a positive view of their brand. Ask students if their high schools
had an exclusive agreement with any athletic clothing corporation (e.g., Nike) or beverage
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company (e.g., Coca-Cola). Did any corporations make a large donation to their college in
exchange for having a campus facility named for a brand?
• Two of the biggest attractions in Atlanta are corporate headquarters. Coke has a popular
museum, and CNN gives tours. Both corporate headquarters have gift shops, too.
• Apple initiated the practice of donating computers to schools, a sure way to generate good
PR. Apple’s donations, along with those from other computer companies, however, are tied
in with a marketing strategy for accustoming young people, their parents, and teachers to a
certain computer or software brand. Donations also enable the company to make future sales
and upgrades because the school has already committed to its brand. Other companies
outside the computer industry donate computers as well, and although these moves are also
widely regarded as philanthropic, these companies are usually undergoing a computer
upgrade and need to get rid of their old systems anyway. Some computer donations have
been contingent on students and their families shopping at a certain local store and collecting
register receipts to prove it or on writing letters to relatives and friends begging them to buy
magazine subscriptions in return for more school equipment.
• To enhance consumer relations, retailers such as Pier 1 Imports invite their “preferred”
customers to do secret surveillance of the company’s own employees. Pier 1 mails credit card
customers a form asking them to come to the store, document their consumer relations
experience, and mail the responses back to the company, all for a discount on their next
purchase. The PR strategy works in more than one way: it brings customers back to the
stores, it ensures that store employees are on their toes in terms of individual consumer
relations, and it gives the consumer a sense of control and ownership in how the store is run.
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• American Express spent $6 million to tell us about how they had donated less than $2 million
to renovate the Statue of Liberty. American Express was one of the first companies to do
“cause–related” marketing, a strategy whereby a company supports a cause but generally
spends more money to celebrate its own generosity than to help the cause. In 1983, American
Express offered to support the renovation of the Statue of Liberty over a three-month period.
The more people spent on their credit cards, the campaign urged, the more funds would be
raised for the project. The campaign raised $1.7 million toward statue renovation. Ultimately,
the generosity came from people being inspired to use their American Express cards to help
preserve the landmark. As they created more debt for themselves, more profit was ultimately
generated for American Express, a percentage of which went to the statue renovation project.
• Where do stories come from? The answer is often PR Newswire, which publishes press
releases. PR Newswire says its content reaches “nearly 10,000 websites portals, and
databases” across the world. Its “media portal PR Newswire for Journalist has more than
37,000 active monthly users.” Visiting https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com can be eye-opening,
especially for students considering careers in journalism.
• Explore online press releases and other information offered online directly by a major
company. Although any number of companies or sites would work, one possibility is the site
for General Electric (http://www.ge.com). Click the “news” tab to find fairly traditionally
formatted press releases, links to news articles about GE, and video and audio produced by
the company for use by the press and the public.
• The environmental and financial damage to the Gulf Coast from the 2010 BP Deepwater
Horizon oil spill will take decades to clean up. However, one element of the news story that
might never be fully cleaned up is BP’s public image. This damage occurred both through
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traditional news reports and through constant coverage of the disaster on the Internet. From a
live feed of the massive amount of oil gushing from the burst pipe in the Gulf, to viral video
parodies of the company’s often-inept responses, to YouTube videos of disaster-relief efforts,
the digital messages about the disaster took on a life of their own. In a segment aptly titled
“PR-mageddon,” Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, discussed these Internet
phenomena and observed how BP’s public relations team tried to exert control over Web
coverage of the spill. The clip (some strong language) is available at
http://www.cc.com/episodes/55xano/the-colbert-report-june-8—2010—mark–frauenfelder–
season-6-ep-06073.
• Discuss ethics in public relations. Consider new ethical issues that arise with the use of social
media and other Internet tools. You might wish to refer to the spotlight on Examining
Ethics: Public Relations and Bananas in the textbook.
III. Tensions between Public Relations and the Press
• Discuss the conflicted yet “codependent” relationship between PR professionals and
journalists.
Show examples of obvious press releases that became newspaper or broadcast news stories.
• VNRs are particularly effective in highlighting the tensions between PR and press as well as
the tensions between government regulators (usually the FCC or FTC) and broadcasters.
Show students the “Rescue Sleep” VNR without telling them it is a VNR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xo0HlYXHlQ.
• Begin 25 seconds into the video, where the VNR actually begins (the first 25 seconds
give away that it’s a VNR and were not designed to be aired). End at 2:05, before the
“Suggested Tag.”
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• The PR Watch report, “A First for the FCC: Fining Fake News!” (available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2007/09/6478/first-fcc-fining-fake-news), documents FCC
action to fine Comcast for airing the VNR without disclosing its source.
• A 2006 Toronto Globe and Mail article reported that between 2000 and 2003, ExxonMobil
Corp. gave more than $8.6 million to think tanks, consumer groups, and policy organizations
to configure a PR assault on the idea of global warming. Despite the World Meteorological
Society’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consensus on climate change,
ExxonMobil and a large contingent of oil and related industries have promoted the
“research” of a minority of scientists who generally receive undisclosed amounts from
industry interests to undermine the IPCC consensus and instill disagreement (or the notion of
disagreement) in the science community. The assault against the global warming consensus
is an example of what PR practitioners call “the echo chamber technique.” A PR firm finds a
scientist (often retired or past his or her prime) who says there is no global warming to worry
about. The PR firm then takes this statement and promotes it, and the scientist goes on the
road giving speeches, talking to reporters, doing press briefings, and making sure the
message is repeated over and over.
• Here are some tactics used by corporations or politicians to try to “kill” a negative story, as
documented by Alicia Mundy in the Columbia Journalism Review:
• Trying to take the story away from the reporter by threatening legal consequences if
the story is pursued, printed, or aired. Managing editors then ask themselves if the
story is worth the hassle.
• Trying to control the timing or placement of the bad news such as by releasing it on
Friday afternoon or, better yet, Friday at midnight.
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• Playing on the competitive nature of journalism. If information is released to one
news organization, its rival will often feel obliged to find a new angle or will ignore
the scoop.
(See Alicia Mundy, “Games PR People Play; Corporate Damage Control Turns
Tough,” Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2003, p. 10.)
• Two PR consultants, Al Ries and his daughter/consulting partner, Laura Ries, have predicted
the fall of advertising in favor of more ambitious PR campaigns. “All the recent brand
successes have been basically PR successes, not advertising successes,” they wrote in a 2003
Ad Age article. They name Red Bull, Harry Potter, JetBlue, Linux, Palm, Starbucks,
PlayStation, and Microsoft’s Xbox as examples of products that relied almost solely on
public relations to get them into the public consciousness. “No new brand is as clearly a PR
success as Botox. Imagine trying to use advertising to introduce a new product with the
theme ‘Let us inject a toxin made from the bacteria that causes botulism into your forehead to
cure your wrinkles.’ Yet PR did just that. In eight years, with no advertising at all, Botox
became a $300 million brand,” they wrote. The Ries’ strategy is to first use PR to change
minds and then turn to advertising to keep people from changing their minds back.
• The “Will it blend?” campaign, launched by BlendTec in 2006, is a mixture of PR and
advertising. BlendTec created a series of videos, shot for under $100, that featured a
nerdy/cheesy, science-guy host putting unlikely objects into the BlendTec blender: a video
camera, golf balls, an iPod, marbles, glow sticks, and so on. BlendTec released the videos on
YouTube hoping to generate a social media marketing buzz. The result was an enormously
successful viral video campaign that, according to one media analyst, “is the stuff of
marketing legend, like Apple’s ‘1984 Macintosh’ campaign or Wendy’s ‘Where’s the beef?’
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advertisements.” The company drove more than six million visitors to its Web site
(http://www.winitblend.com) in less than a week, and sales went up 43 percent.
IV. Public Relations and Democracy
• Explore the impact of good and bad public relations on democracy. For example, point out
the use of pseudo-events and “Twitter-wars” during the 2016 election.
• U.S. Government Accountability Office found two examples in which the U.S. government
broke the law in 2004 by using video news releases and issued a notice to all departments
and agencies regarding the transgressions. The seven-paragraph memorandum/admonition,
“Prepacked News Stories” (available at http://www.gao.gov/decisions/appro/304272.htm),
provides a brief and helpful summary of the law regarding use of taxpayer funds for publicity
or propaganda.
• The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch is an example of how easy it is to manipulate the press in
time of war, but it also shows how such manipulations can backfire. An injured Lynch was
captured by Iraqi forces after her Humvee took a wrong turn near the southern city of
Nasiriyah in March 2003. She was rescued nine days later, when U.S. troops stormed the
hospital where she was kept. In the first version of her story, the Washington Post, quoting
U.S. officials, wrote that Lynch had sustained stab and bullet wounds while fiercely resisting
capture (“fighting to the death” was the chosen expression). The paper reported that Iraqis
had then taken Lynch to a local hospital, where she was slapped about while being
interrogated. She was saved thanks to the intervention of an Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed Odeh
al-Rehaief, whose wife was working at the hospital. Al-Rehaief had risked his life by telling
U.S. authorities where they could find Lynch. After the rescue, the Pentagon released a five-
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minute film showing the assault on the hospital, saying the troops had come under fire but
had managed to whisk Lynch away by helicopter.
Six weeks later, a different story started to emerge, most notably thanks to a BBC
documentary that included interviews with the Iraqi doctors who treated Lynch. They said
Lynch had no bullet or stab wounds but had suffered a broken arm, a broken thigh, and a
dislocated ankle when her Humvee crashed. They said they gave her the best care they could
under the circumstances, had tried to deliver her to U.S. forces, but had turned around when
they heard gunfire as their ambulance approached a U.S. checkpoint. They also said there
were no Iraqi soldiers in the hospital at the time of the U.S. assault and that Iraqi military had
fled the area the day before.
Al-Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer, was granted asylum in the United States and was offered a book
deal and a job in Washington. In another twist to the story, the Al-Rehaief book was
promoted by Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who is best known for her work coaching a Kuwaiti girl in
her phony testimony that she’d seen Iraqi soldiers murder Kuwaiti babies.
Lynch herself was able to tell her story seven months after the fact when she left the army.
Her biography, written by former New York Times feature writer Rick Bragg, came out in
November 2003. A made-for-TV movie about Lynch’s ordeal was also released that
November.
(Two interesting sources on this story: John Kampfner, “The Truth about Jessica,” Guardian,
May 15, 2003, 2; and Christopher Hanson, “American Idol: The Press Finds the War’s True
Meaning,” Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2003. Also interesting is the
Washington Post original story: Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, “‘She Was Fighting to the
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Death’: Details Emerging of W. Va. Soldier’s Capture and Rescue,” Washington Post, April
3, 2003, p. A1.)
MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES
RESHAPING A CONTROVERSIAL IMAGE
Imagine that you work for a high-powered PR firm, and a controversial client (e.g., a tobacco
company, a pharmaceutical company, the government of Saudi Arabia) hires your firm to
reshape the client’s image.
To perform this job, what strategies would you employ and why? (Before you begin, your
class may want to discuss whether the firm would refuse to work for any clients.)
HELPING YOUR COLLEGE RELATE TO ITS PUBLICS
Pre–Exercise Question: What’s a recent public relations disaster at your college or university?
Identify a problem or situation on your campus that could use PR strategies to improve
relations with groups on or off campus. (Recent examples include bad publicity that focused on
campus sexual assaults, racist and homophobic incidents, deceptive marketing by for-profit
colleges, and fraternities and sororities.) Next, agree on a general goal or solution for the kinds of
strategies that could serve to meet your goal and improve public relations. Do the strategies meet
the PRSA Ethics Code? (See “PRSA Member Statement of Professional Values” in the textbook
or http://www.prsa.org for the complete code.) Could the strategies backfire?
Do the strategies embrace a democratic process and serve all parties’ “public interest”?
THE INFLUENCE OF PRESS RELEASES
Pre–Exercise Question: What influence do press releases have?
In this Critical Process exercise, track three to five press releases from the time they are
released through any resulting news stories. First check with a PR organization that issues
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releases. For example, you can check with your university’s PR office or the athletic
department’s sports information office.
Both offices may post their press releases on a Web site as well. On the day that the press
releases are issued, track the local print and electronic news stories that are generated.
(Alternatively, you could track broadcast news stories.)
1. Description. Describe your list of stories. How many stories are there? Which
newspaper(s)/news organization(s) used the press releases?
2. Analysis. What kinds of patterns emerge? Do most publications and broadcasts seem to be
willing to report the information in a press release? Did the reporters do any additional
investigation, or did they take the point of view of the release? Did certain types of releases
fail to get any coverage? What kinds of stories received more prominence and coverage?
3. Interpretation. What changes, if any, were made between each press release and the
corresponding news story? Why do you believe that these changes were made? Do
newspapers/news organizations ever print releases verbatim? Should they? Which version—
the press release or the news story—represented the better story? Why? (Keep in mind that
each story has a different purpose and audience.)
4. Evaluation. How much should press releases drive a newspaper’s/news organization’s
coverage of an institution like a local college or university?
5. Engagement. Are there potentially significant stories on campus that don’t get reported
because they are not likely to be suggested to the press via a press release? Research some of
these ideas, and develop the information a little further. Then pitch the story idea to a local
newspaper (via phone or email).
PERSUADING PEOPLE TO ACT FOR THE GREATER GOOD
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Pre–Exercise Question: Why don’t some people recycle?
This Critical Process exercise is a case study for nonprofit public relations; it involves the
process of persuading citizens to make a minor personal investment of time and energy for the
good of the community.
As the new environmental coordinator for the make-believe city of Murphystown (population
100,000), your duty is to get the citizens to reduce, reuse, and recycle their household garbage.
More than six months ago, a citywide curbside recycling program went into effect. Each
household received plastic bins for separating its paper, metal, glass, and plastic products. Pickup
is every two weeks, on the same day as weekly garbage collections. Many citizens of
Murphystown, though, are not recycling or are forgetting to put out their recycling bins on time
and then later overloading the containers. Others are incorrectly sorting their recyclables, and
still others are putting nonrecyclable waste into their bins. Moreover, few citizens are
composting yard waste, such as leaves and grass clippings, and many are still putting those items
into their garbage cans, a practice that is now illegal. So, after six months, the new recycling
program has been deemed a failure, and you have been hired for the unenviable task of fixing the
situation. A survey indicates that Murphystowners are accustomed to a throwaway convenience
culture, and they believe that recycling and composting are too time–consuming, with little
benefit for them.
The recycling program needs to be a success. The program will extend the life of the city’s
landfill from twenty to seventy years, and it will also provide (through the sale of bulk recycled
garbage) an important revenue source for the operation of the city’s environmental management
system. Your job success depends on your ability to turn the program around. The city’s mayor
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has privately demanded that you dramatically improve the citizen participation rate in the
program in a year; if you don’t, you’ll be fired.
Your Job:
1. Identify all the public relations problems in this scenario. Who are all the “publics” you need
to consider? How will you communicate with them?
2. Your solutions should shun top-down administrative edicts and, instead, encourage open,
democratic communication and creative participation. How will you frame your strategies
and messages to do that? How will you get all residents of the entire city of Murphystown to
make a personal investment in energy and time for a long-term plan for which they may not
see immediate tangible benefits?
3. Consider not only the message but the entire organizational process. Are there things you
could do to change the entire recycling process that might create higher participation rates
and improved performance? How will you find out which parts of the process to improve?
TRACKING RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PUBLIC RELATIONS INDUSTRY:
A SEMESTER–LONG CRITICAL PROCESS EXERCISE AND PAPER
In this exercise students discover the most recent developments in the industry, and they become
familiar with industry trade sources. The paper they produce is due in sections, which
correspond with the steps in the Critical Process.
1. Description. Read industry trade sources to get a sense of the main issues affecting the public
relations industry. Look at the Web sites of industry trade associations and professional
societies. (Links to Web sites of some industry trade sources are given in the Classroom
Media Sources below.) Take notes on topics that have multiple stories or mentions in the
current year. What issues or developments in the industry have received a lot of recent
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attention, discussion, or commentary in industry sources? (Focus only on information from
the current year—and only from trade sources.) Write a one-page synopsis of the information
you found about current topics in the industry. Cite your sources properly.
2. Analysis. Look for one development or pattern that has received significant attention on trade
sites and from trade journalists in the current year. Choose one specific trend, and write one
or two pages with details about the information you found about that trend. Continue to track
news about your topic as the semester progresses. Cite sources properly.
3. Interpretation. What does the trend mean for the state of the industry? Is it evolving? How?
What does it tell you about media in general at the current time? What might it say about our
culture or our society? Can your information help us interpret the role of the industry in our
lives? Write up your interpretation in a five-page paper. (The first page should be a synopsis
of the trend, with proper citations.) You might not have to provide information from your
sources for the next four pages because this section is your interpretation of the trend. (Save
any ideas you have about whether the trend is “good” or “bad” for the Evaluation step of the
Critical Process.)
4. Evaluation. Is the trend “good” or “bad”? For the industry? society? culture? democracy? us?
What do you think might happen in the future?
5. Engagement. Are there any actions you can take (related to your trend and the industry)?
Possibilities include posting your views on social media, creating a petition, contacting
people in the industry to see what they think of your interpretation and evaluation, or going
to an industry event if any are held nearby. (This step need not be required if students are not
motivated to take action.)
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Note: This exercise works well if each step of the Critical Process is due two weeks after the
prior step is due. Limiting students to only trade sources and only information from the current
year helps keep them on track. Your institution’s librarians should be able to provide students
with information on how to access industry trade sources.
CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES
LAUNCHPAD FOR MEDIA & CULTURE:
launchpadworks.com
Filling the Holes: Video News Releases (2009, 3:29 minutes). Television and public relations
experts explain the increasing use of VNRs as business concerns drive networks to cut costs.
Featuring Jonathan Adelstein, Shana Daum, and Robin Sloan.
Give and Take: Public Relations and Journalism (2009, 3:44 minutes). News editors, publicists,
and advocates debate the relationship between journalism and public relations. Featuring
Dino Corbin, Shana Daum, Mickey Huff, and Bob Speer.
Going Viral: Political Campaigns and Video (2010, 3:21 minutes). Online video has changed
political campaigning forever. In this video, Peggy Miles of Intervox Communications
discusses how politicians use the Internet to reach out to voters.
VIDEOS/DVDS/CDS
Counterfeit Coverage (1992, 30 minutes). This video explains how the first Gulf War was not
merely reported but marketed to the American public. It includes interviews with several public
relations firms, network news-show officials, Amnesty International, Citizens for a Free Kuwait,
and a large polling service, and it shows actual broadcast footage and newspaper photos.
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire (2006, 76 minutes). This
video places the George W. Bush administration’s original justifications for war in Iraq
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within the larger context of a two–decade struggle by neoconservatives to dramatically
increase military spending while projecting American power and influence globally by
means of force. Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, 800-897-0089;
http://www.mediaed.org.
Jerry Maguire (1996, 138 minutes). A fictional film starring Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr.,
it portrays a sports agent who pushes his clients on marketing and PR.
Our Brand Is Crisis (2005). A documentary about U.S. PR work in foreign politics.
Our Brand Is Crisis (2015). A fictional film starring Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton;
based on the 2005 documentary.
Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land: U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
(2004, 80 minutes). This video provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international
media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in
U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Distributed
by the Media Education Foundation, 800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.
Public Relations (1996, 24 minutes). This program examines PR’s three broad functions:
promotion, image-building, and image protection. The video also features a number of case
study examples from a PR agency, a nonprofit organization, and a small business. Distributed
by Insight Media, 800-233-9910; http://www.insight–media.com.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957, 96 minutes). A fictional story about the ties between a ruthless
gossip columnist (Burt Lancaster) and the sleazy head of a PR agency (Tony Curtis) who
would stoop to anything to get good press.
Thank You for Smoking (2005, 92 minutes). This darkly satirical fictional account of the inside of
the tobacco industry’s public relations campaign creates a framework for discussions about
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public relations, journalistic ethics, and personal ethics. Starring Aaron Eckhart, Katie
Holmes, and Maria Bello.
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (2002, 45 minutes). A critical look at the PR industry with PR
Watch founder John Stauber and cultural scholars Mark Crispin Miller and Stewart Ewen.
Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, 800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.
Wag the Dog (1997, 97 minutes). This fictional film shows how a spin doctor and a Hollywood
producer join efforts to “fabricate” a war to cover up a presidential sex scandal. Starring
Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.
WEB SITES
O’Dwyer’s Inside News of Public Relations & Marketing Communications:
http://www.odwyerpr.com
PR News: http://www.prnewsonline.com
PR Newswire: http://www.prnewswire.com
PR Watch: http://www.prwatch.org
PRWeb: http://www.prweb.com/
PR Week: http://www.prweek.com
Public Relations Society of America: http://www.prsa.org
Public Relations Student Society of America: http://prssa.prsa.org
FURTHER READING
Bernays, Edward L. Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L.
Bernays. New York: Simon, 1965.
__________. Crystallizing Public Opinion. New York: Horace Liveright, 1923.
Boorstin, Daniel. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Vintage, 1992.
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Burton, Bob. Inside Spin: The Dark Underbelly of the PR Industry. New York: Allen, 2007.
Cutlip, Scott M. The Unseen Power: Public Relations—A History. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum, 1994.
Ewen, Stuart. PR! A Social History of Spin. New York: Basic, 1996.
Hiebert, Ray Eldon. Courtier to the Crowd: The Story of Ivy Lee and the Development of Public
Relations. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1966.
Lee, Ivy. Publicity. New York: Industries, 1925.
Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan, 1922.
Mundy, Alicia. “Games PR People Play; Corporate Damage Control Turns Tough,” Columbia
Journalism Review, September/October 2003, 10.
Mundy, Alicia. “Is the Press Any Match for Powerhouse PR?” In Impact of Mass Media:
Current Issues, 3rd ed., edited by Ray Eldon Hiebert. New York: Longman, 1995.
Olasky, Marvin N. “The Development of Corporate Public Relations, 1850–1930.” Journalism
Monographs, no. 102, April 1987.
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