Crystallizing Public Opinion

People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them. The expert, therefore, must advise first upon the form of action desirable for his client and secondly must utilize the esta

Others whose work influenced Bernays included the British political scientist, Graham Wallas, whose 1908 book, Human Nature in Politics, maintained that “the empirical art of politics” was not based on fact-based appeals to reason. Instead, he asserted, it “consists largely in the creation of opinion, by the deliberate exploitation of subconscious,

three recent tendencies of fundamental importance; first, the tendency of small organizations to aggregate into groups of such size and importance that the public tends to regard them as semi-public services; second, the increased readiness of the public, due to the spread of literacy and democratic forms of government, to feel that it is entitled

Two of Lippmann’s ideas were particularly significant as Bernays crafted the job of the “public relations counsel.” The first of these was Lippmann’s argument that people’s view of reality was guided by the “pictures in their heads.” Living within the cocoons of their personal lives, and with minimal direct access to the outer world, most people’s

The public responds to finer music and better motion pictures and demands improvements. “Give the people what they want” is only half sound. What they want and what they get are fused by some mysterious alchemy. The press, the lecturer, the screen and the public lead and are led by each other.

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, t

Commenting on this aspect of the situation, Mr. Lippmann discuses this very example of the broker, John Smith, and his hypothetical bankruptcy. “That overt act,” says Mr. Lippmann,9 “‘uncovers’ the news about Smith. Whether the news will be followed up or not is another matter. The point is that before a series of events become news they have usual

Dominant groups today are more secure in their position than was the most successful autocrats of several hundred years ago, because today the inertia which must be overcome in order to displace these groups is so much greater. So many persons with so many different points of view must be reached and unified before anything effective can be done. U

Abstract discussions and heavy fact are the groundwork of his involved theory, or analysis, but they cannot be given to the public until they are simplified and dramatized. The refinements of reason and the shadings of emotion cannot reach a considerable public. When an appeal to the instincts can be made so powerful as to secure acceptance in the