Edward L. Bernays

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the practice of public relations produced by Edward L. Bernays' way of looking at information dissemination. The paper also looks at more recent advances in thinking about the function of communications between what are lately termed "stakeholders" in any given public enterprise. The paper presents a result that reveals that public relations is still operating much as Bernays designed it to do.

Outline
Edward L. Bernays in Brief
Modern Approaches to Bernays's Creation
Ethics Enters the Debate
How Many Flavors?
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"During a career that spanned more than 80 years, Bernays was billed as a press agent, publicist and public relations counselor, depending on the styling needed for acceptance at any given moment, and had some major accomplishments most Americans would not realize were not "always there" but rather were attributable to Bernays' engineering of the public belief system. For example, he got Americans to eat bananas and children to like washing with Ivory soap. He humanized President Calvin Coolidge, and talked William Paley into making news a very strong component of his fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System, or CBS. None of these could be viewed as a bad thing."

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