Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays developed what most people know as modern public relations at the turn of the twentieth century, but the idea of public relations have been around since the beginning of time. The Ancient Greeks believed in the philosophy “vox populi” or the voice of the people which started the foundation of public relations’ two-way communication. With the invention of the printing press, printing books and pamphlets gave the public information and opinions to what was going on in their world, which were similar to a press release in their day. We discussed in class how in the American Revolution, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay wrote the Federalist papers to encourage people to ratify the Constitution and before and during the Civil War how abolitionists wrote to abolish slavery and include former slaves and women in the rights of an American citizen. In 1906, Lee published his "Declaration of Principles" which gave practioneresponsibilitiesies to the client and established a sense of ethics. Bernays then gave public relations the direction it needed to advance the occupation.

The most interesting part about the history is how public relations was used in the time of World War I and II. Before World War I, American leaders and the public for the most part followed George Washington's words of his farewell speech in that America should not get involved in European wars and affairs. During the war, President Wilson established the Committee for Public Information (CPI) which created over 75 million pamphlets and books and also produces films for the movie theaters informing the general public of what was going on and why America should be involved. This process repeated in the 1940s with the Office of War Information in order to control the information from the battlefield and to create psychological warfare against the enemy. During this time is when public relations got the negative word of "propaganda" attached to it because of the Nazi Propaganda Minisiter Joseph Goebbels.

After September 11, the American people wanted to do whatever they could to help the victims of the attack, and when the American Red Cross said they wanted blood, the public gave it to them and "within the first 48 hours, the nation's blood supply had tripled"(86). The problem with this was that the blood had a shelf life of only six weeks and soon with the overflow of blood and the lack of need for it caused the blood to be useless and forced to be thrown away. Some of the blood could not be used because the red blood cells had died, but the plasma was still used. What should have been done as we discussed in class was to listen to similar companies' advice. In PR we cannot just focus on our company or client, but we have to understand what similar companies or clients are doing so that we can learn from what they did correctly or how to handle mistakes or crisis differently.

My roommates' responses of what the definition of PR was ranged from Kaitlin saying, "the people side of business," Katie saying, "it's talking for the company they're representing, " and Melissa saying, "helping to communicate information to the people." When I had asked them if they knew someone in a high-profile PR job, Melissa and Katie didn't know any, but Kaitlin responded with "the only PR person I know is Samatha Jones from Sex and the City."

I told them my definition of PR and the books version that included Harlow's definition that it "helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communication, understanding, acceptance, and cooperation between an organization and its publics" (pg 5). In a way, all three of them were right, but they didn't have the full picture of PR. At least my roommates didn't think that I was going into a profession where I would have to "spin" information for the companies, but just thought that as part of my job, I would be the voice between the public and the company, organization, or client I was representing. On the other hand, no one really knew anyone in a high-powered PR job except for Kaitlin who remembered Samatha from her favorite TV show worked a PR job organizing events and major parties.

When I told my friends that I had finally figured out that I would be majoring in PR, most thought that I would later be working for a company in order to "spin" or lie to make the company look better. I had never seen "Wag the Dog" before until class last Wednesday, but movies such as that and "Thank You For Smoking" lead me to believe that's where the public gets their skewed view of the PR field.
According to our book and during our class discussion, PR can be a synonym for "spin" which gives PR a negative connotation as "spin doctors" who stress certain points and events to improve their image. The book defines public relations as "the management of relationships between an organization and its publics" and PRSA, CIPR, and wikipedia have similar definitions. PRSA and CIPR's, the British PR organization, goals are to put down the negative ideals of PR and to make sure that members follow the Code of Ethics to prevent the public to view PR as "spin doctors."
My view of PR so far after reading the book, the article given in class, and the internet sites definitions have brought me to define PR as a mediator between who they are representing and the media and/or public. When in the PR position of the company it is their job to do damage control, making sure that the public knows the information; yet at the same time not to only put out certain points causing suspicion of "spin." Many people who don't understand what PR really is will confuse it with the "spin doctors" instead of understanding how organizations such as PRSA and CIPR are trying to organize the members to stick to the Code of Ethics and still represent the client/company in the best light as possible.