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Propaganda As Public Relations Antecedent: the Complex Legacy of the Creel Committee Christopher J

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Propaganda As Public Relations Antecedent: the Complex Legacy of the Creel Committee Christopher J PAPER 1B3 – CHRISTOPHER J. MCCOLLOUGH PROCEEDINGS OF ARMISTICE & AFTERMATH: A MICHIGAN TECH SYMPOSIUM ON WWI • SEPT. 28-29 2018 Propaganda as Public Relations Antecedent: The Complex Legacy of the Creel Committee Christopher J. McCollough Columbus State University Wars are not won on battlefields alone. Logistics, strategy, resources, force strength, and technology have all played critical roles in determining outcomes in major conflicts throughout history. Yet, there are still two related factors that have much to say about the outcome of major conflicts: propaganda efforts to sell the war effort to the nation states that are a part of the conflict and its impact on public opinion around the participation of those nation states among its citizenry. History offers us some prominent examples that reinforce this point, and they consistently revolve around the ability of parties involved in the conflict to effectively leverage contemporary communication outlets to effective ends in order to shape and manage public opinion. Walter Lippmann’s iconic Public Opinion (1922) provides his perspective as a newsman and as a member of Woodrow Wilson’s collection of journalists, advertisers, early public relations practitioners, and education philosophers who worked from the United States’ involvement in World War I in April of 1917 through the effort to promote the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. He warns of the potential for manipulation of information to cultivate and maintain support for military and political action, and the need for objectivity in journalism and a refined study of public opinion to counter its effects. The father of modern public relations, Edward Bernays, offered two texts on the subject of propaganda and its effectiveness in shaping public opinion on behalf of organizations. In Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Bernays establishes his understanding of public relations counsel, public opinion, its formation, how one shapes it, and its necessity for achieving public action. In Propaganda (1928), Bernays offers some perspective on the practice, its role in public relations, and its value to many facets of society. Many found Bernays to offer a manipulative perspective on the discipline, and a reading of both texts leaves this author sympathetic to their perspective. Bernays opens Propaganda with the following Machiavellian perspective in reference to democracy in propaganda: 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. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. Bernays, 1928, p. 1. 1B3–1 PAPER 1B3 – CHRISTOPHER J. MCCOLLOUGH While much of both texts give a reader a window into the modern intellectual evolution of the practice of public relations, it is segments like this that left Bernays with a dubious reputation among prominent members of society, and further damaged the initial reputation around the professional practice of public relations. While it is clear that the work of the Creel Committee and its membership helped solidify and advance the practice of public relations past its early publicist origins into matters of shaping public opinion and behavior to establishing and managing relationships, what is not clear is how early we see the elements of modern best practices in public relations practice in play. The purpose of this study is to examine the execution of the Four Minute Men Speech campaign, using the ROPES PR model (Kelly, 1998) to determine the overall adherence of the campaign to modern best practices. In the examination of the Four Minute Men, the author will draw parallels to specific strategies and tactics, content choices, and selection of speakers to illustrate how much of the work of the CPI set early precedents for modern public relations practice. Further, the paper will demonstrate how the actions of the Creel Committee established a baseline for scholarship that developed theories of practice that would achieve effective, ethical approaches to public relations practice. Context American War, Public Opinion, and Communication In the case of American conflicts throughout its first 242 years, we see a country that wins or loses its battles through effective management of the public mindset, often through the communication modes of the day. During the American Revolution, the colonists made the most of the early postal service and the printing press to shape and manage public opinion during a challenging conflict with a British force superior in size and early strategy, providing enough public support to enable colonists to outlast Britain’s patience and budget to earn independence. The American Civil War illustrated the power of the telegraph and modern photography to permit war correspondents to bring the horrors of the battlefield into the American home (Lewinski, 1980). The Spanish- American War was the product of Yellow Journalism’s sensational efforts to cultivate support among the American citizenry to support a conflict between the nations, exemplified by William Randolph Hearst’s infamous remarks about providing war if his staff provided the pictures (Wilkerson, 1967). Newsreels first utilized during the Great War (Creel, 1920), were perfected during World War II as a means of bringing news around the world and about conflict home. Radio, still in its adolescence, took on an essential role for political leaders and broadcast correspondents like Edward R. Murrow in bringing news from the front home, and in shaping the public’s perspective on the actions of Axis powers, as well as in sharing the struggles and triumphs of Allied forces (Cozma, 2010). Propaganda in film also found its stride during the second world, as Leni Reifenstahl and Frank Capra both elevated the art form to shape public opinion and mobilize support for their respective countries, Germany and the United States (Kelman, 1973; Xifra & Girona, 2012). The Vietnam War brought network news to the forefront as correspondents brought the quagmire into American homes and elevated the reputation of CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite to be able to decry the efforts of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, ultimately undermining the war efforts (Gitlin, 1980). In modern conflicts, the Department of Defense has effectively managed modern communication to create the public images that generate support for military efforts, with a helping hand from lessons learned from cable television. Cable News Network’s (CNN’s) Bernard Shaw, John 1B3–2 PAPER 1B3 – CHRISTOPHER J. MCCOLLOUGH Holliman, and Peter Arnett made the decision to stay in Baghdad the night of January 16, 1991 and captured U.S. airstrike coverage on the scene, in spite of every other news organization’s decision to leave under the threat of the attack issued from the U.S. embassy. The coverage earned critical acclaim for then upstart CNN, as well as for 24-hour cable news, while also sanitizing modern warfare for the American public, often drawing comparisons to watching video games. Always apt to learn from innovation in communication, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon announced it would embed journalists with military units to provide access to the invasion. What was not a part of the dialog was the strategic placement of journalists away from the most severe aspects of the action in order to control the narrative of the conflict. Journalists themselves came away with the impression that they did well, but acknowledged they had a much narrower view of the conflict than if they had a wider access to the invasion (Fahmy & Johnson, 2005). The impact of mass communication to shape public opinion and the outcome of warfare in American history is clear. It is unsurprising then that Woodrow Wilson would seek to leverage mass communication strategically to shape public opinion and align public thinking with the shifting perspective of the United States’ involvement in World War I. This becomes essential when considering where public opinion was on the War, and how Wilson had positioned himself during his first term in office and successfully earned re-election. “He Kept Us Out of War” In the summer of 1914, the United States had no interest in the conflict brewing across Europe. Aside from the geographic barrier of the Atlantic, the United States held none of the binding treaties that drove 11 nations into the fight by September of 1914, and would have maintained that distance if the country had been left to do so (Axelrod, 2009). Over the first two years of war, submarine attacks on American shipping and civilian vessels (most notably the deaths of 128 Americans on the British Lusitania), pleas from allied nations, and rumors of German spies and plots to attack the United States created a growing pressure to join the fight and support the allied effort. This was balanced against a pacifist movement from Jane Addams and the American Union Against Militarism (Badertscher, 2014), the National Women’s Party, along with a consistent public outcry from the then popular Socialist Party of America’s Eugene V. Debs, as well as progressive Republicans in Congress, among them Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follete. This was reinforced by general anti-war sentiments from German-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Irish- Americans, Wilson’s own base of southern whites, who feared unrest among immigrants in border states like Missouri, and prominent American industrialist Henry Ford.
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