The 100th Anniversary Edition—annotated, illustrated, with field notes by PR leaders and educators

Preface to the 1934 Edition

Preface to the 1934 Edition

Bernays may be referring to the National Industrial Recovery Act, passed by Congress in June 1933 to help the nation recover from the Great Depression. Among other things, it effectively fixed prices and wages, established production quotas, and guaranteed labor a right to collective bargaining. See prmu.se/NIRA

Bernays wrote this in 1933 when Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed many laws to fight the Great Depression by increasing the federal government’s role in the economy.
See prmu.se/NewDeal

Preface to the 1961 Edition

Preface to the 1961 Edition

Bernays didn’t invent the term “public opinion,” which derives from “opinion publique,” first used in 1588 by Michel de Montaigne in his Essays. Bernays also can’t take credit for popularizing the term. That right goes to columnist Walter Lippmann who wrote a best-selling book by that title in 1922. Some have suggested that the title of this book actually came from Lippmann’s, where the idea of “crystallizing” opinion appears several times. 
See prmu.se/Lippmann-Opinion (page 234 and 241).

In the very first sentence of his next book, Propaganda (1928), Bernays described propaganda as “the intelligent manipulation of . . .  the masses,” and “an important element in democratic society.”
See prmu.se/Propaganda

Sumeria was the oldest known civilization in Southern Iraq, dating back to 4100 BCE. Made up of city-states, each with its own king, it was conquered by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in 1800 BCE.
See prmu.se/Sumeria

In 1952, Bernays reformulated his 1923 definition as “(1) information given to the public, (2) persuasion directed at the public to modify attitudes and actions, and (3) efforts to integrate attitudes and actions of an institution with its publics and of publics with those of that institution.” Some say he reduced this further to “informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people.” 
See prmu.se/PR-Redefined

Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) wrote La Psychologie des Foules (Crowd Psychology) in 1895. He saw crowds as an agglomeration of people who relinquish their individual beliefs in favor of the crowd’s, which is driven largely by emotions. 
See prmu.se/LeBon

Gabriel Tardé (1843– 1904) was a French social psychologist who came up with concepts such as “the group mind.” Tardé believed media would replace physical space as the means of grouping individuals and spreading ideas, which he thought distinguish a “crowd” or “herd” from a “public.” He wrote Social Laws—an Outline of Sociology in 1898. 
See prmu.se/Tardé-Social-Laws

By the start of the 1920s, “publicity” went from praised for making organizations more open to the public to derided for manipulating public opinion. 
See prmu.se/Light-of-Publicity

The story about Bernays in American Mercury was by the same author as Lee’s. It was titled “Mass Psychologist.” 
See prmu.se/Mass-Psychologist (page 155). 

The story in the Atlantic was by John T. Flynn and entitled “The Science of Ballyhoo.” 
See prmu.se/Ballyhoo

Ivy Lee’s profile was published in the January 1926 issue of American Mercury. Entitled “His Master’s Voice,” it was written by Henry F. Pringle. 
See prmu.se/Masters-Voice 

Wedding (1912–2006), a professor of marketing, interviewed executives at 85 firms, almost half of which were among the 200 largest in the U.S. In addition to finding that only a third thought of public relations as “two-way,” he found that more than half said they “played an active part” in setting their firm’s policies. About a quarter said they played a “minor role” in formulating policy. 
See prmu.se/Wedding 

Part I, Chapter I

Part I. Scope and Functions
Chapter I. The Scope of the Public Relations Counsel 

John LaPorte Given (1871–1957) was a reporter and city editor of the Altoona (Pennsylvania) Times from 1890 to 1892. He joined the staff of the New York Evening Sun in 1896, apparently in a business role. After leaving the Sun he ws advertising counsel and a director of the Heinz company, which his father-in-law owned. He wrote Making a Newspaper in 1914. 
See prmu.se/Given

Freud saw the roots of human behavior in his theories of infantile conflicts and unconscious motives. But a new field of social psychology was just getting off the ground in the U.S. when Bernays wrote this book. Based on carefully structured studies, social psychology sought to understand how attitudes, opinions, and beliefs are formed; what functions they serve for the individual or group holding them; their conscious and unconscious dimensions; if and how they can be changed; and how they influence people’s behavior. 
See prmu.se/Social-Psych

Psychologists have identified three main causes for actual intolerance: (a) prejudice based on rigidity, closed mindedness, and antipathy toward a group of people; (b) disapproval of out-group beliefs or practices based on an unreflective response; and (c) a decision to interfere with specific beliefs or practices that are considered to violate moral principles and values. 
See prmu.se/3FjrYjP

Part I, Chapter II

Part I. Scope and Functions
Chapter II. The Public Relations Counsel; the Increased and Increasing Importance of the Profession

Many people emerged from World War I persuaded that opinion was malleable by mass media. Later research moderated this belief by positing a two-step model, wherein the media did not work directly but through influencers. In the 1960s and 70s, research suggested that media’s greatest role lies in agenda setting. Later research has shed additional insight into influences like priming, framing, and other cognitive biases. In more recent years, study has focused on the unique effects of digital social media. 
See prmu.se/Social-Media 

Leupp suggested the newspaper’s influence in interpreting events might be waning, while its influence in determining what is news might be growing. The former might be harmless; the latter, pernicious. 
See prmu.se/Leupp

Mencken’s article was titled “Newspaper Morals.” He wrote the typical reader is “not at all responsive to intellectual argument . . . but he is very responsive to emotional suggestion; and it is to this weakness newspapers address their endeavors.” 
See prmu.se/ News-Morals

Martin wrote, “Public opinion is manufactured just as bricks are made. . . . Both can be stamped out in the quantity required and delivered anywhere to order. Our thinking on most important subjects today is as little original as … the pages we read and repeat as our own opinions.” 
See prmu.se/Martin-Public-Opinion (Chapter II).

Lippmann defined the “quality public” this way. “The readers of a newspaper . . . can be capitalized only by turning . . . those who have the most money to spend . . . into circulation that can be sold to merchants. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published.” 
See prmu.se/Buying-Public (page 324).

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and abolitionist. His full quote in “Art and Criticism” is, “Whatever new object we see, we perceive to be only a new version of our familiar experience, and we set about translating it at once into our parallel facts.”
See prmu.se/Emerson (page 301). 

Part I, Chapter III

Part I. Scope and Functions
Chapter III. The Function of a Special Pleader

Some scholars distinguish the “public mind” from “public opinion.” Where public opinion is an aggregation of individual opinions, the public mind is a conversion of individuals into a single entity with unique characteristics not previously found in isolated individuals. As Le Bon, Trotter, and Martin suggested, an individual who is part of a crowd thinks, feels, and behaves differently than he or she would as an individual. 
See prmu.se/Public-Mind

Henry F. Pringle, writing a profile of Bernays in the February 1930 issue of the American Mercury, called him “the master of mass psychology.” That and sociology. “Propaganda takes account not merely of the individual, nor even of the mass mind alone, but also and especially of the anatomy of society, with its interlocking group of formations and loyalties,” he quotes Bernays saying. “It sees the individual not only as a cell in the social organism but as a cell organized into the social unit. Touch a nerve at a sensitive spot and you get an automatic response from certain specific members of the organization.” 
See prmu.se/Mass-Psychologist (page 155).

Published Jan. 1, 1922, the article can be read in the New York Times’s “Time Machine” (subscription required). 
See prmu.se/Spotlight

Bernays made every effort to revise people’s concept of the public relations counsel, not only in this book but in numerous articles and speeches. He even took out a full-page ad in the Jan. 29, 1927, edition of Editor & Publisher. But in his final years, he feared little had changed. But a 2020 PWC report suggests otherwise, even though it took a century -- 88 percent of the PR leaders PWC surveyed reported directly to their CEO. And the report said, “Companies increasingly depend on {them} for insights on stakeholder perceptions before making critical decisions.” 
See prmu.se/PWC-Survey

Bernays suggests Lippmann thought press agents serve a useful public service. The truth is quite different. Lippmann went on the write: “. . . the picture which the publicity man makes for the reporter is the one he wishes the public to see. He is censor and propagandist, responsible only to his employers, and to the whole truth only as it accords with the employer’s conception of his own interest . . . So if the wishes free publicity, he has . . . to start something. He arranges a stunt: obstructs traffic, teases the police, somehow manages to entangle his client or cause with an event that is already news.” 
See prmu.se/ Lippmann-Opinion (page 283). 

Part II, Chapter I

Part II Chapter I

Psychologists have identified three main causes for actual intolerance: (a) prejudice based on rigidity, closed mindedness, and antipathy toward a group of people; (b) disapproval of out-group beliefs or practices based on an unreflective response; and (c) a decision to interfere with specific beliefs or practices that are considered to violate moral principles and values. 
See prmu.se/Intolerance

Freud saw the roots of human behavior in his theories of infantile conflicts and unconscious motives. But a new field of social psychology was just getting off the ground in the U.S. when Bernays wrote this book. Based on carefully structured studies, social psychology sought to understand how attitudes, opinions, and beliefs are formed; what functions they serve for the individual or group holding them; their conscious and unconscious dimensions; if and how they can be changed; and how they influence people’s behavior. 
See prmu.se/Social-Psych

Modern social psychologists agree a person’s social context affects their personal thoughts and behavior. But their personal thoughts and behavior affect their social context also. It’s a systemic and interactive process. 
See prmu.se/Social-Context 

Psychologists have identified three main causes for actual intolerance: (a) prejudice based on rigidity, closed mindedness, and antipathy toward a group of people; (b) disapproval of out-group beliefs or practices based on an unreflective response; and (c) a decision to interfere with specific beliefs or practices that are considered to violate moral principles and values. 
See prmu.se/3FjrYjP

Part II, Chapter II

Part II Chapter II

Many people emerged from World War I persuaded that opinion was malleable by mass media. Later research moderated this belief by positing a two-step model, wherein the media did not work directly but through influencers. In the 1960s and 70s, research suggested that media’s greatest role lies in agenda setting. Later research has shed additional insight into influences like priming, framing, and other cognitive biases. In more recent years, study has focused on the unique effects of digital social media. See prmu.se/Social-Media

In The Brass Check, Sinclair wrote, “In journalism the power of the advertiser . . .  is inseparable from . . . publishing news.” 
See, prmu.se/Brass-Check (page 257)

Leupp suggested the newspaper’s influence in interpreting events might be waning, while its  influence in determining what is news might be growing. The former might be harmless; the latter, pernicious. 
See prmu.se/Leupp

Mencken’s article was titled “Newspaper Morals.” He wrote the typical reader is “not at all responsive to intellectual argument . . . but he is very responsive to emotional suggestion; and it is to this weakness newspapers address their endeavors.” 
See prmu.se/ News-Morals

Martin wrote, “Public opinion is manufactured just as bricks are made. . . . Both can be stamped out in the quantity required and delivered anywhere to order. Our thinking on most important subjects today is as little original as … the pages we read and repeat as our own opinions.” 
See prmu.se/Martin-Public-Opinion (Chapter II).

Lippmann defined the “quality public” this way. “The readers of a newspaper . . . can be capitalized only by turning . . . those who have the most money to spend . . . into circulation that can be sold to merchants. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published.” 
See prmu.se/Buying-Public (page 324).

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and abolitionist. His full quote in “Art and Criticism” is, “Whatever new object we see, we perceive to be only a new version of our familiar experience, and we set about translating it at once into our parallel facts.”
See prmu.se/Emerson (page 301). 

Part II, Chapter III

Part II Chapter III

In his 1921 history of the Times, Davis (1890–1958) said the slogan was “a war cry  under which the Times fought for footing against formidable competition.” 
See prmu.se/War-Cry (page 301). 

Beecher (1813–1887) was a Congregationalist clergyman and social reformer. Tilton and Beecher were friends until Tilton learned Beecher was having an affair with his wife. In 1874, nearly four years later, he sued Beecher. The trial ended in a hung jury. See the New Yorker’s account. 
See prmu.se/Hung-Jury

When Bleyer (1873–1935) entered the University of Wisconsin in 1892, where he helped launch a daily campus paper. He returned after graduation to teach English literature and, within a year, he created a journalism course that would ultimately become a School of Journalism in 1927. 
See prmu.se/Bleyer

Like many, Lippmann was skeptical about this, writing, “Many of the direct channels to news have been closed and the information for the public is first filtered through a publicity agent . . . censor and propagandist, responsible only to his employers, and to the whole truth responsible only as it accords with the employer’s conception of his own interests.” 
See prmu.se/Lippmann-Opinion (pages 344–345).

Ogden drew a different moral from the story. “The story suggests the harmful side of the interaction between press and public,” he wrote. “It sometimes puts a great strain upon the intellectual honesty of the editor. He is doubtful how much truth his public will bear.” 
See prmu.se/Ogden

This may be the only point on which Pulitzer and Mencken agree, although he doesn’t say so in his reply. He chides Mencken for implying newspapers are written for “the ignorant” and “hystericalize” public questions. Although Mencken never mentioned “muckraking” in his piece, Pulitzer justifies it as newsworthy. 
See prmu.se/News-Morals 

Part II, Chapter IV

Part II Chapter IV

Collier’s magazine ran a 10-part feature in 1905 and 1906 by Samuel Hopkins Adams. Entitled “The Great American Fraud,” it excoriated the patent-medicine industry for deceiving, addicting, poisoning, and killing the public with their outrageous cure-alls for everything from babies’ teething to old age.
See prmu.se/Fraud

The series drew two million readers. The Justice Department and several congressmen promised to investigate the group. But Klan membership increased.
See prmu.se/KKK

Main Street is a novel satirizing small town life in the years before the First World War. It was written by Sinclair Lewis, and published in 1920.
See prmu.se/Main-St

This likely refers to a statement Wilson made opposing the Italian’s claim to land on the other side of the Adriatic that ultimately became part of Yugoslavia. Italy said it had been promised the land when it agreed to enter the war on the allies’ side. Wilson denied knowing of any agreement, causing the Italians to leave the peace conference for nearly a month. 
See prmu.se/Wilson-Italy

Part II, Chapter V

Part II Chapter V

Lippmann defined stereotypes as a “distorted picture or image in a person’s mind, not based on personal experience, but derived culturally.” 
See prmu.se/Stereotypes

Lippmann doubted there was such a thing as “the public.” What we call the public is merely a “phantom,” he said. People do not know the world directly, but only as a “picture in their heads” that is the product of emotions, distortions, and other influences. He doubted the average person could have sensible opinions on public affairs, and he was certain the aggregate of ill-informed opinions could not add up to a sensible opinion. The best people can do is align themselves with an opinion expressed by experts. 
See prmu. se/Phantom-Public

Gustave Le Bon (1831–1941), made the same point in his book, A Study of the Popular Mind. “Under certain . . .  circumstances . . . an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it . . . and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed . . . subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.” 
See prmu.se/LeBon

In fact, Trotter believed “Suggestibility is the cement of the herd, the very soul of the primitive social group. . . . Man is a social animal, no doubt, but he is social because he is suggestible.” 
See prmu.se/Suggestibility (page 27). 

Le Bon considered crowds more transitory. He maintained they form when a number of individuals unite around an idea that mobilizes them towards a common goal. The idea is greatly simplified and expressed in images that provoke emotions that persist long after the idea behind them are forgotten. The crowd’s size provides anonymity that frees each of its members from inhibitions and repressed feelings. A “crowd mind” is formed, causing the individual members to think, feel, and act quite differently than they would normally. 
See prmu.se/Crowd-Mind

Part II, Chapter VI

Part II Chapter VI

The same article pointed out what all these newspapers have in common: “The newspaper… seeks first the confidence of its readers. Without this it cannot secure either business for its advertising pages, or influence for its ambitions.” 
See prmu.se/Reader-Trust (page 224).

Part II, Chapter VII

Part II Chapter VII

Bernays and Lippmann clearly had different conceptions of propaganda. To Bernays, it is “a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public” to a client. 
See prmu.se/Propaganda

For Lippmann, it is to insert oneself between the public and events in a way intended to serve one’s own interests by manipulating the event or present slanted information. 
See prmu.se/Lippmann

Part III, Chapter I

Part III Chapter I

Lippmann said this was the natural consequence of a Congress that is “essentially a group of blind men in a vast, unknown world.” At best, pork and patronage could “amalgamate and stabilize thousands of special opinions, local discontents, private ambitions.” 
See prmu.se/ Lippmann-Opinion (Chapter XIX, page 6).

Lippmann had submitted an alternative information plan to Wilson at his top adviser’s request. He did not join the CPI but went to London to help the allies’ own information program. Six months after the U. S. entered the war, Wilson asked Lippmann to lead a group of experts charged with devising plans for an eventual peace conference. What the group produced eventually became eight of the “Fourteen Points” peace plan Wilson ultimately presented. 
See prmu.se/14-Points

If this was apparent in 1923, it is obvious now. Research shows many Americans live in places with people who live, think, and vote as they do. 
See prmu.se/Homogeneity  

According to Brookings Institution, more than 60 million Americans live in gated communities. 
See prmu.se/Gated-Communities

And according to the Government Accountability Office, more than a third of American students attend schools where more than 75% are of the same race or ethnicity. 
See prmu.se/Schools-Racially-Divided 

Part III, Chapter II

Part III Chapter II

Lippmann concluded Public Opinion with, “there is an inherent difficulty about using the method of reason to deal with an unreasoning world.” 
See prmu.se/Public-Opinion (Page413). 

In The Phantom Public, he doubted there even was such a thing as “public opinion.” 
See prmu.se/Phantom

On June 18, 1923, Atlantic City banned one-piece bathing suits and bare legs on women. Fifty women were asked to leave the beach and some were arrested.
See prmu.se/Bare-Leg-Ban

Ralph Pulitzer (1879–1939), Joseph’s son, said this in a piece for the June 1914 Atlantic Monthly replying to an earlier article by Henry Mencken attacking the press’s morals. 
See prmu.se/Pulitzer

Whether the Times’s goal was to promote public interest or itself is open to debate, but the paper launched a series of contests as early as 1910, when if offered $25,000 for the first New York to Chicago flight. 
See prmu.se/NYT-Contest (page 25–26). 

Again, from Propaganda, “If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. 
See prmu.se/Propaganda, chapter IV. 

Some scholars believe Bernays “systematically inverts” Lippmann’s concepts to support his own positions. For example, Bernays here calls stereotypes “a great aid to the public relations counsel” even though “not necessarily truthful,” while Lippmann clearly saw them as an obstacle to rational thinking. 
See prmu.se/Bernays-Inversion

Part III, Chapter III

Part III Chapter III

Doris Fleischman cowrote the chapter about symbols in The Engineering of Consent. She pointed out that symbols can take any form, from flags and slogans to people and places. Symbols evoke feelings such as pride, ambition, hunger, etc. So, the American flag can evoke patriotic feelings; the Nazi swastika, feelings of repulsion or fear. 
See prmu.se/Fleischman-Symbols

According to Lippmann the feelings evoked by symbols persist even when the idea behind them is forgotten. 
See prmu.se/Lippmann-Symbols

Le Bon believed crowds are particularly sensitive to symbols. He wrote, “A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first . . . The feelings suggested by images is what can lead to motivate an act.” 
See prmu.se/LeBon-Images (chapter 3).

Lippmann considered symbols socially binding elements that have the power to create coalitions that are more emotional than rational. That’s why factions fight for possession of those symbols. 
See prmu.se/Lippman-Symbols

Part IV, Chapter I

Part IV Chapter I

As a disseminator of news, newspapers hold a less important position in 2023. In 1923, there were more than 13,000 daily papers in the U.S. with a circulation of 232 million. By 2022, the U.S. had only 6,380 newspapers, 1,230 daily papers with a circulation of about 24 million (print and digital). 
See prmu.se/Newspapers-1923 and prmu.se/Newspapers-2023

Modern communications theorists suggest that humans are hardwired for news as part of the surveillance function of the primal need for survival. 
See prmu.Hardwired-for-news

Sadly, these words were but wishful thinking when written in 1923. A 2005 study established that, by the dawn of the 1920s, “publicity” had gone from being a concept praised for making organizations more open to public scrutiny to being derided as a tool for manipulating public opinion. And “public relations” was still confounded with “press agentry.” 
See prmu.se/Publicity

Lippmann defined news as the “signal” of an event; truth as “a picture of reality on which men can act.” He said news and truth are not the same because he didn’t consider journalism a trade, but an instrument of democracy. And he had seen how the sausage is made. 
See prmu.se/News-as-Signal 

A former reporter and media critic in the 1920s, Silas Bent, counted the stories in an issue of  the New York Times and found more than half of  the stories originated from public relations work.
See prmu.se/NYT

“The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is a . . . medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears,” he wrote. “It comes from a distance; it comes helter-skelter, in inconceivable confusion; it deals with matters that are not easily understood; it arrives and is assimilated by busy and tired people who must take what is given to them.” 
See prmu.se/News-of-the-Day 

Research in 10 countries shows a disconnect between what people think is newsworthy and how newspapers display the stories. 
See prmu.se/Newsworthy

Editors have traditionally relied on predictable values to evaluate the newsworthiness of an event. In recent years, scholars have tried to model that process. Gatlung and Ruge developed the first model in 1973, and Shoemaker et alii followed up with a similar model in 1987. Although they have differences, they agree on timeliness, relevance, conflict, and the prominence of the people involved. 
See prmu.se/3Bmgb3

Lippmann also wrote, “Naturally, there is room for wide differences of opinion as to when events have a shape that can be reported.” But he was skeptical of the media’s ability to educate a distractible public. The press, he wrote, is “like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision.” 
See prmu.se/Searchlight (page 187 and pages 358–365).

In 2022, there were six public relations people for every journalist. 
See prmu.se/PR-to-Reporters

Franken and Hotchkiss surveyed 2,000 members of the stock exchange, advertisers, shipping agents, doctors, and lawyers between June and September 1921. Their response rate was an unusually high 80 percent. The Times, Tribune, and Herald were the most-read morning papers. The Sun, Globe, and Post in the evening. More than eight out of ten respondents read at least two papers. Business people are most interested in finance; doctors and lawyers in general news. 
See prmu.se/Papers-read

The Times was restrained compared to Time magazine which in 1926 wrote, “As the mongoose loathes the cobra, as the herring fears the shark, as the flapper dodges ‘lectures,’ so do editors shun the machinations of a species whose villainy is (to editors) as plain as the nose on your face and as hard to clap your eyes on. This species was for a long time called ‘press agent.’ Next there evolved the ‘public relations counsel.’” 
See prmu.se/Time-magazine-on-PR

WEAF in New York was the first radio station to sell advertising. In 1922, AT&T, which owned the station, offered businesses a chance to get on the air for $50. By the 1930s, when nearly half U.S. families had a radio, ad agencies were producing radio programs for clients like DuPont (“Cavalcade of America,” an anthology of dramas based on U.S. history). 
See prmu.se/Radio

Part IV, Chapter II

Part IV Chapter II

Bernays tried to rehabilitate the word “propaganda” as a “perfectly wholesome word.” In fact, he considered it the very definition of the public relations counsel’s work. To him propaganda is “the mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a broad scale. Whether it is good or bad depends on the merit of the cause urged and the correctness of the information published.” He knew for many propaganda has a “sinister meaning,” but he said that merely “shows how much of the child remains in the average adult.” In fact, he believed the idea that all people know of the world are “pictures in their heads” plus the concept of “crowd minds” made dueling propagandists necessary to organize the “chaos” of modern life. 
See Propaganda at prmu.se/Propaganda-defined

Martin did not mince words. “All propaganda is lies,” he wrote, “and every crowd is deceiver, but its worst and first deception is itself.” 
See prmu.se/Crowd-Lies (chapter III, page 54)

Many scholars, including some Bernays cites in this book, disagreed with him on the difference between education and propaganda. Communications theorist Harold Lasswell (1902–1978) said, “education is a process of transmitting accepted attitudes. Propaganda is the transmitting of attitudes that are controversial.” Psychologist Everett Dean Martin holds that education teaches you how to think, propaganda teaches you what to think. 
For a detailed list of differences, see prmu.se/Education

Ivy Ledbetter Lee, Bernays’s contemporary and competitor, set forth his own standards or principles in 1906 when he was advising coal mine owners how to handle a strike. He distributed his “Declaration of Principles” to the media. They included: “This is not a secret press bureau. All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news; “This is not an advertising agency. If you think any of our matter ought properly go to your business office, do not use it; “Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject will be supplied promptly;“In brief, our plan is frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply the press and public . . . prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about.”  Unfortunately, as we have seen, Lee didn’t always adhere to these principles. 
For the full list, See prmu.se/Lee-Principles, (PR Timeline, 1906).

Bernays summarized the ethical principles of a propagandist or public relations counsel in an article for the Independent magazine. They were: (1) never to represent or plead in the court of public opinion a cause he believes is socially unsound; (2) never to take the cases of conflicting clients; (3) when he deals with the media . . . he will do so as the representative of his client, maintaining the same standards of truth with them as govern the morals and habits of the world he lives in.’ The social value of the public relations counsel, he concluded, “lies in the fact that he brings to the public facts and ideas of social value which would not so readily gain acceptance otherwise..” 
See prmu.se/Bernays-Principles

Holmes gave his opinion is the trial of five men accused under the Espionage Act of 1917 of publishing opposition to U.S. participation in World War I. Their defense was that the Act was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The Supreme Court upheld their conviction, but Justice Holmes dissented, saying, “I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country. The ultimate good . . . is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” 
See Abrams et. al. v. United States, prmu.se/Holmes

PREFACE TO the 1934 EDITION
prmu.se/3CXlhDP | prmu.se/3kkz0OC

PREFACE to the 1961 EDITION
prmu.se/3VCOhrZ | prmu.se/3VT1AEM | prmu.se/3uo8gyt | prmu.se/3XJIiTl | prmu.se/3VzQ9k5 | prmu.se/3FCTyKw | prmu.se/3W16qiLa | prmu.se/3VnlmIe

PART I: Scope and Functions
CHAPTER I: The Scope of the Public Relations Counsel
prmu.se/3u4NVxX