Crystallizing Public Opinion quotes

I have preferred to cite facts known to the general public, in order that I might explain graphically a profession that has little precedent, and whose few formulated rules have necessarily a limitless number and variety of applications.

This profession in a few years has developed from the status of circus agent stunts to what is obviously an important position in the conduct of the world’s affairs.

If I shall, by this survey of the field, stimulate a scientific attitude towards the study of public relations, I shall feel that this book has fulfilled my purpose in writing it.

A new phrase has come into the language—counsel on public relations. What does it mean?

As a matter of fact, the actual phrase is completely understood by only a few, and those only the people intimately associated with the work itself.

One bank’s vice-president is its recognized public relations counsel. Some dismiss the subject or condemn the entire profession generally and all its members individually.

Slight examination into the grounds for this disapproval readily reveals that it is based on nothing more substantial than vague impressions.

Indeed, it is probably true that the very men who are themselves engaged in the profession are as little ready or able to define their work as is the general public itself.

A nationally famous New York hotel found that its business was falling off at an alarming rate because of a rumor that it was shortly going to close and that the site upon which it was located would be occupied by a department store.

Few things are more mysterious than the origins of rumors, or the credence which they manage to obtain.

Reservations at this hotel for weeks and months ahead were being canceled by persons who had heard the rumor and accepted it implicitly.

The problem of meeting this rumor (which like many rumors had no foundation in fact) was not only a difficult but a serious one.

Mere denial, of course, no matter how vigorous or how widely disseminated, would accomplish little.

The mere statement of the problem made it clear to the public relations counsel who was retained by the hotel that the only way to overcome the rumor was to give the public some positive evidence of the intention of the hotel to remain in …

The latter, in turn, used the article to obtain support and contributions for relief work. Thus, while an important humanitarian project was being materially assisted, the magazine in question was adding to its own influence and standing.

Now, the interesting thing about this work is that whereas the public relations counsel added nothing to the contents of the magazine, which had for years been publishing material of this nature, he did make its importance felt and appreciated.

A large packing house was faced with the problem of increasing the sale of its particular brand of bacon. It already dominated the market in its field;

… paid to public opinion, not only by individuals, groups or movements that are dependent on public support for their success, but also by men and organizations which until very recently stood aloof from the general public and were able to say, “The public be damned.”

The public to-day demands information and expects also to be accepted as judge and jury in matters that have a wide public import.

The public, whether it invests its money in subway or railroad tickets, in hotel rooms or restaurant fare, in silk or soap, is a highly sophisticated body.

… “Woman’s Chance as Publicity Specialist” published in the New York Globe of August 2nd, 1921, discusses the profession as one of recent development, but of such importance as to deserve the serious consideration of women who are interested in making a professional career for themselves.

The public relations counsel is first of all a student. His field of study is the public mind.

His text books for this study are the facts of life;

Society must understand the fundamental character of the work he is doing, if for no other reason than its own welfare.

The public relations counsel works with that vague, little-understood, indefinite material called public opinion.

Public opinion is a term describing an ill-defined, mercurial and changeable group of individual judgments. Public opinion is the aggregate result of individual opinions—now uniform, now conflicting—of the men and women who make up society or any group of society.

If we had to form our own judgments on every matter, we should all have to find out many things for ourselves which we now take for granted. We should not cook our food or live in houses—in fact, we should revert to primitive living.

The public relations counsel must deal with the fact that persons who have little knowledge of a subject almost invariably form definite and positive judgments upon that subject.

“If we examine the mental furniture of the average man,” says William Trotter, the author of a comprehensive study of the social psychology of the individual,4 “we shall find it made up of a vast number of judgments of a very precise kind upon subjects …

The rational method adequately used would have told him that on the great majority of these questions there could be for him but one attitude—that of suspended judgment.”

The reader will recall from his own experience an almost infinite number of instances in which the amateur has been fully prepared to deliver expert advice and to give final judgment in matters upon which his ignorance is patent to every one except himself.

In the Middle Ages, society was convinced that there were witches. People were so positive that they burned people whom they suspected of witchcraft.

Others, no better informed, consider mediums divinely inspired. Not so long ago every intelligent man knew that the world was flat. To-day the average man has a belief just as firm and unknowing in the mysterious force which he has heard called atomic energy.

It is axiomatic that men who know little are often intolerant of a point of view that is contrary to their own.

The bitterness that has been brought about by arguments on public questions is proverbial. Lovers have been parted by bitter quarrels on theories of pacificism or militarism;

This group was a broadly representative group of men and women, yet the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee accused all these people of acting upon motives of personal gain and lack of patriotism.

Prejudice superseded logic.

Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view.

In politics, for example, his understanding of the problem may be fragmentary, yet he will enter excitedly into discussions on bonus and ship subsidy, of which he has made no study.

We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called “logic-proof compartments.”

The logic-proof compartment has always been with us. Scientists have lost their lives through refusing to see flaws in their theories. Intelligent mothers give food to their babies that they would manifestly forbid other mothers to give their children.

There is a uniformity of opinion in this country upon many issues.

When this uniformity accords with our own beliefs we call it an expression of the public conscience. When, however, it runs contrary to our beliefs we call it the regimentation of the public mind and are inclined to ascribe it to insidious propaganda.

Uniformity is, in fact, largely natural and only partly artificial. Public opinion may be as much the producer of “insidious propaganda” as its product.

Uniformity is, in fact, largely natural and only partly artificial.

Public opinion may be as much the producer of “insidious propaganda” as its product.

Naturally enough, where broad ideas are involved, criticisms of the state of the public’s mind and of its origin come most frequently from groups that are out of sympathy with the accepted point of view.

We must look further for a standard by which these definitions are applied. There must be a consensus of public opinion on which the newspaper falls back for its standards.

The truth is that while it appears to be forming the public opinion on fundamental matters, the press is often conforming to it.

It is the office of the public relations counsel to determine the interaction between the public, and the press and the other mediums affecting public opinion.

The preacher upholds the ideals of society. He leads his flock whither they indicate a willingness to be led. Ibsen creates a revolution when society is ripe for it. 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.

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.

A fundamental study of group and individual psychology is required before the public relations counsel can determine how readily individuals or groups will accept modifications of viewpoints or policies, which they have already imposed upon their respective mediums.

No idea or opinion is an isolated factor. It is surrounded and influenced by precedent, authority, habit and all the other human motivations.

For a lucid conception of the functions, power and social utility of the public relations counsel it is vitally important to have a clear grasp of the fundamentals with which he must work.

A more specific instance is the football game, with its manifestations of the crowd-mind among a selected group of individuals. The Ku Klux Klan has numbered among its violent supporters some of the “best” families of the affected localities.

The crowd is a state of mind which permeates society and its individuals at almost all times.

What becomes articulate in times of stress under great excitement is present in the mind of the individual at most times and explains in part why popular opinion is so positive and so intolerant of contrary points of view.

What becomes articulate in times of stress under great excitement is present in the mind of the individual at most times and explains in part why popular opinion is so positive and so intolerant of contrary points of view.

The college professor in his study on a peaceful summer day is just as likely to be reacting as a unit of a crowd-mind, as any member of a lynching party in Texas or Georgia.

Mr. Trotter in his book, “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War,”15 gives us further material for study. He discusses the underlying causes and results of “herd” tendencies, stressing the herd’s cohesiveness.

1. “He is intolerant and fearful of solitude, physical or mental.”21 The same urge which drives the buffalo into the herd and man into the city requires on the part of the latter a sense of spiritual identification with the herd.

Man is never so much at home as when on the band wagon.

2. “He is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any other influence.” Mr. Trotter illustrates this characteristic in a paragraph which is worth quoting in its entirety. He says:

The standards of fitness created in the minds of the publishers express the point of view of a mass of readers, and this enables the newspapers to achieve and maintain circulation and financial success.

The very fact that newspapers must sell to the public is an evidence that they must please the public and in a measure obey it.

In the press there is a very human tendency to compromise between giving the public what it wants and giving the public what it should want. This is equally true in music, where artists like McCormack or Rachmaninoff popularize their programs.

The basis of the selection was clearly the general standard of the clientele of each individual paper.

And this selection of ideas for presentation goes on in every medium of thought communication.

This basis of selection has long been recognized.

The critics who hold these extreme points of view about public opinion have too easily confused cause and effect.

The sympathy between the orator and his audience is not one which the orator can create. He can intensify it, or by tactless speaking he can dissipate it, but he cannot manufacture it from thin air.

Margaret Sanger, a leader in the fight for education on birth control, will evoke enthusiasm when she addresses an audience that approves of her sentiments.

“Damaged Goods” was able to make the American public accept the word “syphilis” because the counsel on public relations projected the doctrine of sex hygiene through those groups and sections of the public which were prepared to work with him.

Public opinion is the resultant of the interaction between two forces.

This may help us to see with greater clarity the position the public relations counsel holds in relation to the world at large, and what the factors are with which he is concerned and by which he accomplishes his work.

Mr. Lippmann says propaganda is dependent upon censorship. From my point of view the precise reverse is more nearly true.

Propaganda is a purposeful, directed effort to overcome censorship—the censorship of the group mind and the herd reaction.

The average citizen is the world’s most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts.

Mr. Lippmann says propaganda is dependent upon censorship. From my point of view the precise reverse is more nearly true. Propaganda is a purposeful, directed effort to overcome censorship—the censorship of the group mind and the herd reaction.

The average citizen is the world’s most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts.

His own “logic-proof compartments,” his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction.

That was because the heritage of these groups made them sensitive to the same stimuli. One man, remarks Mr. Lippmann, then was able single-handed to crystallize the common will of his country in his day and generation.

To-day the greatest superman as yet developed by humanity could not accomplish the same result with the United States.

Populations have increased. In this country geographical areas have increased. Heterogeneity has also increased. A group living in any given area is now extremely likely to have no common ancestry, no common tradition, as such, and no cohesive intelligence.

Now it must be understood that the proponent of a point of view, whether acting alone or under the guidance of a public relations counsel, must utilize existing avenues of approach. Modern conditions are such that it is not feasible to build up independent organs.

Innovators and innovations cannot create their own channels of communication.

They must for a great part work through the existing daily press, the existing magazine, the existing lecture circuit, existing advertising mediums, the existing motion picture channels and other means for the communication of ideas.

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.

Few people are life members of one group and of one group only.

The ordinary person is a very temporary member of a great number of groups.

This is one of the most powerful forces making for progress in society because it makes for receptivity and open-mindedness. The modification which results from the inconstancy of individual commitments may be accelerated and directed by conscious effort.

It uses the terminology of warfare in these bulletins. Such phrases in this or other health campaigns as “kill the germs,” “swat the fly,” illustrate this point.

The public responds to a battle in a way that it might not respond to a plea to take care of itself or to do its civic duty.

Under pugnacity would come that technique of the public relations counsel which is continually devising tests and contests. Mr.

“It is this element of conflict, directly or indirectly, which plays an overwhelming part in the psychology of every crowd. It is the element of contest which makes baseball so popular.

A debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture.

One of the secrets of the large attendance of the forum is the fact that discussion—‘talking back’—is permitted and encouraged.

We have to take sides. We have to be able to take sides. In the recesses of our being we must step out of the audience onto the stage and wrestle as the hero for the victory of good over evil.

We must breathe into the allegory the breath of our life.

Recently a philanthropic group was advised to hold a prize fight for charity. This recognition of the importance of the principle of pugnacity was correct. It is a question whether the application was not somewhat ill advised and in bad taste.

Visible objects as stereotypes are often used by the public relations counsel with great effectiveness to produce the desired impression. A national flag on the orator’s platform is a most common device. A scientist must of necessity be in juxtaposition with his instruments.

A chemist is not a chemist to the public unless test tubes and retorts are near him.

A doctor must have his kit, or, formerly, a Van Dyke beard. In photographs of food factory buildings white is a good stereotype for cleanliness and purity. In fact, all emblems and trade-marks are stereotypes.

His utilization of these basic principles will be a continual and efficient aid to him.

He must make it easy for the public to pick his issue out of the great mass of material.

He must be able to overcome what has been called “the tendency on the part of public attention to ‘flicker’ and ‘relax.’” He must do for the public mind what the newspaper, with its headlines, accomplishes for its readers.

He must be able to overcome what has been called “the tendency on the part of public attention to ‘flicker’ and ‘relax.’” He must do for the public mind what the newspaper, with its headlines, accomplishes for its readers.

Abstract discussions and heavy facts 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 medium of dissemination in spite of competitive interests, it can be aptly termed news.

The public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium he chooses to transmit his ideas.

It is his duty to create news no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news. It is news interest which gives him an opportunity to make his idea travel and get the favorable reaction from the instincts to which he happens to appeal.

News will, by its superior inherent interest, receive attention in the competitive markets for news, which are themselves continually trying to claim the public attention.

The public relations counsel must lift startling facts from his whole subject and present them as news.

He must isolate ideas and develop them into events so that they can be more readily understood and so that they may claim attention as news.

The headline and the cartoon bear the same relation to the newspaper that the public relations counsel’s analysis of a problem bears to the problem itself.

The headline is a compact, vivid simplification of complicated issues. The cartoon provides a visual image which takes the place of abstract thought.

So, too, the analyses the public relations counsel makes, lift out the important, the interesting, and the easily understandable points in order to create interest.

It is true that he first analyzes his client’s problem—he then analyzes the public mind; he utilizes the mediums of communication between the two, but before he does this he must use his personal experience and knowledge to bring two factors into alignment.

It is his capacity for crystallizing the obscure tendencies of the public mind before they have reached definite expression, which makes him so valuable.

His ability to create those symbols to which the public is ready to respond; his ability to know and to analyze those reactions which the public is ready to give; his ability to find those stereotypes, individual and community, which will bring favorable responses;

It has always been interesting to me that a concise, comprehensive definition of news has never been written. What news is, every newspaper man instinctively knows, particularly as it concerns the needs of his own paper.

But it is almost as difficult to define news as it is to describe a circular staircase without making corkscrew gestures with one’s hand, or as to define some of the abstruse concepts of the metaphysician, like space or time or reality.

What is news for one newspaper may have no interest whatever, or very little interest, for another newspaper. There are almost as many definitions of news as there are journalists who take the trouble to define it.

Obviously, the well-nigh infinite number of occurrences which take place in daily life throughout the world are timely enough, so far as each of them in its respective environment is concerned; but few of them ever become news.

Mr. Irwin defines news as “a departure from the established order.”

Thus, according to Mr. Irwin, a criminal act is news because it is a departure from the established order, and at the same time, an exceptional display of fidelity, courage or honesty is also news for the same reason.

They even had representatives waiting for him at the Morgue. He was safe only when he walked the straight and narrow path and kept quiet.”

An overt act is often necessary before an event can be regarded as news.

Commenting on this aspect of the situation, Mr. Lippmann discusses this very example of the broker, John Smith, and his hypothetical bankruptcy. “That overt act,” says Mr. Lippmann,40 “‘uncovers’ the news about Smith. Whether the news will be followed up or not is another matter.

But when a negro, drunk on bad gin which he got at such a dive, assaulted and killed Margaret Lear, a schoolgirl, Shreveport voted out the saloon.”

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, the point of view, the movement or the issue which he represents. Mr.

The really important function of the public relations counsel, in relation to the press as well as to his client, lies even beyond these considerations.

He is not merely the purveyor of news; he is more logically the creator of news.

An amateur can bring a good story to the average newspaper office and receive consideration, although the amateur is only too likely to miss precisely those features of his story which give it news value, and to overlook precisely that element of the story which …

Franken, Lecturer in Advertising at New York University, there are several tables setting forth the features of morning and evening newspapers preferred as a whole by the group to whom the questionnaires were sent, and by various smaller groups within the main group.

The counsel on public relations not only knows what news value is, but knowing it, he is in a position to make news happen. He is a creator of events.

An organization held a banquet for a building fund to which the invitations were despatched on large bricks. The news element in this story was the fact that bricks were despatched.

“The crowd-man can, when his fiction is challenged, save himself from spiritual bankruptcy, preserve his defenses, keep his crowd from going to pieces, only by a demur.

Any one who challenges the crowd’s fictions must be ruled out of court. He must not be permitted to speak.

As a witness to contrary values, his testimony must be discounted. The worth of his evidence must be discredited by belittling the disturbing witness. ‘He is a bad man; the crowd must not listen to him.’ His motives must be evil; he is ‘bought up’;

The only difference between “propaganda” and “education,” really, is in the point of view.

The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.

Each of these nouns carries with it social and moral implications. Education is valuable, commendable, enlightening, instructive. Propaganda is insidious, dishonest, underhand, misleading. It is only to-day that the viewpoint on this question is undergoing a slight change, as the following editorial would indicate:

There is a different set of facts on every subject for each man.

Society cannot wait to find absolute truth. It cannot weigh every issue carefully before making a judgment.

The result is that the so-called truths by which society lives are born of compromise among conflicting desires and of interpretation by many minds. They are accepted and intolerantly maintained once they have been determined.

There is a different set of facts on every subject for each man. Society cannot wait to find absolute truth. It cannot weigh every issue carefully before making a judgment.

The result is that the so-called truths by which society lives are born of compromise among conflicting desires and of interpretation by many minds.

They are accepted and intolerantly maintained once they have been determined. In the struggle among ideas, the only test is the one which Justice Holmes of the Supreme Court pointed out—the power of thought to get itself accepted in the open competition of the market.

The duty of the higher strata of society—the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual—is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion.

Public opinion must become public conscience.

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