"Manipulating Public Opinion" -- Edward Bernays

Henry: "Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of manners, Kate."
-- Henry V, Act V, Scene II

In "Manipulating Public Opinion," Bernays makes an eloquent case for public relations. He writes: "This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas" (p. 971). He notes that before mass communication, public opinion was shaped by other outlets -- tribal chiefs, kinds, and religious leaders (p. 959). When viewed through this lens, the art of manipulating public opinion can be viewed as democratic, since anyone (who can sway the press) can now work to change public sentiment. Bernays also argues that propaganda (public relations by its original moniker) and education are very similar. The former is more overtly partisan while the latter proclaims objectivity -- "attempts to be disinterested" (p. 959). An objective observation shows that education is often propaganda as well -- indeed, schoolbooks are still the most influential form of mass communication.

Bernays insists that manipulating public opinion is actually teaching the public to "ask for what it really wants" and thereby teaching "the public how to safeguard itself against his own possible tyrannous aggressiveness" (p. 960). So, Bernays says we're not manipulating opinion, we're just helping people identify their true beliefs. The notion requires a rather large suspension of disbelief. Bernays argues that somehow making people adopt a position is somehow helping them exercise their own free will. One wonders if Bernays truly believed what he was saying. Of course, Bernays would hope that we not discount this view the public relations is fundamentally good. Perhaps, he's right. After all, public relations campaigns fail all the time. Perhaps because you can't get people to believe something that fundamentally disagrees with their core beliefs. Bernays offers a laundry list of PR success and none of them seem overtly disturbing to core beliefs -- anti-lynching, hat buying, margarine. But, one wonders how Bernays would have responded to the propaganda tactics used by the Nazis. Was hatred for the Jews something that the public really wanted? Perhaps this is the difference between a mass and a public -- a mass can be led astray away from their core beliefs (just like a mob) but a public will remain true to their values.