II. Answer the questions

1) Do all professions emerge at the same time?

2) Is the term “public relation” new or old?

3) What does the term mean?

4) What groups of people does every company or organization deal?

5) How may each of these groups be considered?

6) Why do the companies consider public opinion in their work?

7) What does the company’s policy include?

8) What is the purpose of a public relation officer?

9) What public relation activities many of the companies and firms use?

Тема №2

History of PR

Early specialists in public relations specialized in promoting circuses, performances, and other public shows. Later, most PR practitioners were recruited from journalism. Highly paid PR positions are a popular career choice for many journalists. PR historians say the first PR firm, the Publicity Bureau, was established in 1900 by former newspaperman. Their first client was Harvard University.

The First World War also helped to stimulate the development of public relations as a profession. Many of the first PR professionals, including Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays and Carl Byoir started their careers with the Committee for Public Information, which organized publicity on behalf of US during World War I.

Ivy Lee was a man who developed the modern news release (also called “a press release”). He introduced a philosophy of the “two-way street” public relations, in which PR consists of helping clients listen as well as communicate massages to their publics.

Bernays was the profession’s first theorist. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays took many of his ideas about irrational, unconscious motives of human behavior. He wrote several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947). Bernays saw public relations as an “applied social science” that uses psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manipulate the irrational public.

One of Bernays’ early clients was the tobacco industry. In 1929, he managed a legendary publicity event aimed at persuading women to start smoking cigarettes as a form of protest against the norms of society, to equate smoking with women’s rights.