ABSTRACT
“Public Relations: How the Press Launched an Agency of its Own” profiles the work of Ida Tarbell as influential in causing the growth of public relations industries. It shows how Tarbell’s exposé of The Standard Oil Company inspired public relations pioneers, including Ivy Ledbetter Lee and Edward Bernays, to help repair the image of industrialists, and it shows how, as major parts of modern media, public relations affects content in ways sometimes unexpected for consumers. Using materials from this chapter, students should know the role of Tarbell’s work in what would become public relations and why journalists and historians hold it in such high esteem today. They should know how Parker and Lee’s “Declaration of Principles” contained language that both initiated public relations as we know it and set the practice apart from the traditional purpose of reporting by members of the Fourth Estate, and they should be able to explain how public relations does a service to both corporations and consumers. Key words, names, and phrases associated with Chapter 9 include: Ida Tarbell, “The History of the Standard Oil Company”; Ivy Ledbetter Lee; “Declaration of Principles” (Parker and Lee); John D. Rockefeller and the Ludlow Massacre; and Edward Bernays, “Torches of Freedom,” and Simon and Schuster.
