Edward Bernays, r.i.p.

[Jon Ford]

mbuttons comments:
>
>I have no information about a Guatemala campaign, but Bernays was hardly
>retired in the 1960's. He seemed aged, but alive and professionally active
>when he spoke to Miami's public relations society in the mid-1980's.
>
>In reflecting on WWI, Bernays wrote ...
>
>"The most fantastic atrocity stories were believed. After the war there was
>widespread disillusion with and reaction against propaganda. The American
>people resented their own wartime gullibility.
>
>"... Words may win your war and lose your peace. In public relations, as in
>all other pursuits, actions speak louder than words."

I love that last phrase! Bernays had an idea long ago of what we now call 
the "pseudo event"-- actually creating something which seems like a 
real-life action or event in order to get peoples' attention more than the 
usual propagandistic name-calling. Leaking false atrocity stories is just 
one way this is done. By the way, Bernays actually lived a very active 
professional life until he was almost 105; he was giving interviews up until 
the early ninties. He died in 1995. With his anti-democratic philosophy, he 
would have been a natural to mount a disinformation campaign against any 
"democratic" or left-leaning government anywhere in the world. In 1998 a new 
biography of him  was published: Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. 
Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations(DBW HM263.T94). For reviews see: The 
Columbia Journalism Review(Nov./Dec. 1998); The Economist(Oct. 17, 1998); 
Business Week(Aug. 17, 1998) and Publishers Weekly(Aug. 3, 1998) .

Jon
>

>


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