A contingent of New York debutantes marched down Fifth Avenue in the 1929 Easter Parade, each openly lighting and smoking cigarettes. It was the first time in the memory of most Americans that any woman who wasn't a prostitute had been seen smoking in public. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, later admitted that he had been paid a tidy sum to orchestrate the march by George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company. But long before the public learned who had engineered the parade, it had achieved its goal of breaking the taboo against female smoking. Within months, in fact, the politest of American ladies were puffing in public and sales of Hill's Lucky Strikes were soaring.
Some people consider it the coup that launched a whole new, distinctively American industry.
Most of us are aware of public relations. But few outside the public relations industry know how well PR really works, and fewer still realize how often we are persuaded by it. The sad truth, which this book amply documents, is that PR executives are today mediating public communications as never before. But the intricate practice of relating to the public has evolved even further and requires the kind of close examination that John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton provide. PR has become a communications medium in its own right, an industry designed to alter perception, reshape reality and manufacture consent.