Warfare and Public Relations

When nations go to war, their citizens go with them. Modern warfare requires the commitment of a nation's resources and the sacrifice and support of its population. Democratic nations, in particular, must win the support of their citizens before committing armed forces to battle, and maintain that support for the duration of hostilities and beyond. Even in peacetime, the government and industries responsible for military preparedness must justify continued investment in weapons and forces. For these reasons, public relations strategies and tactics have long been associated with the waging of war. Historically, wartime has fostered pivotal developments in public relations strategies and tactics, as well as the careers of notable public relations figures. As warfare has changed, so too has the way in which these strategies and tactics have been used. However, the field's connection to warfare has raised ethical questions about the means and ends of public relations in pursuit of war.

Historically, the call to arms has helped develop the careers of notable public relations practitioners and, more important, the understanding of the use and effects of various strategies and tactics. Although some trace the connection between public relations and warfare to ancient Rome or the American Revolution, the rise of the modern public relations practice in the early 20th century is intimately connected to warfare.

President Woodrow Wilson formed the Committee on Public Information (CPI) during World War I. More commonly known as the Creel Committee—after its chair, newspaper editor George Creel—the CPI comprised leading newspaper editors, advertising writers, and several figures in the nascent public relations field, including Edward Bernays and Carl Byoir, who was the CPI's associate chair.

The Creel Committee is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it clearly established the three purposes to which governments put communication efforts in wartime: to build domestic public support for the war; to communicate U.S. intentions to foreign nations, with the aim of building support among allies and acquiescence among enemies; and to censor, or control the flow of, information reaching the media and, by extension, the public. Second, the CPI used a comprehensive range of communication tactics to achieve its aims, from personal appearances and staged events to the mass media of the day. This marked one of the first times that a public relations campaign used such a wide range of tactics, from newspaper articles, editorials, and advertisements warning against enemy spies to the “Four Minute Men,” a corps of trained public speakers who blanketed the country with propaganda in support of the [Page 894]war. Finally, the CPI nurtured the careers of Bernays and Byoir. Bernays, who played a relatively small role in the CPI's division, found some of his ideas about mass influence and the engineering of consent reinforced by the success of the CPI's campaign. Byoir staged a number of events designed to build support for the war among European immigrants. The events included a July 4, 1918, celebration in Philadelphia for the newly independent Czechoslovakia. What was truly impressive about the Creel Committee, in addition to its winning widespread financial and emotional support for the war, was the fact that its messages reached nearly every corner of the country despite the lack of a national mass media or universal literacy.

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