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History of Public Relations

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A Brief History of Public Relations
Public relations has been with us for thousands of years. The Greeks had a word for it: sematikos: to signify, to mean. Semantikos means semantics, which can be defined as how to get people to believe things and do things. That is not a bad definition of public relations. In 50 B.C. Julius Caesar wrote the first campaign biography, Caesar’s Gallic Wars. He publicized his military exploits to convince the Roman people that he would make the best head of state. Candidates for political office continue to publicize themselves with campaign biographies and accounts of military exploits to this day. In 394 A.D., St. Augustine was a professor of rhetoric in Milan, the capitol of the Western Roman Empire. He delivered the regular eulogies to the emperor and was the closest thing to a minister of propaganda for the imperial court. Thus, St. Augustine was one of the first people in charge of public relations. The modern equivalent would be the President’s press secretary or communication director. In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote “The Crisis,” a pamphlet which convinced the soldiers of Washington’s army to stay and fight at a time when so many were prepared to desert so they could escape the cold and the hardships of a winter campaign. Paine was a master of political propaganda whose writing could get people to do things and believe things. Benjamin Franklin made it a rule to forbear all contradiction to others, and all positive assertions of his own. He would say, "I conceive” or "'I apprehend" or "I imagine” a thing to be so, or it appears to be so. Franklin pioneered the rules for "personal relations" in an era before mass media had made possible a profession called "public relations."

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In the middle of the 19th century appeared a man who was to become one of the leading publicists of all time, P. T. Barnum. His accomplishments

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