E.L.B.

The first chapter, I must admit, was very well detailed in what public relations really means. Pulling it away from people assuming it is the same as advertising, but as it is found in the chapter, it is not even close to what advertising is. As mentioned in the chapter, the lines between advertising and publicity have been blurred. In the readings, it says that advertising is paid time or space in a medium. While publicity is information provided with no fees.
In the readings, the name Edward L. Bernays stuck out the most to me. As the quote goes from the chapter (found on page 5) he said,

"Public relations is not a one-way street in which leadership manipulates the public and public opinion. It is a two-way street in which leadership and the public find integration with each other in which objectives and goals are predicated on a coincidence of public and private interests."

After reading this, I made note to look more into the late Edward L. Bernays, who the book calls the "PR authority." An interesting article that I found on him, which stuck out because of it's unique title, is "The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR." Which is the actually the name of the book that Larry Tye wrote. The article is a book review by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, whom in the first paragraph wrote,

"Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to
figure on historians' lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century."

Not being an actually PR major, I myself have never heard of Mr. Bernays, until I read the chapter and did some research.
An interesting fact that I found from the book review mentions how Bernays's uncle was Sigmund Freud. Since Freud was, as the review puts it, "the father of psychoanalysis", I have actually heard of him thanks to a psychology class from high school. According to what I have read, they seemed to use similar tactics with what they did. From the book review I found that Freud would use his ""talking cure" [that] was designed to unearth his patients' unconscious drives and hidden motives, in the belief that bringing them into conscious discourse would help people lead healthier lives." While Bernays would use "psychological techniques to mask the motives of his clients, as part of a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping the public unconscious of the forces that were working to mold their minds."
Furthermore, I think that what Edward L. Bernays did for PR seems to be pretty major. It seems he really helped people understand what the world needed back in the 1950s. And yet, as I have read, he also did some things that hurt his image. All in all, he did something right.