Monday, August 23, 1999

Professor’s book details one PR agency’s history
In 1933 John W. Hill opened the New York office of the public relations agency Hill & Knowlton, Inc. By 1959 the combined sales of its clients--which included Procter & Gamble, Texaco, Gillette--amounted to 10 percent of the gross national product.
In The Voice of Business, assistant professor of public relations Karen Miller chronicles Hill & Knowlton’s influence on American public discourse in the years following World War II.
Guided by its founder’s conservative ideals, Hill & Knowlton developed a twofold mission: to influence public discussions about issues important to its clients and to educate Americans about big business.
Miller shows how the agency tried to manipulate public opinion, political debate and news media content about such issues as postwar military aircraft procurement, the deregulation of margarine production, President Truman’s seizure of steel mills in 1952 and the 1953-54 cigarette health scare. Though its campaigns did not change many opinions, Miller says, Hill & Knowlton affected the public indirectly by reinforcing the ideas of its clients and other conservatives.
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