What PR Pioneers Say About PR Today

0:00Bernays, he was the first person to create the phrase public relations counselor. And what public relations means, and it still does 100 years later, relating to the public or trying to create relationships with all of your publics. So today we use it the wrong way. We use it as a verb, let's say, or as a noun or even as an adjective. But we forget that the original usage is creating good relationships with all your publics. Welcome to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd.

0:35Jason Mudd: And welcome to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. Today, I'm joined by Shelley Spector. She is the founder and CEO of the Museum of Public Relations, the world's only museum dedicated to the PR profession. The museum housed more than 5 ,000 artifacts, chronicling PR history and its AI-powered personas lets visitors talk with PR pioneers in their own voices. Our topic today is what PR's pioneers teach today's communicators. Shelly, welcome to On Top of PR. Thanks so much, Jason. It's wonderful to be here today. I'm really glad to have you here as well. So I want to start off by just learning how and what made you decide to found the Museum of Public Relations.

1:20I had no idea you were going to ask me that. No, I'm kidding. Through an accidental meeting with Edward Bernays back, and we were both doing seminars for NYU in 1985. I know it sounds so long ago. It was actually 41 years ago, believe it or not. And it was just remarkable meeting this man. He was then 94, almost 95. my soon-to-be husband and I went out to dinner with him at the Waldorf, which I knew had been one of his clients, and where he and his wife Doris had spent their wedding night. And I knew that that hotel meant a lot to him. So we went to dinner with him, and it was just remarkable.

2:01For four hours, he spoke, and he can do that even today. While he's not alive, he can speak for hours at a time. We had to put an actually an artist artificial stop at the end of him over a certain period of time. Anyway, we found him so interesting that that spring, we decided to go up to his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts with an old camcorder, which was one of the first portable video cameras and started what turned out to be nine and a half years of video recordings

2:34Jason Mudd: of Eddie. And at the end of his life, which was age 103 and a half, his family let us take all the material from his house, the artifacts, everything that the Library of Congress did not want. And so you can imagine we just loaded up the truck with everything, including his oil portrait, lots of books, lots of papers, photographs. Amazing. And he had wanted to start a museum in his house like his uncle, his double uncle, Sigmund Freud, had done in London after he had died. His family did it for him. He wanted the same sort of thing. But I told him, Eddie, people are not going to come up to a museum of public relations up in Massachusetts.

3:21So I said, I'll make a museum in New York, a museum of public relations. So we started off with his stuff, and then we started adding more and more things. So the biographer of Ivy Lee heard we had done this and sent us all his research materials on Ivy Lee. And the Finn family sent us stuff, the Edelman family, Burson family. And eventually we had 5 ,100 different artifacts here.

3:52Jason Mudd: So is this your own private endeavor or some of these organizations, are these families, you know, contributing towards the cause or how, I mean, how all that got started? Okay. So in 2012, we became a 501c3 nonprofit educational institution. So we live on donations, sponsorships, underwritings. We have 34 trustees who each contribute a certain amount every year. and who guide us along the way. And we are self-sufficient, independent, and we serve the interests of the PR profession, both the educational community and the professional community. Okay, lovely, wonderful. And I think for our audience, because they may not be aware, you name dropped Edward Bernays and we're going to talk about a couple other people that you have resurrected through their AI persona, if you will.

4:49Jason Mudd: But, you know, I'm going to guess that a fair amount of our audience doesn't know who Edward Bernays is. So maybe you could give us like a brief summary of him and his career. Bernays was in the early teens, a publicity agent, you would call him. He was in the beginning of World War I. He was hired to do public relations for the U.S. during the war effort. helped write the press release that went out after the Treaty of Versailles, counseled President Wilson, etc. He came back to New York and in 1919 opened a public relations firm. Now, back then, he wasn't the only person doing this, but he was the first person to create the phrase public relations counselor.

5:35And what public relations means, and it still does 100 years later relating to the public or trying to create relationships with all of your publics. So today we use it the wrong way. We use it as a verb, let's say, or as a noun or even as an adjective. But we forget that the original usage is creating good relationships with all your publics.

5:58Jason Mudd: Yeah, I've been known to say on this podcast several times, it's time we put relationships back in public relations. So many times people first think of it as either what people might call publicity or getting media coverage, or it's image and reputation management through crisis situation or, you know, covering up a crisis. And I think those that work in the profession realize that one, PR is so much more, and two, you know, ideally, that's not where your PR program gets started. Well, exactly. Exactly. And if you talk to, this is why it's so important to log into Eddie, is that he will tell you the very basics, the fundamentals of a very good PR program, which always starts with doing research.

6:41Now, think of it back in his day in the 1920s, you didn't have Gallup, you didn't have Survey Monkey, right? You didn't have any of these big polling companies, but he would actually write to people or write to authorities to go ahead and poll their audiences. And so he never went into a PR program without first knowing who the public was that he needed to reach, what motivated them, and what kind of behaviors he wanted them to have.

7:12Jason Mudd: Right, right. Well, we want to mention, I think briefly as well, just so everybody's on the same page, your background on who is Ivy Lee, who is Arthur W. Page, and who is Walter Lipman. Okay. Let's knock that out. All right, sure. Ivy League actually started in PR, as we call it today, in the late 1800s, working for John D. Rockefeller and also working for Pennsylvania Railroad. Now, he had been a New York Times reporter, so he knew something about how to make news, how to write news. And in working with the Pennsylvania Railroad, he witnessed one of the trains derailing down in Atlantic City.

7:54And the officers of the company said, well, you can't tell anybody about this. Don't let the press in. Don't let anyone take photos. This is 1904. And Ivy Lee, you know, it's still the Gilded Age. You had, you know, Vanderbilt saying, the people, the people be damned. People were not, you know, nobody cared about them. Right. And or that much less to talk to them and to try to explain a company crisis to them. But Ivy Lee explained to the officers and essentially his client, we have to tell the press. If we don't tell the press, they'll figure it out anyway. And they'll not like us for it. They won't trust us anymore.

8:34So he sent out what would be known as the first ever press release. And the first and last time that the New York Times printed a press release in full.

8:46Jason Mudd: Yeah, that's right. I remember that. I also remember, you know, we use at our agency the Ivy Lee method, which is identifying, right, the most important things you need to do in a given business day. That's right. Starting at the top and working your way down. Exactly. That's just for us a little extra fun fact, you know, that we use two of his tools every single day in our agency practice. Well, go find the Declaration of Principles. I think you'll find that helpful as well. It's very motivating. Okay. I will not only find it, but I'll add it to our episode notes so that our audience can find it quickly.

9:18Jason Mudd: And since we're bringing that up, I'll just mention right now that you can go to on top of PR.com slash Shelly, E-L dash Spectre. And that's where you'll find the episode notes so you can track along with us as we're talking and find the links to all the different items that we're discussing today. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, and so we also wanted to talk about Arthur Page and William Lipman. Okay, Walter Lipman. Okay, so Arthur Page had been a writer working in a publishing family. And in 1927, the CEO of AT &T met him and asked him if he would please join and become a vice president, an officer of the company to run the public relations operation of AT &T, a pretty big company even back then.

10:08And Page said, well, I won't do it unless I have a seat at the table. And we actually have a picture of him sitting at the boardroom table as they announced the second transatlantic phone call, which was to Paris. So he was a vice president. I mean, he started off as high as you could possibly be as a VP of PR. This was a forerunner to CCOs, right? So - Chief communications officers, yeah. Yes. And he found it very important to be in the room when they were setting policies that would affect them. He started internal communications. Nobody had ever done that before. He was excellent at crisis, so you should talk to him about his most significant crises and how he went about handling them.

10:52He was very active in information during World War II. So a very, very interesting figure. And out of his legendary work came, in 1980s, the Page Society. And just two weeks ago, Page had its annual conference in Atlanta, and I had the privilege of introducing Arthur Page to everybody sitting at the meeting. And it was there that we told him that there's a society now named after him. And he said he was just very fulfilled and humbled by this.

11:28Jason Mudd: Very nice. I'm looking forward to asking more about the technology and how you put it all together. But I guess I'm just curious. So were you able to prevent the artifacts and the documentation that you inputted into creating that persona from knowing about the Arthur Page Society? The artifacts for Arthur Page, most of them we had here in the museum, which is a benefit to having a museum when you're doing these large language models, right? So we had a good deal of it here. The speeches, some of them we had to go outside for. Some of them we got from the Page Center, which is a different organization from the Page Society.

12:07But for all of the other large language models, we had everything in-house.

12:13Jason Mudd: So I guess my question is, How did you prevent it from learning about the society and how you input the information? Great question. These guys have guardrails. They can venture out of their own historical record. So it's a corpus bound, it's called, in the LLM industry. Right. And they are not allowed to go onto the internet. But that's a good question. you would think that Page would know all about the Page Society and he would know about AI and all this. No, our four large language models are restricted to their corpus, to what they've written, what they've said during speeches and interviews.

12:58They know nothing about what has happened after they died, unless you describe it to them.

13:04Jason Mudd: Okay, I got it. So we're here to talk about what PRs, pioneers teach us or teach today's communicators. I know one of the first signs we want to cover, and I'm raising it because I want to ensure either we covered it already or we want to say a few more things about how the museum built the living archives. Okay. Earlier this year, we heard about the technology, about how to build a large language model. Somebody passed it on to us and said, you know, you guys are perfect because you have all the stuff. Most people can't build these things because where are they going to get all these things from?

13:40But fortunately, we had the materials. For instance, with Bernays, we had 90 hours of usable videotape and audio, obviously. We had a million words of text that he had written. We have his inbox, for instance. We have memos. We have correspondence and a tremendous amount. And that's what takes the process so long, is digitizing everything and then feeding it into the LLM software. And then once we had all of that in and he was able to respond, he's not a chatbot. He doesn't have pre-recorded answers. Everything he says is very unique to the question and to the time. So we then found out, wow, there's a software company called Eleven Labs Free Commercial that takes the voice that you've already recorded and puts it on top of the text.

14:39A lot of people have come to me and said, well, why don't you have a kind of avatar or hologram or some graphical representation? We don't want to do that because the technology is not there yet. And I don't want it to look like a cartoon. So for most of our large language models, we have their voice. With Bernays, it was very easy. We had 90 hours of videotape of him. For Ivy Lee, since he died in 1934, there were just no places to get his voice, but we found it in a 1947 March of Time newsreel. There's a little snippet in there of Ivy Lee speaking about the Rockefellers in 1930. So we had 10 seconds of Ivy Lee's voice.

15:24And from that 10 seconds, we were able to project it onto his entire ability to speak in his own voice.

15:33Jason Mudd: That's incredible. For Walter Lipman, it was even more incredible. And I give credit to the software company, Eleven Labs, for being able to do this. We looked all over for Lippman's voice. And he, you know, even though he was very famous on radio and all that, we just couldn't find any tape of him. But we did find two phone calls where we were able to get five second snippets. One phone call was in 1960 with LBJ and another one was later on with Richard Nixon. Two staticky phone calls, five seconds apiece, and we're able to use that voice, and it is his voice. So it's quite remarkable. That is very impressive and just amazing to think about how you've been able to reconstruct or recreate a persona from those resources.

16:24Right.

16:25Jason Mudd: Yes. And that's why when you look at these large language models, you're using them in a very different way, but in a very familiar way to using chat GBT or Claude. Right. But in this case, there is a person attached to it who has that person's personality and voice. So it's a little different relationship, a little different engagement with the historic persona than it is with Claude. For sure. Yeah. I can only imagine. So for our audience, we are going to demo this in just a moment. I wanted to get through some of these initial topics in conversation first so we can build around that. But let's talk about the foundational PR principles that you sense get lost in the social media and AI era.

17:14Yeah. So I've been teaching for a very long time as an adjunct. In addition to running an agency for 30 years, I no longer run the agency, but I still do teach. I guess lecture these days. And what I have found over the years, and I'm sure you've found this too, with young people, ever since social media took on the force that it did, kids are no longer learning how to write press releases, therefore no longer learning how to make news, generate news, write news, and even follow the news. So it became, from what I've seen, almost an 80 to 90 % focus on writing posts for Instagram. And you may have seen that too.

17:57And while I find social media certainly, you know, come into the menu of what we can offer our clients, in my experience, clients want earned media. Clients want good old-fashioned media relations for the most part. A lot of clients feel they can do their own social media. It's not that hard. And I don't necessarily believe that. But I feel that since the advent of social media and then with the advent of AI and the fact that you have a younger generation of teachers, a lot of this foundational stuff gets lost. And that's one of the benefits of having Eddie and Ivy around is that they can make you remember that and talk about its significance.

18:39And a lot of people, a lot of professionals, in addition to students, find that very helpful.

18:45Jason Mudd: Well, I'm excited to dive into that. We're going to do that in just a moment. You wanted to share also about the 1920s principles of Bernays, Lee, and Paige. Right. So what I think is so stunning is that these are three guys who had no real precedents, that they had no handbooks for PR. They had really no experts. They had no PRSA. They had no Paige Society. They were very, very few. Pioneers. They were the pioneers. They figured it out. They made it up. And they all had a different way of approaching it. So with Ivy Lee, As you know, it was all about transparency, telling the truth, sending out news, being very, very factual, creating good relationships with reporters and counseling clients very well about crises, especially being proactive and handling the crisis before the press gets to it.

19:42That's timeless advice, is it not?

19:45Jason Mudd: Yeah, for sure. Right? Yeah, ethics, integrity, and public interest, public trust, and transparency are what I think all good PR programs should lead with. It's the first core value of my agency, integrity. Exactly. And then with Bernays, now you remember that Bernays, his double uncle, was Sigmund Freud. Right. So he grew up hearing about Freud when he was a little boy. And he used to be very close with Freud. And a lot of Freud's influence was carried into his practice for PR. So that's why he studied the personalities of the people he was trying to reach and influence. And he knew about their motivations and he understood it in a way the other guys really did not and didn't bother to study.

20:31He was very interested in using public relations as an applied social science.

20:38Jason Mudd: Persuasion, right? Yes, that's right. The engineering of consent. Right. And he was very effective at it. He, you know, if look at his campaigns, I'm not going to get into them here, but bacon and eggs, ivory soap, even tortures of freedom, which was controversial. And you could talk to him about that. They were all about reaching people's subconscious and peer pressure and all those Freudian things that we used to study in psychology 101. And Bernays was able to use those so effectively throughout his life. And when students say, well, what should I take in college? That he always recommends taking a lot of social science courses to understand mankind.

21:21Page was the first guy of importance, of high influence to take the seat as, you know, the head of public relations for an international phone company. And as I think I mentioned earlier, he established the concept of internal communications. He said that everybody who reaches a customer, talks to a customer, meets a customer on the street is a public relations person and has to be an ambassador for the company. So he understood it from a very far-reaching, expansive way. He also worked on the company's release of financial information. One of the first people to do that. He did more than publicity.

22:06He looked at how the company, which was sort of a utility, could best serve all of its publics. And instead of just looking at his publics as customers, his publics included shareholders, regulators, which are a very big deal. People who bought the phone service every month and remember phones, not everybody could afford a phone. Back then, certainly in the 30s, they couldn't afford a phone.

22:31Jason Mudd: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, one actor of that same era is, you know, Benjamin Somburg. And I've read his biography. I assume you have, too. Talk to me a little about him. He was a different character and certainly not as well celebrated as the individuals that you're talking about today, but still a figure of that same era. And because I've read his book, I have a little insight into that. But I would just love to hear your take among his, I'll call it parallel paths. Yeah, well, he was really, he was celebrated. He had a home that was about a block wide, a half a block long. He was a typical press agent who knew everybody.

23:12And I think that a lot of people had come to think that this is what public relations was. But he even called himself a press agent, publicity agent. And he represented a lot of theater people, restaurants, all kinds of introductions of cars. He was much more of a publicity guy who would go out to lunch every day with reporters. And he was quite different, I think, than Bernays and Page and Ivy League.

23:38Jason Mudd: He was more of, I think what you're saying is more of a publicist is how I would describe him. Absolutely. He was also, his tactics were not necessarily at the same ethical standard of the individuals you're speaking to. although I do think from reading his book and of course he claims he never wanted a book written about him and I saw the eye roll because I feel the same way but I do sense that there were some things that he did advance the profession in their own unique way for the audience we'll put a link to the book but it's called Always Live Better Than Your Clients and he was very much keeping up with the Joneses as the same goes and what I also liked though was of course I think you need to do this ethically but I do sense that he was right and that there's the version of the press release that the corporation and the client signs off on.

24:26Jason Mudd: And there's another version of how it gets actually pitched and sent to the media that actually gets coverage. And I think as long as you do that ethically without misrepresenting the situation, there's the press release or the news release that the C-suite likes to sign off on and share with the board and the board likes to smile at, but it's a tool that's not gonna typically get coverage. And so you have to pivot. that documented news release into what I think is an actionable media pitch, right? And as far as I can tell, that was a technique that he was an early adopter of that I think any seasoned PR practitioner understands that you have to work within those constraints sometimes.

25:05Jason Mudd: Again, as long as you're transparent about what you're doing. Well, that is true. Yeah. Now, one thing that I want to explore with Eddie, but also with you, is kind of I've got a opinion that, you know, we celebrate Edward Bernays as, I believe the term is the godfather or the father of modern public relations. Is that the right word? Godfather? Father. No, I would be the father. Yeah, the father. Right. My question to you, though, would be by today's standards, you know, I feel like he would be much more controversial in today's environment than just like Benjamin Somburg would be, given his focus on persuasion and not necessarily focused on kind of using people's emotions and mindset to convince them to do what he wants them done, as opposed to maybe more ethical practices.

25:53Jason Mudd: And you mentioned earlier, we'll talk about the tobacco industry with them. But I would just like your take on that because I've kind of felt that way for, I don't know, the last 20 or so years when I studied him for, you know, taking my accreditation in public relations. He's a key figure you have to get familiar with. And the more I read about him, the more I'd say, oh, this is not the way public relations practitioners approach it today. So, I'd love to give you a chance to speak to that, especially because I now know that you met him personally and you probably have a unique point of view.

26:22Jason Mudd: And I'm probably not the first person to ask you this question either. Well, I think that where he gets his bad reputation from that kind of tarts everything, unfortunately, was his client was American Tobacco Company. Right. They said, we're losing half our market. Women can't smoke by law outside in the streets or in restaurants or in theaters like men can. And this was 1929. So it was a different time. It was a different time. It was the end of the suffrage movement. Women felt that they can become emancipated and showcase their independence from men with cigarettes. So in the same way that the ad agencies were doing it, Eddie Bernays staged an Easter parade.

27:05Well, there was an Easter parade going on, but he got debutantes to light up cigarettes and cigarette holders, which is a famous picture. At the same time, the photograph that was shot on the corner of Fifth Avenue, 34th Street, then went out to all the newspapers. Newspapers used it because it was so unusual to see women smoking on Fifth Avenue.

27:28Jason Mudd: Right. And he, yes, for better or worse, he got women to feel that smoking was there, right? And holding a cigarette meant I'm emancipated. In my view, he didn't get more women to start smoking. He got women who were smoking to smoke in public places. Right. And certainly back then, his own wife smoked two packs a day. Unfortunately, she later died because of it. Sure. But there was no way for him to know how bad cigarettes were for you. When the Surgeon General's report came out, he formed an organization called ASH, and that organization worked to make sure that cigarette brands were not allowed to advertise on radio and TV.

28:15And so that's one example that is most often cited by people.

28:20Jason Mudd: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting that I would guess if he was running a traditional PR firm, he would not be harmed by the prevention of advertising. He would not be harmed. Yes, that's very, that's an interesting little fact, I think. All right. Let's see. I think we wanted to cover how each AI persona strength can help communicators as we jump into asking Eddie here. Well, let's talk about what Eddie can do and why I use him at work. He is very creative. Even today, he can come up with new ideas, which is fascinating because if you ask him to help you with new ideas, say you have a new client, you want to come up with a big idea for the client that will make news, you can literally brainstorm with him.

29:08And so to this day, he is, how old would he be? 130-something years old. he's able to come up with unique ideas that are very good, even workable. He doesn't have to incorporate Instagram or Twitter into his campaigns.

29:26Jason Mudd: But he will if you ask him to, huh? Well, he'll ask you what it does. He'll ask you questions about it and how it works. We're trying to, he doesn't learn like many software agents, but we're trying in some long talks with him to teach him during that time about what twitter can do and what social media is all about but first you have to get to the portable computer and then what the internet allows you to do and his memory of computers is the mainframe in a single room and punch cards right um you can if you're in a client crisis you can get his advice and the same way you can go to claude but if you got a claude claude does not have any experience in public relations crisis management but eddie has and so he can tell you about his past experiences and tell you what you can do now and he cannot ask you the right questions who your client is and he and he remembers during that period of time that you're talking to him it seems like a healthy exercise for us to have to be able to communicate what X and Instagram and AI and maybe even commercial newswires in the modern environment can do for the campaign as well as explaining it to someone who is an expert in the craft but doesn't have any familiarity with the tool.

30:51Jason Mudd: I think that could be a very healthy exercise for us to rethink the purpose and the use of those tools as we describe them to basically someone who's never lived with them. You're exactly right. And he gets to the basis of the program without adding in the layers of technology. So today, a lot of young professionals, and I say this non-offensively, will jump immediately to Instagram or Twitter or TikTok instead of saying, what does the research say? What's the strategy? What do we want for the objectives? And Eddie will start off with, well, who are the people you want to impact? What's the goal you want to achieve?

31:32What's the strategy? What are the messages? It's the old-fashioned way of doing it, but it still works.

31:39Jason Mudd: It's the right way of doing it. Instead of jumping into tactics and activities, you want to have a goal and a strategy, objectives for the audience, and ultimately demonstrate the impact on the organization. Exactly. So Eddie will, you can pressure test campaigns with him. So you can literally write up a whole campaign and feed it into him and say, what do you think? Right, right. Well, let's quickly go through the other personas you wanted to share so we know how to use each of them. But we probably should quickly jump into asking Eddie as well. Yes. You want to go right to Eddie? Sure, we can do that.

32:15Jason Mudd: So I'm going to share my screen for those of you who are capturing this audibly. I don't know that you need to see the screen share. We'll advise you on what that looks like. But at the same time, we'll provide a link in the episode notes so that you can find it as well. But real quick, it's prmuseum.org slash ask-eddy. And there's some content here, including a video with him. But then it says to ask a question by selecting the microphone icon. Introduce yourself. Ask Eddie a question. And when you're done, say goodbye. And if you need to continue, you can begin a session. But it is limited to 10 minutes.

32:53Jason Mudd: You can also download a transcript, it looks like. Yeah. And so we'll just get started. Did you have any advice of what I should ask him first? Ask him the hardest question you could think of. Okay. And ask him, you know, if he was his own client, what would he advise for his own legacy? But I want to make a point clear is that he speaks 73 languages. Okay. So, Jason, if you have a second language you want to speak to him on, feel free to use it. All right. I don't know which one of my 70 languages I know I would pick from. All right. Let's give it a try. I'm going to press the microphone button now, and it says to introduce yourself.

33:35Jason Mudd: Eddie, my name is Jason Mudd. It's nice to meet you. I'm a public relations practitioner contacting you from 2022, or excuse me, 2026. we're actually recording an episode of my podcast called on top of PR with Jason Mudd which is one of the top PR podcasts in the world a podcast is like an on-demand radio show that people can listen to in real time through streaming over the internet through a computer or other device that they have if they're ready well Jason it's a pleasure to meet you I'm familiar with the concept radio on demand through computers, quite an evolution from the broadcasting we pioneered back in the 20s.

34:21Jason Mudd: I'm honored to be on your program. What would you like to know about communications and persuasion? Well, we're actually talking to Shelby Spector, who is the founder of the Public Relations Museum, and she's created you or her organization has created you. And so we want to give our listeners an opportunity to learn how to interact with you. So one of the questions she suggested we ask you might be, how would you handle public relations for your own legacy? Earlier in the call, we talked about how you're considered to be the father of modern public relations, yet the timing of generations is much different as far as what's considered to be modern public relations practice back then versus what's today, including some cultural cues and norms.

35:09Jason Mudd: In addition, yet the foundation of having strong strategy, goals, objectives, and tactics, all aligning ethical, still remain as a foundation of this profession.

35:24Jason Mudd: That's a thoughtful question, Jason. My legacy is built on actions, not just words. I'd start by researching how different publics perceive my work today, what they value, what troubles them. Then I'd align my contributions with current social values, showing how the principles of research, strategy, and ethical persuasion remain vital. The key is demonstrating that good public relations serves the public interest first. If my methods helped sell war bonds, build highways, or advance public health, those actions speak for themselves. Legacy isn't about defending the past. It's about showing how sound principles adapt to serve society's evolving needs.

36:07Jason Mudd: Well, that's a wonderful answer, I think, and I agree with that. I think that what I love about your response is how it's rooted in research and how you're suggesting that there's flexibility, but all good PR is focused on the value that it creates, the impact to the organization, as well as, as you mentioned, the ethical persuasion. I think if we guard and shield everything we do under the guise of ethics and what's in the trust of the public and put that first is always a good place to be, Eddie.

36:42Jason Mudd: Exactly right, Jason. Ethics isn't just a nice sentiment, it's practical. A public relations council must decline clients whose causes are questionable in the court of public opinion, even if they're legally sound. That's how you build trust and protect the profession. Research tells you what the public needs and values. Strategy aligns your client's actions with those needs. And ethics ensures you're serving society, not just self-interest. When those three elements work together, you create lasting results that benefit everyone involved. I like that a lot. I think that's a lovely answer and a great way to put it.

37:23Jason Mudd: So let me ask you a little bit more about something you said that's interesting. You said that a public relations counselor must decline clients whose causes are questionable in the court of public opinion. even if they're legally sound. That's how you build trust and protect the profession. You know, one thing I've always thought about or I think about often is the idea that I believe that just like everyone is entitled to the right to an attorney, I also sense that sometimes people should have the right to public relations counsel, at least advising them and guiding them. While they may not be the right client for all agencies, including ours, that is something I often wonder about is where might someone turn to if they need public relations guidance, but they have a hard time finding it.

38:10Jason Mudd: There's no court to appoint a public relations counselor. Have you ever thought about that or run into that in your own practice?

38:21Jason Mudd: That's an interesting parallel, Jason. Actually, the lawyer comparison has limits. The lawyer defends the accused in court, the judge and jury decide. But in public relations, I'm both advocate and judge because my work shapes public opinion itself. That's why I must scrutinize every case more carefully than a lawyer does. Not everyone deserves representation in the court of public opinion. Some causes are genuinely harmful to society. However, someone with a legitimate need can find counsel if they look. There are practitioners at every level with different standards and specialties. That's a great thought.

39:01Jason Mudd: So how would you go about scoring or grading those opportunities when they come your way? And who would you think of or how would you think of referring them to a trusted source if you declined to do business with them?

39:16Jason Mudd: I evaluate on balance, Jason. If a client's socially constructive behavior outweighs what I can't support, I might proceed, but I won't represent a cause I believe is socially unsound. That's my first principle. As for referrals, I wouldn't send harmful cases elsewhere. That would make me complicit. If someone needs basic counsel on legal communication, but their cause troubles me, I might suggest they consult their attorney or find practitioners with different standards than mine. The key is this. Every practitioner sets their own ethical line. Mine is whether the work serves the public interest, not just the client's profit.

39:59Jason Mudd: Okay, that's an interesting thought. One thing that you are well known for in the profession is your advocacy on behalf of tobacco products and tobacco manufacturers. Now, most health organizations absolutely recommend no use of tobacco products whatsoever. How would you address that in the modern era today?

40:25Jason Mudd: Actually, Jason, a small correction. At the time I worked with American tobacco in the late 20s and early 30s, cigarettes weren't known to be dangerous to health. That discovery came about 30 years later when the Surgeon General made a statement in the 50s, you can't hold yourself responsible for what you didn't know. When roast beef is considered healthy and 10 years later they discover it has dangerous chemicals, you can't carry guilt for earlier advice. Once the health dangers became clear, I helped eliminate cigarette advertising from radio and television. And that's how I addressed it, by working to restrict promotion once the facts changed.

41:08Jason Mudd: Interesting. So there was no data at the time to support the idea that perhaps tobacco wasn't healthy, you know, putting smoke inside people's lungs and seeing the side effects at all?

41:24Jason Mudd: Well, there were no scientific findings linking cigarettes to cancer, emphysema, or serious disease at that time. In fact, cigarettes were seen as symbols of sophistication and even modernity. Little boys smoked to appear older. The medical establishment hadn't yet made those connections. When the Surgeon General's findings came out around 1950, showing the health dangers that changed everything. Once we knew, I acted helping remove cigarette ads from broadcast media. You work with the knowledge available at the time. Then adjust when science reveals new truths. You're right. You can't change the past.

42:04Jason Mudd: Let's talk for a minute about your legacy. When did you realize that you were a pioneer in the profession or did you always sense that? I recognized it early, Jason. When I came back from the Paris Peace Conference in 1918 and 19, I saw that ideas had been used as weapons of war for the first time, and I realized those same principles could serve peacetime pursuits. When I wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion in 1923, the first book on the subject, I knew I was establishing something new, a profession grounded in social science, not just press agentry. But being a pioneer and making it a true profession are different things.

42:48Jason Mudd: For 60 years, I've fought to get public relations licensed and registered like medicine or law, so any nitwit can't call themselves a practitioner and damage the field's reputation. Would you be surprised to know in 2026 that it's still not a profession that requires license or registration, and some would argue that that's a prevention of freedom of speech and or freedom of press, just like journalists don't have to be registered or licensed to be journalists.

43:24Jason Mudd: I'm not surprised, Jason, just disappointed. The journalism comparison misses the point. Journalists report facts. They don't engineer consent or advise clients on actions that shape public opinion. And that's closer to medicine or law, where poor practice harms society. Without licensing, any criminal can call themselves a public relations expert, go to jail, and tear the whole profession. After Watergate, Nixon's henchmen called themselves PR practitioners, and decent people had to change their titles overnight. Freedom of speech protects your right to speak. It doesn't give you the right to practice a profession affecting millions without training, ethics, or accountability.

44:06Jason Mudd: That's the difference. Well, I'm glad you gave an example because I was going to ask you for an example of what you've seen. Unfortunately, I have to end this conversation now. Oh, we ran out of time. Don't hesitate to call again if you still have more questions. Well, thank you for that demonstration, Shelley. What did you think about that? He was good. He was good. Now, if you wanted to continue it or you can always reason we had to limit it is that we have people from all over the world and our system can only handle 30 people at once. So we restrict it to 10 minutes. I see. But you're welcome to go at any time to just hit the mic again.

44:50Jason Mudd: OK. Yeah, I'll have to do that. Like I said, I've used it before. It's been a minute. I tested it out when you first developed it. And you have other engines available as well, right? Other large language models? Yes, we have Ivy Lee, we have Arthur Page, and we have Walter Lipman. However, we have not introduced Ivy Lee in a formal way yet, which we're going to do at PRSA this Saturday. But we're not formally introducing Ivy Lee until October 28th, which is the 106th anniversary of the first press release being issued by him. Right. Okay. And so how would we reach the other ones that are available now?

45:33Because we haven't formally introduced Ivy Lee, I will tell you and your listeners a secret.

45:40Jason Mudd: Okay. You can go to Eddie himself and ask him to introduce you to Arthur Page or Ivy Lee. Okay. Because he knows them both. You can also, soon we will release the capability of having two of them, either any two of them talk to one another. Because they all knew each other in the 1920s. They all are very familiar with each other's work. I see. And you can learn a lot by listening to debates among them. That would be fun. Yes, for sure. It is fun. Yeah. Yeah. So if someone is visiting or is in New York City who is listening to this podcast, how do they find you? How do they get into the museum?

46:26Jason Mudd: How does all of that work? Well, we have free visitation Monday through Friday starting at 11 o 'clock, but you have to reserve in advance because we have a lot of school groups coming up. And so just fill out the form on our website, PRMuseum.org, and we'll set up a time for you and your group to come. Okay, excellent. I am browsing your website. It does read that you need at least two weeks notice. Is that still the case? Yes, I would say so. And there is a small fee quoted here for professionals of$25. Is that still accurate? That's just a suggested donation. Okay, excellent. We would never turn anybody away.

47:07Jason Mudd: Wonderful, wonderful. I'm visiting next week, but I don't know that I will have time to stop by, but it is on my list of things to do when I'm in the city. So I will definitely keep that in mind. As we're wrapping up here, thank you for sharing all this with us. I really enjoyed spending some time with you and, of course, time with Eddie. I learned a lot from this experience, and I look forward to exploring how we might do more together. Shelley, anything else that you wanted to mention before we wrap up? No, that's it, except that I like the first DR homepage very much because you emphasize earned media, and I think that has a valuable place in education today.

47:43Yeah.

47:44Jason Mudd: Well, thank you very much. I think earned media is one of my favorite sports within the PR profession, right? It is a contact sport, as I tell people. You can't just will it into being. You have to actually contact and communicate with people. And it reminds me of being a journalist, which is where I started and many PR pros of my age and older started. And certainly there's nothing wrong with going straight into PR, but there's certainly a lot of benefit from starting in a newsroom, understanding how newsrooms work and realizing how to navigate that environment and how quickly news can change.

48:18Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

48:20Jason Mudd: Look, I'm thrilled with my experience with Eddie today because otherwise, how would I have ever gotten to know him or meet him or work with him and interact with him? And now you've set up this tool that generations can invest in and get familiar with. And so I look forward to finding ways to introduce that to my team and my colleagues. Maybe even we can do some other conversations through this platform of our podcast. I'd love that. Thank you so much, Jason. Yeah, it was a pleasure to meet you and connect with you. And I look forward to seeing you in Orlando for PRSA Icon. And we have a series of guests from Icon that will be joining our show after Icon, as well as forming a relationship with PRSA to have future speakers be interviewed on our podcast in advance of Icon 2027.

49:06Jason Mudd: so with that I want to say thank you again for being a guest on our show and I want to take a moment also to thank our guests for tuning in if you enjoyed this podcast today I need you to do one of two things either share it with a colleague or friend you think would benefit from it or take a minute to go to ratethispodcast.com slash on top of PR leave us a review so that someone else can discover this podcast as well and benefit from it with that this has been Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations signing off and thanking you for the opportunity to allow us to help you stay on top of PR. Be well.

49:42Jason Mudd: This has been On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode and check out past shows at ontopofpr.com.

50:10Thank you.