Early codes of professionalism in 1950s government public relations

Abstract

The study of government public relations (GPR) is growing as a stand-alone category within the public relations literature. The literature includes foci on history and on ethics. This article presents three very early documented examples of codes of professionalism in GPR, perhaps even the earliest ever. All were issued in the 1950s. They emanated from a public relations (PR) roundtable sponsored by the Washington chapter of the Society for Advancement of Management, the short-lived Government Public Relations Association, and were the PR principles issued by Clyde Hall, the public information officer of the National Science Foundation. These three codes have not been examined in the literature heretofore. Also, Hall led a little-known, but unprecedented, effort by the US Civil Service Commission to proactively recruit high-level public relations officers for federal agencies during World War II and in the immediate post-war period.