The American public relations firm hired by Salazar (1951-1962) – The debut of the dictatorship in the bidirectional asymmetric model in the post-António Ferro period

Abstract

A decade before the publication of the first public relations manual in Portugal, a translation of the work of Sam Black (1962), Antonio de Oliveira de Salazar already had a portfolio with extensive personal correspondence with a public relations company in New York. It was called George Peabody and Associates and developed an intense and sophisticated work in tourist and political communication for the Portuguese Government during 11 years (1951-62). Through a search of the archives of Torre do Tombo and the US Department of Justice, as well as the epistemological and prosopographic study of the main figures of the old regime, we will try to demonstrate the strategies, tactics and main protagonists of this company that served the New State and the dictator of the regime. As a main conclusion, this article reveals how, even during the 1950s and without António Ferro, the dictatorial Government itself carried out an instinctive communication shift towards the bidirectional asymmetric model (Grunig & Hunt, 1984).