According to Barbara Diggs-Brown, an academic with the American University School of Communication, the PR field anchors its work in historical events in order to improve its perceived validity, but it didn't begin as a professional field until around 1900. Scott Cutlip said, "we somewhat arbitrarily place the beginnings of the public relations vocation with the establishment of The Publicity Bureau in Boston in mid-1900." He explains that the origins of PR cannot be pinpointed to an exact date, because it developed over time through a series of events. Most textbooks on public relations say that it was first developed in the United States, before expanding globally; however, Jacquie L'Etang, an academic from the United Kingdom, said it was developed in the UK and the US simultaneously. Noel Turnball claims it began as a professional field in the 18th and 19th century with British evangelicals and Victorian reformers. According to academic Betteke Van Ruler, PR activities didn't begin in Continental Europe as a professional field until the 1920s. According to Goldman, from around 1903 to 1909 "many newspapers and virtually all mass-circulation magazines featured detailed, indignant articles describing how some industry fleeced its stockholders, overcharged the public or corrupted politics." The public became abruptly more critical of big business. The anti-corporate and pro-reform sentiment of the Progressive Era was reflected in newspapers, which were dramatically increasing in circulation as the cost of paper decreased. Public relations was founded, in part, to defend corporate interests against sensational and hyper-critical news articles. It was also influential in promoting consumerism after the emergence of mass production. Early pioneers The Publicity Bureau was the first PR agency and was founded by former Boston journalists, including Ivy Lee. Ivy Lee is sometimes called the father of PR and was influential in establishing it as a professional practice. In 1906, Lee published a Declaration of Principles, which said that PR work should be done in the open, should be accurate and cover topics of public interest. According to historian Eric Goldman, the declaration of principles marked the beginning of an emphasis on informing, rather than misleading, the public. Ivy Lee is also credited with developing the modern press release and the "two-way-street" philosophy of both listening to and communicating with the public. In 1906, Lee helped facilitate the Pennsylvania Railroad's first positive media coverage after inviting press to the scene of a railroad accident, despite objections