John Brown's Notes and Essays: The Committee on Public Information: Public diplomacy? Or propaganda? Or both?

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The Committee on Public Information: Public diplomacy? Or propaganda? Or both?

Monday, April 6th 2015

Ninety-eight years ago today the United States declared war against Germany, entering World War I. Few recall that one of that war's offspring was what we now call public diplomacy.

Today's First Monday Forum, co-sponsored by the Council and the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, featured a panel discussion titled The Untold History of U.S. Public Diplomacy. Two State Department historians and a scholar of public diplomacy's history joined the Council's John Brown to discuss their new archival materials and findings about the Committee on Public Information, created in World War I to influence public opinion in the United States and abroad in support of the war effort.

On the "Read More" page, you'll find an extra that we couldn't show today: a set of illustrations that tell the story of the CPI. We hope the short collection of pictures will motivate you to read into the new volume of Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) -- the first of a new series documenting the birth and development of U.S. public diplomacy and featuring visual products as well as texts.

Our panelists were:

Aaron W. Marrs, Historian, Policy Studies Division, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State;
Adam Howard, General Editor, Foreign Relations of the United States;
and Caitlin Schindler, University of Leeds;
and moderated by: John Brown, Public Diplomacy Council, who lectures and writes about propaganda and public affairs.

Today's panel only scratched the surface of an era full of personal rivalries, outsized ambitions and novel concepts, offering surprising parallels to our own time. I hope the Council will revisit this theme in the future.