In the weeks after a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British
cruise ship Lusitania in 1915, killing 128 American civilians and
starting the US down the road to World War I, public opinion in this
country galvanized. Sympathy for the Germans evaporated, and a
determination to enter the war in Europe took its place. But President
Woodrow Wilson, a lover of all things diplomatic, decided to wait.
Eventually, public opinion began to drift. By the time America finally
entered the war two years later, much of America sat by unconvinced.
Wilson knew that that was no way to send out troops. So in 1917, six
days after declaring war, he created a committee that would tend to
America's morale.
He called it the Committee on Public Information (CPI).
With a pushy, muckraking journalist named George Creel at the helm, the
CPI waged a war of words, images, and ideas to fortify support for the
war, domestically and overseas. The earnest posters and racially
simplistic caricatures of foreign enemies may look quaint now, but Creel
ran a sophisticated campaign, putting publicists, novelists, academics,
advertising executives, and filmmakers to work all over the world. He
once boasted that CPI employed 150,000 people.
It was a communications effort unprecedented in ambition, and the
tactics - if not the numbers - set the standard for propaganda campaigns
throughout the 20th century.
Of course, all centuries come to an end.
In the first few months of our current conflict, we have seen countless
entities - government and otherwise - launch individual attempts at
diplomacy.
The Pentagon has hired its own PR firm. Navy planes are dropping
leaflets on Afghanistan. The White House and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair set up Coalition Information Centers (CIC) in their respective
countries and Pakistan. Presidential advisor Karl Rove flew to Beverly
Hills to discuss the war effort with Hollywood execs. Congress, the
State Department, and the Defense Department are taking turns asking
advertising and PR hotshots what they should do. Yet there is almost
universal agreement that our message isn't getting across. What exactly
are all these experts doing?
Ironically, many of them have been doing the same thing: telling the
government it needs to coordinate its PR efforts. Too many messengers
are muddling the message, they say, and they should all be getting their
marching orders from a centralized source - one with the power of the
President behind it, just like it was in the old days.
Land of propaganda
But such comparisons are complicated at best, and at worst,
dangerous.
America and its government have changed. The federal workforce has
exploded in size, as have regulations for hiring private citizens to do
its work.
Post-Watergate reforms erected firewalls between departments making some
coordination difficult, if not illegal. The American mindset -
particularly regarding race and violence - renders old tactics offensive
and obsolete.
And this conflict is fundamentally different than those that have come
before it. Maybe the old, proven model is no longer applicable.
But America has always been good at churning out effective propaganda (a
word that didn't pick up its derogative baggage until the Nazis tried
their hand at it in the '30s and '40s). So good, in fact, that Americans
are by and large unaware that many of its favorite works of art are
artifacts of the government's propaganda program (Casablanca, anyone?).
It is worthwhile to examine what made those campaigns so effective, if
for no other reason than to extract whatever elements might still
apply.
Many believe the keys to Creel's success were his direct line to the
President - he was hand-picked by Wilson - and the latitude of that
relationship afforded him to operate unrestrained. He staffed the agency
with his own people, and divided it into dozens of divisions and
subdivisions, each focusing on its own agenda and audience. Among these
groups were the Division of News, the Division of Films, the Division of
Advertising, and the Division of Women's War Work. Creel's workers and
volunteers held "mass-meetings" in small towns all over the country.
"Four Minute Men" would give short speeches in movie theaters about the
virtue of enlisting. Volunteer translators fed news to the
foreign-language press "designed to combat ignorance and disaffection,"
as Creel put it. "(We) organized and directed 23 societies and leagues
designed to appeal to certain classes and particular foreign-language
groups." The Committee even issued "voluntary guidelines" to the
press.
After the war ended, the CPI was disbanded, and individual government
agencies took on the task of doing America's talking. But when World War
II erupted, once again a single organization was created for the task.
Coincidentally, it was another famously outspoken journalist -
hand-picked by the President - who suggested and then led the
effort.
Different war, same message
Elmer Davis was a radio personality with CBS news. On the evening of
March 2, 1942, he launched into an on-air diatribe against the
government for having too many agencies conducting their own
communications campaigns.
"Why they are not centralized, why no unified program is followed, is
beyond the private citizen's comprehension," Davis cried.
President Roosevelt took the suggestion seriously, creating the Office
of War Information (OWI), and installing Davis as its leader, with "full
authority to eliminate all overlapping and duplication, and to
discontinue in any department any informational activity which is not
necessary or useful to the war effort."
Davis' campaign resembled Creel's in many ways. He sought help from the
brightest minds in every field of communications or entertainment, and
had free reign to use them as he pleased. But the OWI put a much greater
emphasis on overseas communication than did the CPI. Its Overseas
Operations Branch had special bureaus for publications, radio, news, and
movies, among others. It established outposts in more than 20 neutral
and allied nations, dropped leaflets over enemy territory, and doggedly
fed its side of the story to foreign journalists.
At home, the OWI again issued guidelines to the press, and advised
Hollywood on how to make more "helpful" movies. Compared to the CPI,
however, the OWI practically manhandled Hollywood. Studios were
requested to submit all screenplays to the federal government so that it
could ask for changes at an early and inexpensive stage in the
production process. The OWI even distributed a list of questions to all
studio heads that they should ask themselves before making a film. First
among those question was, "Will this picture help win the war?"
While such extremes seem impossible in today's censorship-sensitive
climate, the tactics being employed all have the ring of familiarity.
The White House has asked for help from Hollywood and journalists
(though both have spent more time publicly debating their own
cooperation than actually helping). Leaflet drops have resumed
throughout the bombing campaign in Afghanistan. Advertising and PR execs
have been consulted, and are eagerly cooperating in various ways.
Relationships with foreign and particularly Muslim journalists are being
tended to like they haven't been in years, with foreign outposts opening
in hostile territories.
Who's in charge here?
But the primary difference remains: No single person or entity is
running the show. What in the past was always done under authority of a
pushy professional with the President's blessing is now done by at least
four different entities with varying levels of authority and little
coordination - a three-ring circus with no emcee.
Which might be exactly right.
One person talking a lot about this lately is Jack Leslie, chairman of
Weber Shandwick Worldwide. One of the private sector's most prominent
consultants in America's newest propaganda campaign, he recently
testified before the House Committee on International Relations, and has
advised under secretary of state Charlotte Beers.
He applauds specific steps the government has taken to coordinate its
campaign, chief among them the CIC, the Office of Homeland Security, and
the authority given to Beers. But given the nature of this conflict, he
says, that may be as much coordination as America should have.
"There is a complexity to the nature of this war, where things are not
nearly as black and white, and objectives change and will continue to
change," he says. "The natural instinct is that everything should be
coordinated, but things are very different now. You can't just rely on
the old model." Perhaps, Leslie says, the construct we have is precisely
what we need for this war. A fluid model for a fluid conflict, a deft
machine of many parts going where a homogenous, lumbering unit
cannot.
It is just one suggestion among many, but it does have the advantage of
momentum. It seems unlikely that the government can or will create
another CPI or OWI. People complained about those organizations in their
time as well, but the criticism faded when the wars were won. If America
emerges from this war as fortunate as it did from those, the various
departments who conducted the communications effort will most likely
reap that same benefit.
KEY PLAYERS IN THE NEW PROPAGANDA WAR
Charlotte Beers
Under secretary of state for public affairs and public diplomacy. A
lifelong staple of Madison Avenue, Beers started her new role on October
2. As such, the queen of advertising is now responsible for most of the
government's overseas PR efforts concerning the perception of
America.
Karen Hughes
Advisor to President Bush One of Bush's closest and most trusted
advisors, Hughes (ex-White House communications director) is in charge
of the Coalition Information Centers (CIC). She initiates conference
calls between several key figures in the propaganda campaign, and
continues to help shape White House messages.
Torie Clarke
Assistant secretary of state for public affairs, Department of Defense
Clarke leads the Pentagon's own PR effort, which is outsourced to The
Rendon Group for four months. Formerly of Bush Sr.'s administration and
Hill & Knowlton, Clarke is a rare sight at the podium, preferring to
allow the folksy secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld face the media
himself.
Kenton Keith
CIC spokesperson. A former diplomat, Keith has considerable knowledge of
local values and fears in the Middle East, and can speak Arabic. Hence
he appears often on Al-Jazeera TV to convey the US' message.
Laura Bush
First lady Bush has earned the nickname comforter-in-chief for her
efforts to allay fears at home. She is also at the helm, with British
Prime Minister's wife Cherie Blair, of an effort to spread the word of
the Taliban's record of abuse toward women.
Karl Rove
White House advisor and administration's liaison to Hollywood. As the
unlikely liaison to Hollywood, Rove recently flew to Beverly Hills to
discuss the film industry's role in the war effort.
Tom Ridge
Director, Office of Homeland Security Ridge, former governor of
Pennsylvania, was recently made the US' first director of the newly
created Office of Homeland Security. The Bush administration hopes to
brand him as the face of national security.
