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In a few sentences, an older Public Diplomacy officer gave me a key insight about many of the “isms” since the French Revolution – Jacobinism, Marxism, militarism, fascism, Communism, and Islamism among them. And it came from his study of inanimate machines. Here’s the story: In 1985, Arthur J. McTaggart (1915-2003) — a USIA officer…
“Jingoist newspaper articles, or thoughtlessly provocative speeches in Congress, may become propaganda in reverse.” This was the 1963 observation of emeritus Princeton professor of politics John B. Whitton (1892-1977) in his book Propaganda and the Cold War (Washington, Public Affairs Press, 1963, pp. 10-11). His chapter on “The American Effort Challenged” included a subhead —…
“The news may be good… the news may be bad, but we shall tell you the truth.” That was the solemn pledge a Voice of America program host in New York made to listeners at the opening of the first VOA broadcast in German to war-torn Europe early in the morning on February 1, 1942.…
Our People and Our Values Are the Core of U.S. International Leadership A Statement by PDC and PDAA Boards of Directors October 31, 2019 As Board members of the Public Diplomacy Council and the Public Diplomacy Association of America, non-partisan organizations of professionals committed to U.S. global leadership, we support all public servants who…
The disinformation, propaganda, and malign narratives that now trouble international relations reach beyond the traditional Public Diplomacy frames of “mutual understanding,” “winning hearts and minds” and “soft power.” They are tools of “sharp power,” defined by the National Endowment for Democracy as “authoritarian influence efforts” that “pierce,…
In June 1970, the Marine Corps Gazette published the text of a talk, “Effective Press Relations,” given to students at the Command and Staff College earlier that year by legendary USIA officer Barry Zorthian. As Public Affairs Officer at the American Embassy in Saigon from 1964 to 1968, he set up the Joint United States…
A ceasefire in Yemen’s civil conflict, now in its fifth year, now appears, at last, to be coming into view. The conflict has cost tens of thousands of lives and been described by U.N. officials as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” “If the fighting continues through 2022,” a U.N. development report released October 10 said,…
When you’re my age, twenty years pass in the blink of an eye. On an autumn day in 1999, I was standing by a bank of elevators watching office furniture exiting the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) building in Southwest Washington, enroute to its new location in the State Department. I was deputy director of USIA’s…
October heralds the formation of a new management team overseeing the nation’s five taxpayer-funded networks that reach an estimated unduplicated 345 million users online, TV and radio listeners each week. The networks are the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE-RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), The Middle East Broadcast Network (NBN) in Arabic.…
Lou was one of the most thoughtful, dedicated, and politically savvy public diplomacy professionals of his generation. Louis T. Olom (1917-2019), a career civil servant, will be remembered for his many contributions to public diplomacy during the years in which it was gradually gaining acceptance as a field of professional practice in US diplomacy. Lou’s…