Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information, 1917, 1918, 1919
George Creel's report to President Wilson, dated 1 June 1919 and printed by the Government Printing Office in 1920, on the committee that ran America's publicity in the First World War. It goes division by division.
What it is
George Creel's report to President Wilson, dated 1 June 1919 and printed by the Government Printing Office in 1920, on the committee that ran America's publicity in the First World War. It goes division by division. The Four Minute Men used 75,000 volunteer speakers who gave 755,190 short talks in cinemas, churches and lodges, each campaign run from a central bulletin. The Division of Pictorial Publicity, chaired by Charles Dana Gibson, enlisted artists for posters. The Division of Advertising, led by William H. Johns of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, placed donated space worth about $1.6 million, created "The Greatest Mother in the World" for the Red Cross, and ran the draft registration drive. Other chapters cover news releases, films, war expositions, work with immigrant groups through loyalty leagues, and offices abroad, with field reports from Mexico, Europe, Russia, China and South America.
Why read it now
This is the first full record of a government running a national campaign the way an advertiser would, and several of its methods still work. The Four Minute Men paired one central brief with many local voices speaking in their own words, the structure brands now use with creators. Loyalty leagues led by figures inside each immigrant group match a finding public health campaigns keep repeating: trusted messengers from inside a group persuade better than outsiders. The Peru field report, on pamphlet fatigue and on photographs rotated through public boards, is a lesson in distribution. Read it with care. It is Creel grading his own work, and it counts speeches, insertions and audiences, not changed minds. Its claim of pure truth-telling is its own verdict; historians have judged the committee's part in wartime intolerance more harshly. Part of its legacy is people: Edward Bernays worked for it before shaping public relations as a trade. Use: for a national or seasonal campaign, write one brief per campaign with the message, points and time limit, recruit local voices to deliver it, and measure the outcome, not the activity.
Passages worth keeping
We did not call it "propaganda," for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with lies and corruptions.
اللجنة رفضت كلمة الدعاية لأنها ارتبطت بالكذب في يد الألمان، وقدمت عملها على أنه إعلام وتثقيف.
We got into the foreign press by the simple expedient of making our output so newsy and so interesting that the editor could not resist it.
الطريق إلى الصحف الأجنبية كان مادة فيها خبر وجاذبية تجعل المحرر يريد نشرها، لا شراء المساحة.
No dollar has ever been sent on a furtive errand.
كريل يؤكد أن اللجنة لم تنفق مالًا في أي عمل سري، وهذا ادعاء منه لا نتيجة تدقيق مستقل.
The Four Minute Men will live in history as the most unique and one of the most effective agencies developed during the war for the stimulation of public opinion and the promotion of unity.
التقرير يعد شبكة المتحدثين المتطوعين في دور السينما أنجح أدوات الحرب في تحريك الرأي العام.
the public were surfeited with them, and pamphlets were actually creating prejudice against their distributors.
كثرة الكتيبات من كل الأطراف أتعبت الناس حتى صارت تسيء إلى من يوزعها، فكثرة الرسائل قد تضر صاحبها.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.