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The Committee on Public Information, also known as the CPI or the Creel Committee, was an independent agency of the government of the United States created to influence U.S. public opinion regarding American participation in World War I. Over just 28 months, from April 13, 1917 to August 21, 1919, it used every media available to create enthusiasm for the war effort and enlist public support against foreign attempts to undercut America's war aims.

Creation

President Woodrow Wilson established The Committee on Public Information (CPI) through Executive order 2594 on April 13, 1917. The committee consisted of George Creel (Chairman) and as ex officio members the Secretaries of: State (Robert Lansing), War (Newton D. Baker), and the Navy (Josephus Daniels).

Creel urged Wilson to create a government agency to coordinate "not propaganda as the Germans defined it, but propaganda in the true sense of the word, meaning the 'propagation of faith.'"^[1] He was a journalist with years of experience on the The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News before accepting Wilson's appointment to the CPI. He had a contentious relationship with Secretary Baker.^[2]

Activities

"U.S. Official War Pictures", propaganda poster by Louis D. Fancher

The purpose of the CPI was to influence American public opinion toward supporting U.S. participation in World War I via a prolonged propaganda campaign. Among those who participated in it were Wilson advisers Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays, the latter of whom had remarked that "the essence of democratic society" was the "engineering of consent,"^{[citation needed]} by which propaganda was the necessary method for democracies to promote and garner support for policy.

The CPI at first used material that was based on fact, but spun it to present an upbeat picture of the American war effort. Very quickly, however, the CPI began churning out raw propaganda picturing Germans as evil monsters.^{[citation needed]} In his memoirs, Creel claimed that the CPI routinely denied false or undocumented atrocity reports, fighting the crude propaganda efforts of "patriotic organizations" like the National Security League and the American Defense Society that preferred "general thundering" and wanted the CPI to "preach a gospel of hate."^[3]

The committee used newsprint, posters, radio, telegraph, cable and movies to broadcast its message. It recruited about 75,000 "Four Minute Men," volunteers who spoke about the war at social events for an ideal length of four minutes, considering that the average human attention span was judged at the time to be four minutes. They covered the draft, rationing, war bond drives, victory gardens and why America was fighting. It was estimated that by the end of the war, they had made more than 7.5 million speeches to 314 million people in 5,200 communities.^[4] During its lifetime, the organization had over twenty bureaus and divisions, with commissioner's offices in nine foreign countries.^[5]

Both a Films Division and a News Division were established to help get out the war message. What was missing, Creel saw, was a way to reach those Americans who might not read newspapers, attend meetings or watch movies. For this task, Creel created the Division of Pictorial Publicity^[6]. Charles Dana Gibson was America's most popular illustrator - and an ardent supporter of the war. When Creel asked him to assemble a group of artists to help design posters for the government, Gibson was more than eager to help. Famous illustrators such as James Montgomery Flagg, Joseph Pennell, Louis D. Fancher, and N. C. Wyeth were brought together to produce some of World War I's most lasting images.

Committee work was curtailed after July 1, 1918. Domestic activities stopped after the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. Foreign operations ended June 30, 1919. Wilson abolished the CPI by executive order 3154 on August 21, 1919.

Many have commented that the CPI laid the groundwork for the public relations (PR) industry.^{[citation needed]}

He later published his memoirs of his service with the CPI, How We Advertised America. He wrote:^[7]

In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of concealment or repression. Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive. At no point did it seek or exercise authorities under those war laws that limited the freedom of speech and press. In all things, from first to last, without halt or change, it was a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's greatest adventures in advertising...We did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption. Our effort was educational and informative throughout, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that no other argument was needed than the simple, straightforward presentation of the facts.

Notes

Sources

• Blakey, George T., Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists for the Great War (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), ISBN 0-8131-1236-2
• Creel, George, How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information That Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2008), ISBN 0548820929, ISBN 978-0548820926, Available from Internet Archive
• Schaffer, Ronald, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War-Welfare State (NY: Oxford University Press, 1991), ISBN 0-19-504903-9, ISBN 0-19-504904-7

External links

• Records of the Committee on Public Information