The Effectiveness Of The Committee On Public Information In Influencing American Public Opinion During World War I

Abstract

The American government, through its control of many of the news sources and its dissemination of the news, was able to blanket the nation with officially designed and approved propaganda during World War I. Much of the material the Committee on Public Information sent out, was designed to sway the mind of the public in a particular The dividing line between news and propaganda was "news" or otherwise, direction. often thin and very crooked. Information which the Committee sent out had an express task to perform in influencing public opinion. It was a great success. The CPI "organized patriotic enthusiasm where it existed and created it where it did not.” After the war Creel boasted that even naysayers "took a daily diet of our material.” Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone in America being able to avoid coming into contact with the Committee's propaganda in some form. The distaste felt by many for the whole operation in retrospect exists out of time with the mood of the nation. Perhaps the greatest testament to the efficacy of the Committee on Public Information came in Words that Won the War, a book written in 1939 by James R. Mock and Cedric Larson. In it they note the ominousness of the coming World War and present their blueprint for the American government's new Committee on Public Information in order to rally the nation once again.