George Creel and the Committee on Public Information
https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=748
General Information
Source:
NBC News
Resource Type:
Creator:
N/A
Copyright:
Event Date:
Air/Publish Date:
1917 - 1919
07/30/2007
Copyright Date:
Clip Length
Video MiniDocumentary
NBCUniversal Media,
LLC.
2007
00:01:32
Description
To promote the idea of World War I to a skeptical American public, Woodrow Wilson turns to one of the
leading figures in the advertising industry.
Keywords
World War I, Woodrow Wilson, Public Morale, Propaganda, Advertising, Mass Culture, Government
Agency, George Creel, Committee on Public Information, "How We Advertised America", Newspapers,
Censorship
Citation
MLA
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 1 of 2
"George Creel and the Committee on Public Information." NBC News. NBCUniversal Media. 30 July
2007. NBC Learn. Web. 28 March 2015
APA
2007, July 30. George Creel and the Committee on Public Information. [Television series episode]. NBC
News. Retrieved from https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=748
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
"George Creel and the Committee on Public Information" NBC News, New York, NY: NBC Universal,
07/30/2007. Accessed Sat Mar 28 2015 from NBC Learn: https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k12/browse/?cuecard=748
Transcript
George Creel and the Committee on Public Information
Professor CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZOLA (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): One of the things that
the Wilson administration was very concerned about was literally “selling the war” to the American
public, to getting people interested, keeping their attention going, keeping their morale going. And at a
time when the advertising industry was just beginning to develop, when mass culture was beginning to
develop, Wilson turned to George Creel, who was probably one of the leading figures in the advertising
industry, and put him in charge of the Committee on Public Information.
The CPI, as it was called, had a name that mattered – that it wasn't a ministry of propaganda. And in fact,
Creel went out of his way to say that Americans didn't do propaganda. They were about information. The
Committee of Information spread the truth, and that would be all that Americans needed to hear. And, in
fact, and his own memoir was titled How We Advertised America, how we sort of sold the war to the
American public.
Of course, the CPI was a ministry of propaganda. It put out its own version of events, and it published
literally hundreds of thousands of pamphlets. It published its own daily newspaper, which it sent on to
newspapers around the country. It encouraged each individual newspaper to practice what it called "selfcensorship." So, although the U.S. had no formal censorship proceedings in most cases outside the
battlefield, nevertheless, newspaper editors lined up, pretty much willingly, under Creel's provisions.
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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