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U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos
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U.S. History 1877-Present 6: The Propaganda Machine 101 Views
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Description:
It's not really censorship if you just strongly suggest which stories to publish, and threaten to pull resources if the news outlets don't do it...right? Well apparently, yes. And it was done pretty widely in the U.S. during WWI. But we still don't like it.
Transcript
- 00:04
Getting an entire nation in the mood to go to war isn't all that easy,
- 00:08
especially a nation that had just reelected a president whose campaign slogan...
- 00:12
was "he kept us out of war." So when it came time...
- 00:16
for America to enter WWI, President Woodrow Wilson knew...
- 00:19
something dramatic had to be done to get people pumped about going to war.
Full Transcript
- 00:23
One pep rally just wasn't gonna cut it.
- 00:27
And thus the Committee on Public Information was born, with a guy named...
- 00:30
George Creel at the helm. What did Creel and the CPI do?
- 00:34
They created the WWI Propaganda Machine,
- 00:38
which in a lot of ways was more deadly to the Germans than any machine gun.
- 00:42
Why? Because it was incredibly effective in getting a massive amount of Americans...
- 00:46
behind the war. Mostly this meant posters, radio programs, speeches,
- 00:50
and most importantly, media control. See, the CPI was the gatekeeper...
- 00:55
of war news. This was a mega-important role that doesn't really...
- 00:59
exist today, now that we get our news almost instantaneously via the Internet...
- 01:03
But back in the olden days, getting news was more of a process, especially...
- 01:07
if it was coming for thousands of miles away, for example, in the trenches of...
- 01:11
Western Europe. This made it so that the CPI had almost exclusive control...
- 01:15
over what Americans heard of the war. If anybody out there just...
- 01:19
said, hmm, that sounds like an awful lot like it restricted freedom of the press...
- 01:23
well, kudos, that's exactly what was going on. But Creel and CPI were...
- 01:27
really slick, politically. On paper, they didn't demand that certain things be censored.
- 01:32
Instead, they kinda suggested that the press censor itself. If it's voluntary...
- 01:36
the government can't be accused to breaking the First Amendment of the Constitution, right?
- 01:40
Yeah, that's more than iffy, but the CPI totally got away with it. Since the...
- 01:44
CPI was pretty much the only place to get news, the press kinda had to agree that there were...
- 01:48
rules. The deal was that if news outlets followed the CPI's rules, and only reported on what they provided,
- 01:54
all of their news resources would be available. This system ensured that Americans were only...
- 01:58
hearing government-approved war news. The CPI's other major role was...
- 02:02
advertising. Not normal advertising, like for specific products,
- 02:06
but advertising a mindset. Sounds kinda strange, but they...
- 02:10
were actually really successful. George Creel called it
- 02:13
the world's greatest adventure in advertising. So Creel was kinda like...
- 02:17
Don Draper, except he was selling war, instead of 60s consumer items.
- 02:22
Another key output from the CPI were films, movies like...
- 02:26
Pershing's Crusaders. They were meant to show everyday Americans how brave and awesome the...
- 02:31
troops in Europe were, and how evil the Central Powers were. Hollywood...
- 02:35
and the CPI worked together a lot during the war to make pro-American films. All of this worked like a charm.
- 02:40
Though it might not be a shock to anyone these days that the Americans did...
- 02:43
what the movies told them was cool.
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