How Woodrow Wilson’s Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism

Smithsonian Magazine ^ | APRIL 28, 2017 | Christopher B. Daly

[Mastador1]

People can argue whether Carter, Clinton or Obama were the worst president but they are all pikers compare to the global damage Wilson inflicted that we are still seeing.

[Fedora]

Wilson's propaganda ministry was linked to parallel efforts in Britain which involved many top writers of the time: Wellington House. At the end of the war, these efforts shifted towards promoting the League of Nations and a more interventionist public opinion, with support from the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States. In the 1930s, radio propaganda became a major research emphasis: Radio Research Project. As World War II approached, the British stepped up propaganda efforts in the U.S. through the British Security Co-ordination (BSC), run out of Rockefeller Center with the assistance of the emerging OSS. All this set the stage for the wartime Office of War Information and related agencies and the postwar Operation Mockingbird. This propaganda apparatus was turned against Joseph McCarthy when his investigations threatened to expose Soviet infiltration of OWI European assets who were now working for CIA in postwar Europe, ostensibly to recruit European liberals away from Soviet influence through operations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Today, George Soros's Open Society Foundations have inherited the remnant of the European end of this propaganda network.

[wardaddy]

You can tell Freepers love Beck and Levin and their hangers ons

It’s simply propaganda like information but it fits a clean binary paradigm which is easier for them to absorb and takes less time to understand

Remember the old child’s toy where u spun the wheel to an animal and the machine would make the animal sound

It’s like that but with two choices only

An elephant and a donkey

But most important you have to treat slavery and racism as original sins of America and the West

That’s where they really go off the rails from true conservative thought as we knew it before the pre Neo Con engineered purges

Who in 1970 amongst conservatism ranks would have demonized Wilson like NeoCon II adherents do?

And worse they also demonize Teddy to be fair

It’s poppycock....worse president....duh I dunno maybe Clinton or Obama or Harding or LBJ or FDR

[Loud Mime]

I’ve been reading some of the history concerning the ratification of the 17th Amendment and have learned that the press back then played a massive role in the emotions that led to the ratification and the election of Wilson.

From what I gather (I have not read the original articles from that day), the railroad barons, steel businessmen and their teams were controlling businesses in the cities, and, through their influence in the Senate, were blocking solutions and promoting more problems. The sales pitch was that the Senate had to be changed so the people could free society from the influences of the rich and powerful.

It takes a lot of work for a constitutional amendment. The press had to be fully behind it for it to succeed.

It went on from there.

[pigsmith]

Bfl

[newzjunkey]

That famous Republican president Woodrow Wilson Oh Wait...

[Pelham]

“And worse they also demonize Teddy to be fair”

Beck & Levin didn’t start demonizing Teddy Roosevelt until some posters here at FR pointed out that TR was a progressive years before Woodrow Wilson. Those two don’t know much about history despite their posturing and they got caught flat footed.

Instead of conceding that they don’t know what the hell they are talking about they added Teddy to the cannibal’s pot after the fact hoping that no one would notice.

Beck, Levin, D’Souza, and a host of others whose names we all know have been selling their audience a cartoon version of American political history that reduces to the GOP having been God’s Chosen Party and the Democrats being the Party of Evil. This takes advantage of people who trust them and think they are honest. It predictably will end badly.

[Pelham]

In its crusade to “make the world safe for democracy,” the Wilson administration took immediate steps at home to curtail one of the pillars of democracy – press freedom – by implementing a plan to control, manipulate and censor all news coverage, on a scale never seen in U.S. history.

As long as we don't count the 300 newspapers forcibly shut down during the Lincoln administration. The editors and reporters jailed without trial, including Francis Scott Keye's grandson. You have to appreciate the irony of Fort McHenry being used to imprison him. But why spoil a good story with unseemly facts?

[Pelham]

“The only other possible contender is James Buchannan.”

And can you tell us what Buchanan did that merits him being the worst president?

[wardaddy]

Note nobody challenges u

[gandalftb]

“Joseph Goebbels learned propaganda from Woodrow Wilson and George Creel .”
...........
Likely the other way around. From 1933 to 1938 Goebbels made and broadcast radio speeches almost daily. They were imported to willing American radio stations in the Midwest.
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There were many German speakers in the Midwest and the broadcasts were in German only and had great effect in spreading Isolationism.
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Wilson picked up on that, especially the anti-semitic themes and used it as a major campaign plank for the presidential campaign.

[george76]

Within a week of Congress declaring war, on April 13, 1917, Wilson issued an executive order creating a new federal agency that would put the government in the business of actively shaping press coverage.

That agency was the Committee on Public Information, run by George Creel

[gandalftb]

German propaganda lost its appeal after the Lusitania sinking with 128 Americans killed, and other sinkings.
...............
Wilson’s Isolationism ended finally on April 2, 1917 when we declared war. Creels’ propaganda agency came along 11 days later as Wilson and Congress understood they needed to drum up political support for a draft which was then enacted May 18, 1917.
.............
The next goal was raise money on war bond drives. Back in the day, before we had serious income taxes, war was more an act of The People that needed some persuasion.