Quoting History: A Sound Report

Below is the beginning of short op-ed from The New York Times on a recent report on what would later be called public diplomacy by the Advisory Commission on Information, to be known decades later as the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

Every American interested in a strong information program for this country would do well to study the latest report of the United States Advisory Commission on Information. The Commission’s four members … have clarified the key problems we face in attempting to counter Communist propaganda throughout the world and have spoken plainly on matters that require plain speech.

…[R]eferring to Senator McCarthy’s television circus last year, the Commission says, “The wide and unfavorable publicity … gave the agency such a bad name that professionally competent persons were reluctant to accept employment in it.” The Commission adds that the result of periodic Congressional attacks is that those who prepare our counter-propaganda for overseas “are perforce more cautious of how the
messages will sound or appear to the investigators and completely lose sight of whether they will be effective with their intended audience.”

Published February 6, 1954.