In the United States, propaganda is spread by both government and non-government entities. Throughout its history, to the present day, the United States government has issued various forms of propaganda to both domestic and international audiences. The US government has instituted various domestic propaganda bans throughout its history; however, some commentators question the extent to which these bans are respected.
In Manufacturing Consent published in 1988, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion". Some academics have argued that Americans are more susceptible to propaganda due to the culture of advertising.
Domestic
Politico noted the ineffectiveness of domestic propaganda bans. "Officials get around the restriction on publicity agents by giving public relations staff such titles as “health communications specialist” or they outsource the spinmeister work to private communications firms. During an effort to cut back on PR in the administration of Harry Truman, the Air Force even classified some public affairs officers as chaplains."
During the Reconstruction era, newspapers and illustrated engravings helped shape a reunified national narrative, leveraging the wartime communications infrastructure for peacetime persuasion and identity-building rather than purely military propaganda.
World War I
The first large-scale use of propaganda by the U.S. government came during World War I. The government enlisted the help of citizens; including children to help promote war bonds and stamps to help stimulate the economy. To keep the prices of war supplies down (steel, food, etc.), the U.S. government produced posters that encouraged people to reduce waste and grow their own vegetables in "victory gardens". The public skepticism that was generated by the heavy-handed tactics of the Committee on Public Information would lead the postwar government to officially abandon the use of propaganda.Thomas Howell, The Writers' War Board: U.S. Domestic Propaganda in World War II, Historian, Volume 59 Issue 4, pp. 795–813
The 1915 film The German Side of the War was compiled from footage filmed by Chicago Tribune cameraman Edwin F. Weigle. It was one of the only American films to show the German perspective of the war. At the theater lines stretched around the block; the screenings were received with such enthusiasm that would-be moviegoers resorted to purchasing tickets from scalpers.
World War II
During World War II, the official policy of the United States was to not produce propaganda, but the Roosevelt government circumvented it by various means. One such propaganda tool was the publicly owned but government-funded Writers' War Board (WWB). The activities of the WWB were so extensive that it has been called the "greatest propaganda machine in history". Response to the use of propaganda in the United States was mixed, as attempts by the government to release propaganda during World War I was negatively perceived by the American public.
Initially, the US government had no centralized effective propaganda strategy, as President Roosevelt in particular seemed hesitant to institute an official government propaganda agency—in part due to the negative legacy of World War I's propaganda, with it often remembered as being manipulative or coercive in its tactics. However, after the outbreak of war in Europe and in the subsequent years prior to America's involvement, Roosevelt set up a number of different agencies to address problems concerning the dissemination of information, national morale, and public opinion. The power of these agencies was limited, with Roosevelt still seeming reluctant to create a dedicated propaganda agency, and some of these agencies received criticism from Roosevelt's political opponents and the press.
Eventually, it became clear that the information network of the government needed to be streamlined and restructured, culminating in the United States Office of War Information (OWI) being created in June 1942, and consolidating the functions of the previously established agencies. The mandate of the OWI was to promote understanding of the war policies under the director Elmer Davis. It dealt with posters, press, movies, exhibitions, and produced often slanted material conforming to US wartime purposes. These efforts built on earlier 19th-century uses of mass media, when illustrated newspapers and posters helped normalize visual persuasion in American politics. Another example of the OWI's efforts was Why We Fight, a famous series of US government propaganda films commissioned by the OWI to justify US involvement in World War II.
Cultural and racial stereotypes were used in World War II propaganda to encourage the perception of the Japanese people and government as a "ruthless and animalistic enemy that needed to be defeated", leading to many Americans seeing all Japanese people in a negative light. Many people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom were American citizens,Semiannual Report of the War Relocation Authority, for the period January 1 to June 30, 1946, not dated. Papers of Dillon S. Myer. Scanned image at trumanlibrary.org. Retrieved September 18, 2006."The War Relocation Authority and The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II: 1948 Chronology," Web page at www.trumanlibrary.org. Retrieved September 11, 2006. were forcibly rounded up and placed in internment camps in the early 1940s.
From 1944 to 1948, prominent US policy makers promoted a domestic propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the U.S. public to agree to a harsh peace for the German people, for example by removing the common view of the German people and the Nazi Party as separate entities. The core of this campaign was the Writers' War Board, which was closely associated with the Roosevelt administration.
Cold War
Propaganda during the Cold War was at its peak in the early years, during the 1950s and 1960s. The United States would make propaganda that criticized the Soviet Union. The American government dispersed propaganda through movies, television, music, literature and art. The United States officials did not call it propaganda, maintaining they were portraying accurate information about Russia and their Communist way of life during the 1950s and 1960s. The United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow along with Japan and West Germany, among many other nations. When the Olympics were held in Los Angeles in 1984, the Soviets retaliated by not showing up for the games. In terms of education, American propaganda took the form of videos children watched in school; one such video is called How to Spot a Communist.
Operation Mockingbird Operation Mockingbird was an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.
War on Drugs
There has been an abundant amount of propaganda in the half-century-long "war on drugs" that began under President Richard Nixon in June 1971, when he initiated the first federally funded programs aimed at drug prevention in the U.S. The 1960s had seen the rise of a rebellious youth movement that popularized drug use. With many citizens using cannabis and other drugs, and many soldiers returning from Vietnam with heroin habits, there was widespread drug use in the U.S. One tactic of Nixon's initiative, still used today, was a national anti-drug media campaign aimed at youths. The government used posters and advertisements to scare children and teenagers into avoiding drug use.
Between 1971 and 2011, the U.S. spent more than $2.5 trillion fighting the war on drugs. Nixon also dramatically increased the presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was created during his second term in 1973 to tackle both domestic drug use and the smuggling of illegal narcotics into America. The D.A.R.E. program began in 1983 (during the Reagan administration) and dovetailed with Nancy Reagan's campaign to educate children to "Just Say No" to drugs. The messaging permeated popular culture and was promoted by broadcasters through such venues as scripted television sitcoms and family programs, in effect to have fiction help influence reality. By 2003, the D.A.R.E. program had cost $230 million and involved 50,000 police officers, but never showed promising results in reducing illegal drug use.
The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, originally established by the National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988,National Narcotics Leadership Act of 1988 of the Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1988, is a domestic propaganda campaign designed to "influence the attitudes of the public and the news media with respect to drug abuse" with a related goal of "reducing and preventing drug abuse among young people in the United States". Now conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy under the Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998,Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 of the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, the media campaign cooperates with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and other government and non-government organizations.Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 2006, , codified at
Gulf War
Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the US. It hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 million, paid by Kuwait's government.
Among many other means of influencing US opinion, such as distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to US soldiers deployed in the region, "Free Kuwait" T-shirts and speakers to college campuses, and dozens of video news releases to television stations, the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of members of the US Congress in which a young woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor.
The story helped tip both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military actions in a 52–47 vote. However, a year after the war, this allegation was revealed to be a fabrication. The young woman who had testified was found to be a member of Kuwait's Royal Family and the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the US. She had not lived in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion.
Iraq War