Concept
Committee on Public Information (Creel Committee)
The first American war propaganda and information agency, set up on 13 April 1917 under George Creel; it was abolished in 1919.
The Committee on Public Information (CPI) was an independent agency created by President Wilson’s Executive Order 2594 of 13 April 1917. Its civilian chairman was George Creel; the Secretaries of State, War and the Navy were members ex officio. That is why it is also called the Creel Committee.
Its job was to release government news, to sustain support and morale for the war at home, and to make America known abroad. It used every medium of the day: print, speech, film, posters and the telegraph. According to Creel’s own reckoning, its volunteer speakers worked in about 5,200 communities; these figures have not been confirmed independently.
The committee’s foreign operations ended on 30 June 1919, and it was formally abolished on 21 August 1919. Its importance for this course is that it is the first major example of a democracy setting up a state propaganda agency. Creel wrote that the committee did not call its work “propaganda”, because in German hands the word had come to be associated with deceit.
Example
An example of a ministry spreading a message not in its own name but through volunteers who speak like ordinary citizens: the committee’s volunteer speakers (the “Four Minute Men”).