An agency briefly established in order to influence domestic public opinion by the use of pro war (WWI) propaganda.
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The Committee on Public Information (1917–1919), also known as the CPI or the Creel Committee, was an independent agency of the government of the United States under the Wilson administration created to influence public opinion to support the US in World War I, in particular, the US home front.
. . . Wilson established the first modern propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information (CPI), headed by George Creel.[6][7] Creel set out to systematically reach every person in the United States multiple times with patriotic information about how the individual could contribute to the war effort. It also worked with the post office to censor seditious counter-propaganda. Creel set up divisions in his new agency to produce and distribute innumerable copies of pamphlets, newspaper releases, magazine advertisements, films, school campaigns, and the speeches of the Four Minute Men. CPI created colorful posters that appeared in every store window, catching the attention of the passersby for a few seconds.[8] Movie theaters were widely attended, and the CPI trained thousands of volunteer speakers to make patriotic appeals during the four-minute breaks needed to change reels. They also spoke at churches, lodges, fraternal organizations, labor unions, and even logging camps. Speeches were mostly in English, but ethnic groups were reached in their own languages. Creel boasted that in 18 months his 75,000 volunteers delivered over 7.5 million four minute orations to over 300 million listeners, in a nation of 103 million people.
Who was George Creel?
Seven days after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, a propaganda agency acting to release government news, to sustain morale in the US, to administer voluntary press censorship, and to develop propaganda abroad.[9]: 22 George Creel was named the head of the committee, and he created 37 distinct divisions, most notably the Division of Pictorial Publicity, the Four Minute Men Division, the News Division, and the Censorship Board.[9]: 26
The Division of Pictorial Publicity was staffed by hundreds of the nation's most talented artists, and they created over 1000 designs for paintings, posters, cartoons, and sculptures that instilled patriotism, fear, and interest in the war efforts.[10] Creel himself said that the images were "something that caught even the most indifferent eye."[9]: 85 Through the Four Minute Men division, roughly 75,000 civilian volunteers spoke to 314 million people over the span of 18 months on topics assigned by the CPI, like the draft, rationing, bond drives, and victory gardens.[11]: 610 These civilian volunteers spoke at social events in places like movie theaters and fellowship halls for four minutes, which was the time it took to change a movie reel and the time believed to be a human's attention span. The guidelines set forth by Creel directed the volunteers to fill their speeches with facts and appeals to emotions to bolster public support for the war efforts.[11]: 614 Between the News Division and Censorship Committee, Creel and the CPI were able to control the flow of official war information. Creel sought to portray facts without bias, though most pieces of news were "colored by nationalistic assumptions."[9]: 112 Creel's committee may have produced biased news, but it was his hope that the US could avoid rigid censorship during the war, as Creel's views on censorship were "expression, not repression."[9]: 115 Under Creel's direction, the CPI sought only to repress material that contained "dangerous" or "unfavorable" ideas to avoid demoralizing the population.
