Kennedy’s Propagandists

Abstract

Well-written and carefully crafted, Murrow’s Cold War blends a biography of Edward R. Murrow with a cogent assessment of Murrow’s tenure as director of the United States Information Agency (USIA) from 1961 to 1964. Tomlin deftly draws upon primary sources from the New York Public Library, the British National Archives, Tufts University, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and online collections. Tomlin begins by discussing the origins of the term public diplomacy and offering a brief overview of the contested history of U.S. propaganda. He sets the stage for Murrow’s assumption of the directorship of USIA and describes the challenges in documenting Murrow’s life. He then offers a cursory and, at times, rather ungenerous appraisal of other scholars’ efforts to document the history of U.S. information and cultural programs in the post–World War II era. In laying out Murrow’s key objectives for USIA, Tomlin contends that the agency had previously made little effort to inspire foreign audiences to embrace “the merits of the American way of life and its policies” (xxxi). It is difficult to discern whether these claims are Murrow’s or Tomlin’s, but whichever the case, the assertion mischaracterizes public diplomacy during the Truman and Eisenhower eras. But Murrow’s professed aim to integrate long-range planning, dynamism, and flexibility into USIA’s strategy was unquestionably a departure from his predecessors’ ad hoc approaches to propaganda messaging.