Committee On Public Information - Memoirs and Criticism

Memoirs and Criticism

Creel later published his memoirs of his service with the CPI, How We Advertised America. He wrote:

In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of concealment or repression. Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive. At no point did it seek or exercise authorities under those war laws that limited the freedom of speech and press. In all things, from first to last, without halt or change, it was a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's greatest adventures in advertising...We did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption. Our effort was educational and informative throughout, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that no other argument was needed than the simple, straightforward presentation of the facts.

Walter Lippmann, a Wilson adviser, journalist, and co-founder of the New Republic, was a sharp critic of Creel. He had once written an editorial criticizing Creel for violating civil liberties when he was Police Commissioner of Denver. Without naming Creel, he wrote in a memo to Wilson that censorship should "never be entrusted to anyone who is not himself tolerant, nor to anyone who is unacquainted with the long record of folly which is the history of suppression." After the war, Lippmann criticized the CPI's work in Europe: "The general tone of it was one of unmitigated brag accompanied by unmitigated gullibility" giving shell-shocked Europe to understand that a rich bumpkin had come to town with his pockets bulging and no desire except to please."

The Office of Censorship in World War II did not follow the CPI precedent. It used a system of voluntary cooperation with a code of conduct, and did not disseminate government propaganda.