United States Information Agency - Media and Divisions

Media and Divisions

From the beginning, Dwight Eisenhower said, “audiences would be more receptive to the American message if they were kept from identifying it as propaganda. Avowedly propagandistic materials from the United States might convince few, but the same viewpoints presented by the seemingly independent voices would be more persuasive.” According to the Kennedy memorandum, the USIA utilized various forms of media, including "personal contact, radio broadcasting, libraries, book publication and distribution, press motion pictures, television, exhibits, English-language instruction, and others.” Through these different forms, the United States government was able to distribute and disguise the propaganda more easily and engage a greater concentration of people.

Four main divisions existed at the beginning of the USIA's propaganda effort. The first division dealt with broadcasting information both in the United States and around the world. One of the most widely used forms of media at the onset of the Cold War was the radio. The Smith-Mundt Act authorized information programs, including Voice of America. Voice of America was intended as an unbiased and balanced "Voice from America" as originally broadcast during World War II. The VOA was used to "tell America's stories...to information deprived listeners behind the Iron Curtain.” By 1967, the VOA was broadcasting in thirty-eight languages to up to 26 million listeners. In 1960 VOA gained its so-called "Charter" which required its news to be balanced.

The second division of the USIA consisted of libraries and exhibits. The Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961 authorized the international cultural and educational exchanges (the Fulbright Scholarship Program). Thus "Fulbrighters" were grant recipients under the USIA educational and cultural exchange program. To ensure that those grant programs would be fair and unbiased, there were a series of grantees of educational and cultural expertise who chose the actual grantee recipients.

The USIA's third division included press services. Within its first two decades the "USIA publishe sixty-six magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals, totaling almost 30 million copies annually, in twenty-eight languages.”

The fourth division dealt with the motion picture service. After the USIA's failed attempts to collaborate with Hollywood filmmakers to portray America in a positive light, the agency began producing their own documentaries.