We should wonder, if we are still in the propaganda business, what the U.S. is doing today. It is 50 years this past month since Roger Mudd's and CBS's The Selling of the Pentagon outlined the propaganda the U.S. military machine is involved in. Fifty years. Surely, it has evolved. Perhaps no documentary has been done since then. Perhaps no investigation has even followed. What became of things? How about an update on what is going on.
The United States Office of Information was dissolved in 1999. Did it have anything to do with this, to begin with? Was dissolving it a way to reduce the tracing of how tax dollars are spent for propaganda? The functions of the office were handed over to the newly created Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, as part of the U.S. Department of State. Do we look there, as part of our trying to determine what has become?
Of an interesting (and sad) side note, Nilda Pedrosa, the last under secretary under Trump, died January 23 (so, just three days following the end of Trump's presidency) of cancer. Separate from her duties as under secretary, she was a significant influence for immigration reform, and on the board of Amigos for Kids, fighting child abuse and neglect. That is off the subject, but that she was so influential in such matters makes the lose of her a matter for me to mourn, even the more.
Still one wonders at an investigation of America's current involvement in propaganda. Could we audit the spending of the Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs office? Could we interview the six under secretaries who held the office under Trump?
If Hollywood received grants to make movies in the Forties, filling them with propaganda, what of today? Where would government be funneling the money today? Who would be getting these grants, this dark money? What would be the best way of disseminating propaganda today, and is the government siphoning money their way?
Yes, I want to know.
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