page_title: George Creel
section_title: Committee on Public Information
hierarchical_section_title: George Creel / Career / Committee on Public Information
caption_attribution_description: English: Brig Gen W.W. Harts, George Creel of Committee on Public Information and Rear Admiral Cary Grayson, on bord the Presidential Royal Train, en route to Rome, Italy
context_page_description: George Edward Creel was an investigative journalist and writer, a politician and government official. He served as the head of the United States Committee on Public Information, a propaganda organization created by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.
context_section_description: 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. 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.
  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. Creel himself said that the images were "something that caught even the most indifferent eye." 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. 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. 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." 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." Under Creel's direction, the CPI sought only to repress material that contained "dangerous" or "unfavorable" ideas to avoid demoralizing the population.
  All activities of the CPI ceased on November 11, 1919, upon the signing of the Armistice with Germany. The efforts of the CPI were regarded as the greatest public relations effort in history, up to its time. Such a massive, offensive, and multifaceted campaign had never been undertaken before, and the CPI brought to light the power of mass persuasion and social influence at a national level – realizations that had a profound effect on the field of public relations. Many of the 20th century's most influential public relations practitioners were trained under Creel on the committee, including Edward Bernays and Carl R. Byoir.
  According to historian David F. Trask, all of Creel's strengths proved useful at CPI, especially "his predilection for Wilsonian reform abroad as well as at home, his personal magnetism, his taste for controversy, his tendency to attribute evil rather than misjudgment to those who criticized him."
  Trask continues:
  As an administrator Creel was extraordinarily energetic, quick to make decisions, often impulsive. He was capable of inspiring strong devotion....Wilson seems to have held Creel in high regard, probably because of his unbending personal loyalty to the president as well as his effective methods of purveying administrative dogma.
caption: George Creel with General William Wright Harts and Admiral Cary Grayson in front of the presidential train in January 1919.
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