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by the late 1930s, corporations increasingly coalesced around the goal of encouraging citizens to believe that big business and free enterprise was the way for all to flourish and that staying out of war was essential for industry to build nationwide prosperity. However, by 1940, as America’s involvement in the war loomed, corporate forces shifted the pro-industry message and proclaimed that Americans had to unite behind business to mobilize defense preparedness. All these narratives, emerging as others ebbed, faced counternarratives that challenged their coherence and veracity (for example, the primacy of industry was constantly challenged by social reformists, labor activists, and the New Deal’s interventions in the marketplace). In a similar way, the tensions between the PR industry and the professionalized press in the United States comprised a series of claims, accusations, and adjustments about the presentation of truth during tumultuous times. None of it proceeded in a neat, orderly pattern. However, there are moments when we can examine touchstones of what became a press acclimation to propaganda that is foundational to concerns about journalistic credibility today.
Chapter 1, “The Quandary of Propaganda as News,” sets forth the primary argument of the book: the simultaneous rise of professional journalism and institutionalized propaganda in the years between the wars has led to a press “double-mindedness” about using propaganda as news. That is, the press claims that it has professional procedures for offering unbiased truth, but these same practices incline newsrooms toward using propaganda. Such a reliance on propaganda has proven problematic for the traditional press, as news consumers have turned away from mainstream journalism, voicing concerns about its credibility. After defining key terms—press professionalism, propaganda, and public relations—the chapter discusses how propaganda found its role in the journalistic news-framing process. This chapter then explores how James Carey’s observations about journalistic consciousness and Pierre Bourdieu’s reflections on habitus provide valuable grounding for explicating the presence and persistence of journalistic double-mindedness.
Chapter 2, “The CPI, World War I, and Journalistic Backlash,” explores the roots of the uneasy association between professional journalism and