The Press: Flowers for OWI

Too late to do it much good, OWI last week got several ornate wreaths on its grave. They were placed there by the British. London’s World’s Press News (the British counterpart of the conservative U.S. Editor & Publisher) asked correspondents throughout the Empire to say what they thought of OWJ. Their answers would surprise domestic critics who have insisted that the OWI was all thumbs. Most correspondents thought that the highly touted British information services could learn from OWI. Samples:

South Africa: “The Americans . . . put across plenty of propaganda . . . which worked extremely well from an American point of view.”

Australia: “There are finely equipped informative libraries in both Sydney and Melbourne. Each has three expert research librarians and five assistants. . . . Newspapers were greatly helped with background matter . . . given spot-news matter, bright topical articles, radiophotos.”

New Zealand: “There has been nothing blatant about United States publicity. It has been directed almost exclusively along cultural lines, with the objective of explaining the American way of life and promoting better understanding.”

India: OWI “has operated to the satisfaction of the Indian press without once disturbing the hypersensitive Indian people over a period of three years—no mean achievement.”