Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- THE COLD WAR AND THE UNITED STATES INFORMATION AGENCY
- Prologue
- 1 Getting the Sheep to Speak
- 2 Mobilizing “the P-Factor”
- 3 In the Shadow of Sputnik
- 4 Inventing Truth
- 5 Maintaining Confidence
- 6 “My Radio Station”
- 7 Surviving Détente
- 8 A New Beginning
- 9 From the “Two-Way” Mandate to the Second Cold War
- 10 “Project Truth”
- 11 Showdown
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
6 - “My Radio Station”
The Johnson Administration, 1965–69
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- THE COLD WAR AND THE UNITED STATES INFORMATION AGENCY
- Prologue
- 1 Getting the Sheep to Speak
- 2 Mobilizing “the P-Factor”
- 3 In the Shadow of Sputnik
- 4 Inventing Truth
- 5 Maintaining Confidence
- 6 “My Radio Station”
- 7 Surviving Détente
- 8 A New Beginning
- 9 From the “Two-Way” Mandate to the Second Cold War
- 10 “Project Truth”
- 11 Showdown
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
This nation and this government have no propaganda to peddle. We are neither advocates nor defenders of any dogma so fragile or a doctrine so frightened as to require propaganda.
Lyndon B. Johnson, 31 August 1965.In the autumn of 1965, Voice of America engineers installed a neat wooden box with a speaker and dials in the family reception hall at the White House. This was a “Monitron,” a device to allow the listener, in this case the President of the United States, to tap directly into multiple feeds from a radio station, in this case the studios of the VOA. The President tuned in from time to time to hear how the VOA covered particular stories, and from February 1967 the device carried English feeds from Radio Moscow and Radio Beijing as well. Johnson's reactions to the broadcasts were relayed to Voice staff via the USIA director, and it boosted morale to know that the President was listening. But LBJ didn't always like what he heard. Norm Gerin, who broadcast the VOA's weekly press roundup, was astonished to pick up a ringing phone in his studio after a broadcast to hear the voice of the President apoplectic with rage over the content of his program. For LBJ the Voice was “my radio station” and had a duty to keep step with his foreign policy.
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- Information
- The Cold War and the United States Information AgencyAmerican Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989, pp. 255 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008