Matt Armstrong, mountainrunner.us blogger, gave a history of public diplomacy, starting off with the pronouncement: “We are at our very heart propagandists.”

Pamphleteers were the first bloggers, and Samuel Adams (“Keep the enemy wrong”) was a great propagandist.

The Boston Massacre demonstrated that public opinion really matters. It wasn’t – as depicted in Paul Revere’s 1770 printing – really a massacre, there wasn’t a “butcher’s hall” in the background, and it wasn’t daytime, but we were propagandists and knew how to stoke the images. 

The Declaration of Independence is what some call the greatest propaganda document that ever was – “We’re saying, ‘The King is bad, this is why – he refused; he forbid; he endeavored to prevent; he obstructed…”

The 1945 Bloom Bill was the basis for the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which is the basis for public diplomacy. The principles of Smith-Mundt included: tell the truth, explain the motives of the United States; and bolster morale and extend hope.

The post WWII Marshall Plan – which provided aid to Europe – was a psychological operation. The United States wanted to “deny ideological sanctuary to Communists. Linking us to Europe was a byproduct.” 

The term “public diplomacy” was coined in 1965.

“If you talk to people today about what is public diplomacy, some are going to latch on to the world ‘diplomacy.’ ‘Well you know, diplomacy is what governments do, so public diplomacy  must be what governments do in public.’ But that excludes non-state actors, which includes non-governmental organizations, terrorist groups, whatever else… ‘Public diplomacy’ is an artificial term.”