John Maxwell Hamilton on American propaganda

This discusses a 2025-12-11 interview with John Maxwell Hamilton about propaganda. A video and 29:00 mm:ss podcast excerpted from the interview will be added when available. The podcast will be released 2025-12-27 to the fortnightly "Media & Democracy" show syndicated for the Pacifica Radio Network of over 200 community radio stations.

It is posted here to invite others to contribute other perspectives, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view while citing credible sources and treating others with respect.

2025-12-11 interview with John Maxwell Hamilton on American propaganda

29:00 mm:ss excerpts from a 2025-12-11 interview with John Maxwell Hamilton on Woodrow Wilson and American propaganda

John Maxwell Hamilton discusses propaganda with Spencer Graves.

Hamilton is a long-time journalist, author, educator, and public servant. He is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor and founding dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, where he has also served as Provost. He has appointments as a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and as a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, both in Washington, DC.

His journalistic work has been carried by many major outlets including ABC radio, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many others. He was a long time commentator for Public Radio International. He has had assignments in over 50 countries.

As an educator, Hamilton has written extensively on foreign news gathering and has worked to improve it. In the 1980s he created and directed projects for local reporting of foreign news, especially on developing countries, for the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The National Journal said Hamilton has shaped public opinion about the complexity of US - Third World relations “more than any other single journalist.”

In government, he oversaw nuclear non-proliferation issues for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, served in the State Department, and managed a World Bank program to educate Americans about economic development. He served in Vietnam as a Marine Corps platoon commander and in Okinawa as a company commander.

Hamilton is an author of 8 books and editor of many more. Two of his more recent books are

• (2020) Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda, and
• (2009) Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting.

Each of them won multiple awards.

His most recent book, The French 75, describes a New Orleans cocktail named by French propagandists during World War I.

Highlights

Hamilton noted that early newspapers had lots of content that was just made up -- what would be called "fake news" today. He is spending a lot of time now reading those old newspapers, e.g., from the 19th century, because he is writing a book on fake news. He said those newspapers did some good. However, "as the 19th century went on and into the 20th century, the number of newspapers declined," because more money was required for the presses that could print large volumes and a low cost per copy. Hamilton said that newspapers with a local monopoly did if relatively good job, because they had more capacity to acquire news and the public seemed to demand it.

After the end of the "Great War", the press, which had supported Wilson during the war, began to realize that they had been used. The facts were materially different from what the administration claimed, a phenomenon that came to be called a "credibility gap" during the Vietnam War.

When asked about the suggestion by McChesney and Nichols of distributing 0.15 percent of GDP to local news nonprofits with a firewall to prevent political interference, Hamilton said it was "potentially a good idea." He said, "Newspapers are never entirely independent." They have to get money someplace. In the twentieth century, advertising paid roughly 80 percent of their budget; subscriptions paid the other 20 percent.

Philanthropies can help, but they tend to move from one idea to another, and a news outlet needs more reliable funding.

Government already interferes with newspapers, e.g., by subsidizing postal rates. Newpaper boys, like he was, were getting a tiny fraction of the minimum wage, because the press lobbied effectively for an exemption, so they could get cheap carriers.

Graves asked what Hamilton thought about the suggestion that the major media creates the stage upon which politicians read their lines. Hamilton replied that it's not that simple, because Trump -- and Obama before him -- were using social media in ways that suggested they did not need the major media.

Graves asked about government secrecy, noting the 1990s Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy and a book Moynihan published shortly after that commission published their final report. Hamilton said he thought Moynihan was correct: Secrecy is a problem. "Moynihan was astute ... part of that group of people who learned to work across the aisles."

He continued, "Propaganda has two parts to it. The goal of propaganda is to get people to think a certain thing or to think a certain way, and there are two ways to do that. One way is to give them information, using taxpayer dollars to give them information to shape their views. The other way is to withhold information that you don't want them to have and would be inconvenient to the point you want to make, and secrecy can be one of the ways to do that."

Graves said that "my understanding is that primary drivers of every major conflict are differences in the media the different parties find credible." Maxwell noted that,

“

War is always difficult. ... It's often difficult to even get on their side and understand well -- what they're thinking and why. The second thing is that if you start reporting what the other side says and you're favorable about it, you're going to lose a lot of readership and money. So that's a problem. And so war is inherently divisive in terms of what people listen to. ...

A law of propaganda is that no one ever does propaganda. Only the enemy does propaganda. ...

When I went through the British archives, when I was writing the book that you're referring to, about the birth of propaganda in World War I, I was astonished when I looked at memos the British Officials were writing to each other. These were not public memos. These were memos they wrote to each other and which they said, it's amazing how great the Germans are at propaganda and how little propaganda we actually do. They said this with what I guess you could call, metaphorically, a straight face. But in fact, the British were much better propagandists than the Germans were.

But yes ... only the other side does propaganda. ...

And that's part of the problem that you have not only in wars but ... in internal conflicts, polarization. ... Every side thinks the other side is doing propaganda and that they're telling the truth, but in fact, they ought to ask themselves ... sometimes, ... you're really telling the truth. ...

There are ways to do propaganda where you just provide facts, and propaganda doesn't have to be awful. It can be a point of view. But the problem is that when the stakes are perceived as being high, propagandists believe that that achieving victory in terms of winning their point of view is more important than promoting democratic discussion.

In fact, that's another law of propaganda. The propagandas are willing to sacrifice democracy even in ... what they think is a pursuit of democracy. The result is that the propaganda does not admit to the other side having anything to say, and it's also willing to shove aside democratic norms. And as soon as you shove aside democratic norms, you run the risk of shoving aside democracy. ...

And it's shocking how little awareness there seems to be ... that both sides feel they're right, and both sides are willing to shove aside process in the interest of their point of view. And the costs of that are very high, ... and it's going to be hard to change.

A new regime could come in, and ... if they're people who have been criticizing Trump, they may well decide that they're going to use all of Trump's tactics, or many of them that are problematic. ...

We could find if President Trump, for example, is allowed to remove people from federal boards, ... I can tell you what the consequences of that will be. If the Supreme Court decides that the President can remove those people, it will mean that any President who comes in can remove everybody from boards and put his own or her own people on those boards. The purpose of those boards is to have balance and to have different experts debate on what's best. If every board is just going to be a function of a partisan agenda, that's a problem. Now, maybe it's constitutionally correct to do that, ... but whether it is or not, people ... will suffer the consequences later, when their party is not in power.

”

Graves said, "It's a throwback to the spoil system that was kind of done away with ... to some degree, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Am I right?"

Hamilton agreed, "Yep, absolutely. ... We have created these boards as a flywheel against ... capricious, unexpert ... executive branch decisions. ... My own view is that those expert, those panels, those quasi independent panels have been good. ... It would be much better if presidents, and in this case, I will say President Trump, was willing to allow these boards to continue functioning as they were with even if he had the power to get rid of the members of these committees, because in the long run, it was better for the state, it was better for the functioning of government. And I think ... he's trying to break that norm. And I think that has consequences."

The need for media reform to improve democracy

This article is part of category:Media reform to improve democracy. A summary of episodes to 2025-11-15 is available in Media & Democracy lessons for the future.

Discussion

[Interested readers are invited to comment here, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view citing credible sources and treating others with respect.]

Bibliography

• John Maxwell Hamilton (2024). The French 75 (in en). Louisiana State University Press. Wikidata Q137342456. ISBN 978-0-8071-8176-8. 
• John Maxwell Hamilton (2020). Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda (in en). Louisiana State University Press. Wikidata Q137342282. ISBN 978-0-8071-7418-0. 
• John Maxwell Hamilton, Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting, Wikidata Q127311037
• Robert W. McChesney; John Nichols (30 November 2021). "The Local Journalism Initiative: a proposal to protect and extend democracy". Columbia Journalism Review. Wikidata Q109978060. ISSN 0010-194X. https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/the-local-journalism-initiative.php. 
• Robert W. McChesney; John Nichols (25 January 2022), To Protect and Extend Democracy, Recreate Local News Media (PDF), Free Press, Wikidata Q109978337, retrieved 2024-06-23
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience, OL 1829930W, Wikidata Q137431706