Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World (Open Media Series) (Seven Stories' Open Media) [Paperback]

Nancy Snow (Author), Michael Parenti (Introduction), Herbert I. Schiller (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: Seven Stories' Open Media | Publication Date: November 5, 2002

An eye-opening overview of American cultural policy fully updated through the end of the Bush presidency, Propaganda, Inc. reveals how the United States Information Agency became a bureaucracy deeply distrustful of dissent, and one-way in its promotion of American corporate interests overseas.
Nancy Snow spent two years inside the Agency, and here provides an insider's account of its crooked relationship to corporate interests and war—a must-read for those concerned with American propaganda and the war on terror.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Nancy Snow pulls the curtain on the U.S. Information Agency and shows it to be just another front for corporate America. --Jim Hightower, author of There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos --back cover blurb

About the Author

NANCY SNOW is an Associate Professor in the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Since 9/11, Snow has become a frequent media commentator and public speaker on American foreign policy, influence, persuasion, propaganda, and the root causes of anti-Americanism. From 1992 to 1994, she worked as a cultural affairs specialist and Fulbright program desk officer at the United States Information Agency and as intergovernmental liaison in the Bureau of Refugee Programs, U.S. State Department. She was a Fulbright scholar to Germany and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Snow is also the author of Propaganda, Inc.: Selling American's Culture to the World, in addition to many published articles in professional and mainstream publications including the Los Angeles Times and Newsday. She can be reached online at www.NancySnow.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press; 2 edition (November 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583225390
• ISBN-13: 978-1583225394
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,207,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Nancy Snow (Ph.D., International Relations) is a political communications and propaganda expert who specializes in America's image and reputation in the world. She was born in Augusta, Georgia, hometown of James "I Feel Good" Brown. She was raised in a male-dominated household of four older brothers as the youngest and only daughter of Victor and Suzanne Snow. This explains her strong attachment to sports and food.

Snow is Professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton and Adjunct Professor in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. She has been a visiting professor at the IDC Herzliya, Syracuse University, Tsinghua University, and UCLA.

Snow received her doctorate in international relations from the School of International Service, American University in Washington, D.C. Her specializations include international/intercultural communication, U.S. foreign and cultural policy, and peace and conflict resolution studies. She worked as a cultural affairs and educational exchange specialist at the U.S. Information Agency and refugee and migration specialist at the U.S. State Department. She also studied in the Federal Republic of Germany as a Fulbright scholar and has been selected as a Fulbright professor in Japan.

Snow has published seven books, including several that have been published in other languages. Her personal website is www.nancysnow.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Work, June 11, 2003

By 

Edward M. Melendez (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World (Open Media Series) (Seven Stories' Open Media) (Paperback)

I had never heard of the United States Information Agency until I read this book. Among other public diplomacy (read: propaganda) duties, the USIA is responsible for Radio Marti, the pro-US propaganda beamed in to Cuba and the Fullbright scholar program. The reason those of us living in the US don't know too much about the USIA's mission is that they are not allowed to use their propaganda skills on US citizens, even though their predecessor organization, the Committee on Public Information (CPI) was created during the Wilson administration specifically to convince the people of the US that fighting the Germans in World War I was critical to the security of the American homeland.

Post cold-war and especially during the Clinton administration, the USIA became the mouthpiece of NAFTA and the evangelization of people in other countries of the benefits of accepting American-style economies. This very brief book outlines much of this history and the author Nancy Snow makes it clear that any positive aspects of the program like the Fullbright program have been long buried under the pro-business propaganda machine of the Clinton and Bush the Younger administrations. The Fullbright program in particular became a tool to influence thought on market economics in Mexico and Canada, whose citizens were ambivalent about the promises of economic development promised by NAFTA.

Today, much of the USIA's work has been rolled into the State Department, headed by former advertising executive Charlotte Beers, who is charged with "rebranding America to the world" like the Uncle Ben's Rice she used to work on. The USIA is one of the vehicles of US economic and cultural hegemony, especially in countries that we can't go to war with. Snow's history and analysis ends with an action plan that is wider reaching than simply what to do with the USIA. It is really a series of concrete ideas for reforming the very government of our country.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One dollar, one vote., May 7, 2003

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World (Open Media Series) (Seven Stories' Open Media) (Paperback)

This small book tells the story of the USIA (the US Information Agency), a government unit.
This institution was created with very good intentions (increase mutual understanding between people), but was diverted from its original goal and streamlined as a propaganda machine to promote the US economic system and business interests.

The author rightly stigmatizes harshly the democratic deficit in the US: a media monopoly, a political duopoly ruled by big business and big money, and a plutocracy which dominates without control public welfare, public lands, public airwaves and the pension trusts.
Prof. Snow proposes a seven point plan to restore true democracy, but the implementation will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

This book should be read as a classic example of how particular interest groups take control of a public institution and turn it into a pro-private interests mouthpiece.

Not to be missed.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars U.S. views other countries as clients and customers, February 10, 1999

By A Customer

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This review is from: Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World (Paperback)

This book is lively and informative. I would say "shocking," but nothing shocks me anymore. If the author is correct, the USIA is a sort of shadow embassy of the U.S., selling skewed, altered, and sometimes false views of this culture to other countries, the intent being, in the end, to drum up business for American companies. There is nothing altruistic or moral about the agency's goals, just the crass ideal of selling American pop culture abroad while Americans themselves are kept totally in the dark about the agency's doings. What is sad is that, if Americans knew what the USIA was up to, they probably wouldn't care.