Читать книгу The History of Psychological Warfare - Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger - Страница 22

Psychological warfare and public relations are different in the direction in which they apply. Psychological warfare is designed to reach the enemy. Public relations is designed primarily to reach the home audience. Both reach neutrals, sometimes confusingly much. In some nations, the two functions were combined in a single instrumentality, as in the Japanese Joho Kyoku (see page 184, below). The American army and navy traditions of public relations are based on the ideas that the news should be as complete as military security may permit, that it should be delivered speedily and interestingly, that it should enhance the confidence of the people in their armed services, and that its tenor (no less than its contents) should not aid the enemy morale. These ideas are justified in terms of sound newspaper practice, but they can lead to a weak psychological warfare position when we must deal with an inventive and enterprising enemy.

It is not possible to separate public relations from psychological warfare when they use the same media. During World War II, the Office of War Information prepared elaborate water-tight plans for processing war news to different audiences; at their most unfortunate, such plans seemed to assume that the enemy would listen only to the OWI stations, and that the American public releases issued from Army and Navy would go forth to the world without being noted by the enemy. If a radio in New York or San Francisco presented a psychological warfare presentation of a stated battle or engagement, while the theater or fleet public relations officer presented a very different view, the enemy press and radio were free to choose the weaker of the two, or to quote the two American sources against each other.