This week on C-SPAN's Lectures and History podcast, we explore the rise of government propaganda during World War I and its lasting impact on American democracy.

Louisiana State University journalism professor John Maxwell Hamilton, author of Manipulating the Masses, Woodrow Wilson

and the Birth of American Propaganda, examines how the U.S. government established a systematic

propaganda machine, one that set a precedent for state influence over public opinion.

Professor Hamilton earned a doctorate in American civilization from George Washington University.

His book, Manipulating the Masses, received the Book of the Year Award from the American

Journalism Historians Association.

More after this.

So the class today is Woodrow Wilson and the origins of government propaganda.

And the book we're reading is, what's the book?

Public opinion by Walter Littman.

Right.

And we're reading this book in connection with propaganda

because propaganda is what Walter Lippman was reacting to.

This is a photo of Walter Lippman, who looks like a quite buttoned

down guy, which he was, became one of our great public intellectuals, but we'll get to him in a minute.

When he wrote public opinion in 1922, he said, persuasion has become a self-conscious art

and a regular organ of popular government.

What happened at the end of World War I is that propaganda became established in all developed countries and clearly in the United States,

and we're going to talk about that later on. He was an ardent propagandist at the beginning of the war

and then became disillusioned at the end.

So first, let's do a little of the bio.

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