| During the waning years of the progressive era, American journalists and diplomats found themselves working in unlikely proximity, with correspondents occasionally performing diplomatic duties and statesmen sometimes courting publicity. The efforts by both to facilitate the peace talks ending World War I arose amidst the vision to create a "new diplomacy"---one characterized by openness, information sharing, and public accountability. Peacemaking via publicity, a now-obscure dimension of progressive statecraft, supplied a powerful ideological ethos at that time. It hinted at dynamically altered roles for journalists and diplomats; offered hope for a world desperate for optimism and order; and, finally, suggested that the fruits of America's great age of reform might be shared overseas.; The influence of public opinion on American foreign policy from 1918 to 1919 was much greater than scholars have normally depicted. Indeed, the evidence from memoirs, official records, and contemporary periodical literature shows that the Paris Peace Conference was saturated with concern about what the press and, through it, the people thought. Although the use of propaganda comprised a prominent response to that influence, it was not the only manifestation of it. The emergence of mass media institutions and the rising power of the presidency both paid homage to public opinion, simultaneously trying to conciliate and manipulate it. Progressive leadership perforce involved publicity campaigns, and however startling his own lapses Woodrow Wilson not only preached the rule but generally practiced it as well.; At any rate, American journalists discovered an abundance of information in Paris. It turned out that the negotiators could not resist the useful leverage that the press provided. At the end of the war, in ways large and small, correspondents served an indispensable democratic role---"public ambassadors," as they were sometimes called. Equally significant, diplomats often assumed that role, too. The nature of diplomacy had changed forever, because mass media had by then made publicity an integral part of politics, governance, and international relations. |
