Editing Committee on Public Information (section)

==Criticism==
[[Chris Hedges]], Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, provides a detailed critique of the Creel Commission in his 2010 book ''Death of the Liberal Class''. He describes the CPI's work as "a relentless campaign of manipulation of public opinion thinly disguised as journalism," including manufactured German atrocities and war crimes.<ref name="Chris Hedges 2010">Chris Hedges, ''Death of the Liberal Class'' New York: Bold Type Books, Inc., 2010, ch.3</ref>

[[Walter Lippmann]], a Wilson adviser, journalist, and co-founder of ''[[The New Republic]]'', who was influential with Wilson in his advocacy for the establishment of a pro-war propaganda committee in 1917, and who was "associated with CPI propaganda" in Europe in 1918,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Vaughn |first1=Stephen |title=Holding Fast the Inner Lines |date=1980 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |pages=259 (note 81) |isbn=978-0-8078-1373-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/holdingfastinner0000vaug/page/259/mode/1up?view=theater |access-date=5 January 2025}}</ref> may have later been a critic of Creel.<ref name="Chris Hedges 2010"/> He had once written an editorial criticizing Creel for violating civil liberties, as Police Commissioner of Denver. Without naming Creel, he wrote in a memo to Wilson that censorship should "never be entrusted to anyone who is not himself tolerant, nor to anyone who is unacquainted with the long record of folly which is the history of suppression." After the war, Lippmann criticized the CPI's work in Europe: "The general tone of it was one of unmitigated brag accompanied by unmitigated gullibility, giving shell-shocked Europe to understand that a rich bumpkin had come to town with his pockets bulging and no desire except to please."<ref>Ronald Steel, ''Walter Lippmann and the American Century.'' Boston: Little, Brown, 1980, pp. 125-126, 141-147; Fleming, ''The Illusion of Victory,'' pg. 335; John Luskin, ''Lippmann, Liberty, and the Press.'' University of Alabama Press, 1972, pg. 36</ref>

The [[Office of Censorship]] in [[World War II]] did not follow the CPI precedent. It used a system of voluntary co-operation with a code of conduct, and it did not disseminate government propaganda.{{r|sweeney2001}}