Creel insisted his propaganda was merely educational information distribution.

Evidence

George Creel, Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), 158. In fact, Creel portrayed the purpose of the Committee on Public Information as one of information distribution, and rejected the notion of propaganda as used by the Germans, which “had come to be associated with lies and corruptions. Our effort was educational and informative only, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that only fair presentation of its facts was necessary.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1202

Categorization

• XREF: Aligned with the chapter on WWI propaganda in the book itself; echoes the ‘education vs. propaganda’ framing used by later attention-platform builders like Zuckerberg. — connects to: Creel framed propaganda as open propagation of faith, not censorship — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 155
• DEFINE: Creel’s quote is a primary-source definition of one early framing of propaganda-as-education that later industry figures reused.

Broader Connections

• Creel framed propaganda as open propagation of faith, not censorship #qualifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 155