The Advertising Council, 25 West 45th Street, New York 36, N. Y. (with offices at 203 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago; 1200 18th Street, N. W., Washington; 425 Bush Street, San Francisco) serves as a public relations operation to promote selected projects supported by the Council on Foreign Relations and its interlocking affiliates. The Advertising Council was created in 1942 (then called War Advertising Council) as a tax-exempt, non-governmental agency to promote wartime programs of government: rationing, salvage, the selling of war bonds, and so on. The Advertising Council's specific job was to effect close cooperation between governmental agencies and business firms using the media of mass communication. A governmental agency would bring a particular project (rationing, for example) to the Advertising Council, for help in "selling" the project to the public. The Council would enlist the aid of some advertising agency. The agency (giving its services for nothing, as a contribution to the war effort) would prepare signs, newspaper mats, advertising layouts, broadcasting kits and what not. The Advertising Council might then enlist the free services of a public relations firm to get this material into newspapers and magazines; get it inserted in the regular ads of business firms; get it broadcast, free, as public-service spot announcements by radio networks; get it inserted into regular commercials on radio broadcasts; get slogans and art work stamped on the envelopes and business forms of corporations. The Advertising Council rendered a valuable service to advertisers, broadcasting organizations, and publishers. Everyone wanted to support projects that would help the war effort. The Advertising Council did the important job of screening–of presenting projects which were legitimate and urgent. Even the advertising agencies and public relations firms, which contributed free services, profited from the arrangement. They earned experience and prestige as agencies which had prepared nationally successful campaigns. The Advertising Council continued after the war to perform this same service–selecting, for free promotion, projects that are "importantly in the public interest." Indeed, the service is more valued in peace time than in war by many advertisers and broadcasting officials who are badgered to support countless causes and campaigns, most of which sound good but some of which may be objectionable. Investigating to screen the good from the bad is a major job. The Advertising Council does this job. The Council is respected by industry, by the public, and by government. It is safe to promote a project which the Advertising Council claims to be "importantly in the public interest." Thus, officials of the Advertising Council have become czars in a most important field. They arbitrarily decide what is, and what is not, in the public interest. When the Advertising Council "accepts" a project, the most proficient experts in the world–leading Madison Avenue people–go to work, without charge, to create (and saturate the media of mass communication with) the skillful propaganda that "sells" the project to the public. Officials of the Advertising Council are aware of their power as moulders of public opinion. Theodore S. Repplier, head of the Advertising Council, was quoted in a June, 1961, issue of Saturday Review, as saying:
Note, particularly, that the Advertising Council is responsible to no one. If a business firm should decide on its own to include some "public service" project in its advertising, and the project evoked public indignation, the business firm would lose customers. The Advertising Council has no customers to please. Yet, the Advertising Council is a private agency, beyond the reach of voter and taxpayer indignation which, theoretically, can exercise some control over public agencies. Who are these autocrats who have become so powerful that they can condition, if not control, public opinion? They are the members of the Public Policy Committee of the Advertising Council. Here were the 19 members of the Advertising Council's Committee, on June 23, 1958:
Of these 19, 8 are members of the Council on Foreign Relations–Bunche, Buttenwieser, Hoffman, McCloy, Roper, Shishkin, Shuster, Wriston. The remaining 11 are mostly "second level" affiliates of the CFR, or under the thumb of CFR members in the business world. Some Advertising Council projects really are "in the public interest." The "Stop Accidents" campaign and the "Smokey Bear" campaign to prevent forest fires are among several which probably have done much good. There has never been an Advertising Council project which insinuated anything to remind anyone of the basic American political idea written into our organic documents of government–the idea that men are endowed by God with inalienable rights; that the greatest threat to those rights is the government under which men live; and that government, while necessary to secure the God-given blessings of liberty, must be carefully limited in power by an inviolable Constitution. But there have been many Advertising Council projects which were vehicles for the propaganda of international socialism. The Advertising Council has promoted Law Day, which is an annual occasion for inundating America with "World Peace Through World Law" propaganda, designed to prepare the people for giving the World Court jurisdiction over American affairs, as a major step toward world gov The Advertising Council has promoted the "mental health" project, which, superficially, appears to be an admirable effort to make the public aware of the truth that we have more mentally ill people than we have facilities for–but whose underlying, and dubious, purpose is to promote the passage, in all states, of "mental health" laws fabricated by international socialists in the World Health Organization and in the U. S. Public Health Service. These laws, to "facilitate access to hospital care" for mentally ill people, provide no new facilities, prescribe no better treatment, nor do anything else to relieve the suffering of sick people. The new "mental health" laws, which the Advertising Council is helping to persuade people in all states to accept, eliminate the constitutional safeguards of a person accused of being mentally ill, thus making it easier for bureaucrats, political enemies and selfish relatives to commit him and get him out of the way. The Advertising Council has touted ACTION–American Council to Improve Our Neighborhoods, Box 462, Radio City Station, New York 20, N. Y.–an organization for urban renewal. Of the 66 persons on the ACTION Board of Directors, a controlling majority are:
The Advertising Council supports United Nations propaganda. The 1959 annual report of the United States Committee for the United Nations pays special tribute to the "radio-TV campaign, conducted through the cooperation of the Advertising Council and the National Association of Broadcasters." Here are some passages, from this tribute, which show how the Advertising Council gets one-world socialist propaganda into millions of American homes:
A recent accomplishment of the Advertising Council was its saturation bombing (1961) of the American public with propaganda in support of Kennedy's Youth Peace Corps. |