Pay to Play

As the slots get filled for new U.S. ambassadors, I have to modify my earlier praise: too many sensitive overseas posts are being given to Obama fundraisers. For every Carlos Pascual (veteran envoy now assigned to Mexico), there now appear to be several David Jacobsons (Illinois lawyer and Obama-Biden fundraiser set to go to Canada). South Africa, for example, falls into the latter category: an important country in which the next U.S. Read More

Jefferson on Soft Power: Behind Obama’s Cairo Quote

Like many great orators President Obama knows how to quote scripture to maximum impact. His Cairo speech included passages from the Holy Koran, which his audience applauded. Read More

Passing the Day at Guantanamo Bay: A Video Game is on the Way

What do the following have in common? Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and North Korea’s sentencing of the two American female journalists to hard labor. Answer: Each is relevant to Current TV, a U.S. satellite TV channel and Web site. Read More

From Guantanamo Bay to Pyongyang: The Diplomacy of Deeds

On June 7, North Korea's highest court sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor, a sentence more severe than most had predicted. Read More

Engagement is the New Public Diplomacy or the Adventures of a Euphemism of a Euphemism

President Barack Obama inherited two major public diplomacy problems. The first was the obvious crisis in America's communication with the world and the attendant decline in America's global standing. The second was the identification of the process of public diplomacy with the administration of George W. Bush. It was a paradox. The administration could not summon the cure without reminding people of one of the causes of the disease. The linking of Bush with Public Diplomacy was not wholly fair. The term was brought into its modern use in the U.S. Read More

Breaching the Firewall

U.S. government international communicators shifted into max overdrive from both sides of that protective "firewall," to report on what may become known as one of the great White House public diplomacy efforts ever: President Obama's June 4 address from Cairo, Egypt to the Middle East and beyond. The speech was unquestionably both a news event and a public diplomacy activity, so there are times when the mythical "firewall," to protect the independence of government international journalistic endeavors, may be ethically breached. This was one of them. Read More

The Cairo Speech: A Quick Analysis

Some early analyses of President Obama's historic address to the Muslim world in Cairo today have noted that some of Obama's professions of unity with the Muslim world merely echo words President Bush said after 9/11. The implication is that deeds, not words, matter. Read More

Mount Everest in Cairo

It may come to be known as the “new beginnings” speech. The speech that Barack Obama delivered today at Cairo University was probably not his best speech, but it may be his most important and most widely disseminated ever. The U.S. Read More

Setting the Scene

As President Obama embarks for Riyadh and Cairo this evening, the "scene setters" appear: the BBC headlines "what could be one of the most important speeches of his presidency"; America's own NPR features a pre-departure interview focused on the Cairo speech as a "high-profile opportunity to reshape America's image among Muslim countries." Read More

Is Public Diplomacy Journalism Dead?

Maybe public diplomacy journalism is only dying, or maybe it has just become boring to write about the subject these days. This seems to be so on both sides of the pond. Read More

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