Thursday, May 31, 2007

More regrets about the USIA - State merger

Following up on the April 23 post analyzing the merger of USIA into the State Department, here is an extract from an op-ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram by Price Floyd, former director of media affairs at the State Department:

"We must do the real work of public diplomacy, not public relations. We need to greatly increase the number of people-to-people exchanges. We need to bring more officials from foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations to the United States -- not just to Washington but to Middle America, small-town America, even the inner cities of America.
We must re-create the American Libraries that we used to run and support in countries around the world. These centers gave thousands of people round the globe access to information that in most cases was not available in their countries."


The full text is at: http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/114346.html



A story based on this op-ed written by Fred Kaplan and featuring an interview with Floyd appeared in Slate online magazine on May 30. It can be accessed at:

http://www.slate.com/id/2167287/

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