John Maxwell Hamilton | |
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Born | Aurora, Illinois, U.S. | March 28, 1947
Occupation | Journalist, public servant, and educator |
Alma mater | Marquette University Boston University George Washington University |
Notable works | Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda; Entangling Alliances: How The Third World Shapes our Lives |
Notable awards | Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award in 2023, Freedom Forum's Administrator of the Year Award in 2003, Goldsmith Prize |
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faculty |
John Maxwell Hamilton (born March 28, 1947) is a journalist, public servant, and educator. He is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for RealClearPolitics.
Hamilton is the author or coauthor of eight books and editor of many more. Two of his most recent books are Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda [1] and Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting. [2] Each of them won the Goldsmith Prize among other awards. His other books include Edgar Snow: A Biography [3] and the lighthearted Casanova Was A Book Lover: And Other Naked Truths and Provocative Curiosities about the Writing, Selling, and Reading of Books. [4] The French 75 [5] , the story of a cannon, a cocktail, and propaganda appeared in 2024.
As a journalist, Hamilton reported in the United States and abroad for the Milwaukee Journal, the Christian Science Monitor , and ABC radio. He was a longtime commentator for MarketPlace, broadcast nationally by Public Radio International. [6] His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post , Politico , Foreign Affairs, and The Nation , among other publications.
In government, Hamilton oversaw nuclear non-proliferation issues for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, served in the State Department during the Carter administration as special assistant to the head of the U.S. foreign aid program in Asia, and managed a World Bank program to educate Americans about economic development.[ citation needed ] He served in Vietnam as a Marine Corps platoon commander and in Okinawa as a reconnaissance company commander.[ citation needed ]
In his twenty years as an LSU administrator, Hamilton was founding dean of the Manship School and the university's executive vice-chancellor and provost. [7] While he was dean, the Manship School created a doctoral degree devoted to media and public affairs, and launched the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs and a related opinion research facility. The number of majors more than doubled as did the size of the faculty and staff; the school's endowment more than sextupled.[ citation needed ]
In the 1980s, Hamilton established a foreign news project for the Society of Professional Journalists and for the American Society of Newspaper editors. The National Journal said in the 1980s that Hamilton shaped public opinion about the complexity of U.S.-Third World relations probably "more than any other single journalist."[ citation needed ] For many years, Hamilton was on the board of the Lamar Corporation, the largest outdoor advertising company (by number of outdoor signs) in the United States.
In 2023, Hamilton won the Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award for excellence in journalism history, given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s History Division, and the Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History, the highest honor of the American Journalism History Association. [8] He received the Freedom Forum's Administrator of the Year Award in 2003. [7] He has received funding from the Carnegie and Ford Foundations, among others. In 2002 he was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He has served twice as a Pulitzer Prize jurist. Hamilton is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Overseas Press Club. Hamilton serves on the board of the International Center for Journalists, of which he is treasurer. [9]
Hamilton earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Marquette and Boston University respectively, and a doctorate in American Civilization from George Washington University.[ citation needed ]
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. Propaganda can be found in a wide variety of different contexts.
Corporate propaganda refers to corporations or government entities that spread specific ideology in order to shape public opinion or perceptions and promote its own interests. The more well known term, propaganda, refers to the spreading of information or ideas by someone who has an interest in changing another persons thoughts or actions. Two important early developers in this field were Harold Lasswell and Edward Bernays. Some scholars refer to propaganda terms such as public relations, marketing, and advertising as Organized Persuasive Communication (OPC). Corporations must learn how to use OPC in order to successfully target and control audiences.
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The Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History is an award for achievement in the study of the history of journalism in the United States, awarded by the American Journalism Historians Association to "individuals with an exemplary record of sustained achievement in journalism history through teaching, research, professional activities, or other contributions to the field of journalism history." The award is not given every year.
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