Quotes About OWI

The popular director of OWI was Elmer Davis, an ex-CBS radioman with an admiration for the wire services and Murrow. Working closely with the Librarian of Congress, the poet Archibald MacLeish, who headed the Office of Facts and Figures, Davis believed that truth was the smartest type of propaganda. This was in stark contrast to the Axis nations, which banned opposition newspapers, censored stories, and screened every dispatch. Fortunately

most controversial of these movies—one whose production had been virtually commissioned by OWI and encouraged by Roosevelt himself—was Warner Bros.' Mission to Moscow, which seemed more interested in saluting Stalin and his regime than in praising the grit of the Russian people.