Artists and Activists Both Have a Role. But Not the Same One.
Two decades ago, I was a public-affairs officer in the Marine Corps, a public-relations guy for the military, tasked with “telling the Marine Corps story” and providing accurate information about military operations to maintain the trust of the American people. We weren’t propagandists — we told the truth, and in Iraq we welcomed plenty of embedded reporters who we knew would write extremely skeptical articles on the progress of the war — but there were fairly tight borders around what the military thought the American people needed to know.
