Breaking News: Public Affairs and the 21st Century

摘要

This research project was undertaken to support the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ASD) for Public Affairs' (PA) audit and analysis of communication processes, procedures, staffing, and resources for PA operations into the 21st century. The paper provides a chronology of Department of Defense (DoD) PA history and evaluates the documents developed by the military departments and DoD for their PA activities. A later tasking brought the need to evaluate how joint doctrine affects PA activities. While reviewing the voluminous PA data and references to web site sources provided by the four services, the author became aware that all the services initiated guidance to their personnel based on directives levied by ASD (PA), but each service's written guidance reflected its own culture, not a vision provided by DoD and service PA leaders, Further examination showed that the DoD's PA activity was not originally designed along organizational lines but developed piecemeal over the years, This make-piece approach caused the services' PA functions to develop goals and objectives following cultural preferences, while the Joint Staff had no vision on which to base their PA warfighting doctrine. This shortfall translated into four distinct ways of conducting PA activities with no single message or common theme. The author's dilemma became how to carry out the tasking to evaluate the PA community's core documents to help them prepare for activities in the 21st century when her findings disclosed an organizational omission that would continue to affect PA's transformation. She decided to focus on PA's history and its affect on the organization's development; identify the civilian and military behaviors that have influenced PA; review the joint doctrine and PA relationship; and analyze the core documents in three areas of critical concern to PA's future: crisis communication, technology, and education/training. (10 tables, 80 refs.).