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During the Mexican Revolution, no U.S. journalist maintained as close or as enduring relations with revolutionary leader as a former California newspaperman, George F. Weeks. Between 1913 and 1920, he was the principal publicist for Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalist regime, directing the Mexican Bureau of Information and founding and editing the Mexican Review/Revista Mexicana, a bilingual magazine that promoted Mexican interests in the United States. He employed techniques that conform to the public-information model of communications, and his activities reflected the practice and increasing significance of public relations and propaganda in an international context during a tumultous decade of revolution and world war.
During the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920, United States journalists exerted a powerful influence on shaping the perceptions, attitudes, and opinions of their compatriots regarding that tumultuous event. The names and works of writers that students of the Revolution immediately recognize include John Kenneth Turner, whose Barbarous Mexico exposed the horrors of the presidential regime of Porfirio Diaz (1877-1911) to an incredulous American public;1 James Creelman, whose interview of the Mexican leader in Pearson's Magazine spurred the Revolution;2 John Reed, whose Insurgent Mexico helped create the mythic image of Francisco "Pancho" Villa;3 and even Ambrose Bierce, who was known not for reportage but rather his mysterious disappearance and death in Mexico that still remain the subject of speculation, novels, and motion pictures.4 No U.S. journalist, however, enjoyed as close or as enduring relations with Mexican revolutionary leaders and governments as did a former California newspaperman, George F. Weeks. Between 1913 and 1920, he was the principal U.S. publicist for Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalist movement. Although Weeks's role diminished considerably after Carranza's murder in 1920, he continued to promote the administrations of Mexican presidents Adolfo de la Huerta, Alvaro Obregon, and Plutarco Elias Calles until 1928.
While most U.S. correspondents reported Mexican revolutionary affairs from a relatively distant, and frequently hostile, position, Weeks operated within official circles and became one of the early twentieth-century public relations practitioners to promote the interests of a foreign government in the United States. Utilizing practices that generally conform to what historians of public relations call the public-information model of communications, he and his associates sought to influence U.S. public opinion by shaping the content of news about...