The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

S P E A K I N G O U T laborate with, and complement the work of, existing official public affairs entities, attacking an emerging false- hood or clarifying an event or issue via the cleared “personal” statements of individual officers — rather than cum- bersome (and sometimes opaque) of- ficial pronouncements. I think, for example, that we’ve wrung all the juice from the tired cliché about diplomats serving their country on the front lines of an in- creasingly dangerous world. So we’re going to need to come up with some- thing better to explain ourselves to a bemused and skeptical audience. In this connection, I would point to media coverage of the “Iraq town hall meeting” fiasco back in the fall of 2007. Media coverage of that event appeared to confirm all the worst stereotypes of cowardly diplomats. Why did the re- porting not reflect, even just a little, the whirlwind of perceptive and patriotic back-channel commentary I read from colleagues near and far about what re- ally went on in that meeting, and the range of perspectives reflected there? Tapping into those useful percep- tions and perspectives, and targeting them to fill the public information gap, would be the underlying goal of the new communications office. This, in turn, would help a broader public to understand, and even appreciate, the many little (and occasionally big) things that diplomats do on behalf of our country and people. ■ Alexis Ludwig joined the Foreign Serv- ice in 1994 and has served in Guate- mala City, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, La Paz and Washington, D.C. He is cur- rently political counselor in Lima. 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 If my experience is in any way representative, then a great deal of potentially useful public expression has been suppressed in our ranks.