Shared Values Initiative

The Shared Values Initiative was a public relations campaign created by the U.S. State Department and directed by Charlotte Beers, a former Madison Avenue advertising executive, to persuade viewers to be more aware, open and accepting of America by dispelling myths about the treatment of Muslims. The propaganda campaign was launched soon after September 11, 2001 and was intended to sell a “new” America to Muslims around the world by showing that American Muslims were living happily and freely in America without persecution. Although initially thought to be a success by the U.S. Government and Charlotte Beers’ team, the $15 million initiative was regarded as a failure.

The campaign was divided in phases; the first of which consisted of five mini-documentaries for television, radio, and print with shared values messages for key Muslim countries. The videos feature “Real Muslim Americans,” participating in their daily activities. $5 million of commercial airtime was purchased with the consent of the government in carefully considered Middle Eastern and Asian countries during Ramadan. Other phases of the Shared Values Initiative included speaking tours throughout Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, and Indonesia. Although speaking tours were allowed in these countries, government-run television channels in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan refused to run the ads.

The campaign also created a promotional website, www.opendialogue.com, that claimed to feature genuine thoughts and stories from Muslim Americans living as immigrants. The website encouraged users to share their own stories with an entry form, although it appears no user-generated stories were ever shared.

Each video in the Shared Values Initiative ended with the tag line “Presented by the Council of American Muslims for Understanding… and the American people,” however, very few Americans knew anything about the campaign: CAMU was a “third party authenticity”—a public relations front group funded by the U.S. State Department specifically for this initiative. It was created in April, 2002 by Malik Hasan, chairman of CAMU, who admits that the idea came from the State Department.

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