ABSTRACT
When President John F Kennedy (JFK) came to power, he faced the additional challenge of a Cuba under increasing Soviet influence and worldwide Communist insurgence in other parts of Latin America and South East Asia. As a direct response, his administration put in place a set of policies to promote social reform and growth in places such as Latin America where they saw US hegemony being threatened. This chapter examines this programme as a case study to better appreciate the intersection between the practices of journalism, political communication and development policymaking. It focuses on how JFK's officials presented the programme to the media through press briefings and conferences as well as the analysis of background documents. The chapter offers an interdisciplinary, historicised understanding of how development policy is presented to the wider public and how policy formulation and propaganda goals are often intrinsically linked to the extent that neither policies nor news can be disentangled from propaganda.
