From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. They call it public diplomacy. The State Department's attempts to

enlighten a skeptical world about American policy and American values by engaging media and

opinion leaders abroad. For the Bush administration, this hasn't been going so well.

Survey after survey demonstrate that the U.S. is seen as ever more arrogant

and its policies ever less attractive.

Until recently, this so-called hearts and minds battle was the job of Price Floyd,

former director of media affairs at the U.S. State Department.

But in an op-ed piece in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Floyd explained why he finally walked away from the job and a 17-year State Department career.

He joins me now. Price, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Bob. Glad to be here.

I've read your piece. You are one dispirited guy. Why?

As you said, I was at the State Department for 17 years, and a 17 years that was filled with

amazing events around the world, and the biggest of those events was 9-11.

Right after that happened, my office, I mean and other people in the State Department really went into overdrive to push America's foreign policy and its goals in the battle against terrorism to an audience around the world.

In the past, we would have an amazingly hard time trying to get any story or interview.

But after 9-11, it was really easy. People were engaged. They wanted to know what we were doing to stop this and to fight this.

But what I found in the six years since 9-11, as we were doing more of that, poll numbers and opinions of the U.S. were going down.

And so I started raising these kind of concerns and meetings.

You know, it's not the package. It's the actual substance that people are having problems with.

So if public diplomacy isn't finding a good public relations way to justify your policies,

what should public diplomacy be? I think it should be two things. It should be through our actions doing good deeds, you know, delivering humanitarian assistance to countries that need it.

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