Foreign Service Officers: Get Ready for Your Closeup

Karen Hughes, undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs, has a message for State Department employees: Stop focusing so much on "quiet little government-to-government messages" and get out there in front of the TV cameras, making the United States look good in the eyes of the world. "The purpose of our ambassadors and our foreign service officers is to be out interacting with the media to be communicating with the public about America's policies and values and actions," she tells the AP. Making that happen, she says, means "working to try to change the entire culture of the State Department."