It's commonly encountered in in textbooks nowadays, e.g. in Jowett & O'Donnell, Propaganda & Persuasion. But I'm not sure who coined this distinction. I found it mentioned quite explicitly in a 1949 article of Howard [P.] Becker, so it's quite an old typology, but Becker neither seems to claim to have devised nor cites someone else for it... (In fact, he criticized the notion of "gray" propaganda in that article, which strongly suggests he didn't originate it.)
Becker's Wikipedia bio doesn't mention this typology as a contribution of his, so I'm guessing he wasn't the one who came up with it. He, in fact, writes:
The division between the two was recognized during the recent war; the Office of War Information (OWI) was restricted to white, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to black.
which suggests it might have originated in the division of labor between these services, but again, that's not terribly clear. So, is there a traceable authoriship or "priority claim" for this typology of propaganda, either in these precise terms or similar ones?
