"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will announce today the creation of a new annual award to honor a company, academic institution or other nongovernmental entity that does the most to promote the U.S. image abroad through intercultural understanding, State Department officials said. The Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy is designed to prod corporations and other nongovernmental groups to play a bigger role in public diplomacy at a time when the image of the U.S. government has been battered by a backlash, especially in the Arab world, from the invasion of Iraq." Washington Post, 10 January 2007. "The new public diplomacy award was named for Franklin because, as the nation's first ambassador, he was known for his creative ways of using culture and business to communicate with foreign audiences." usinfo.state.gov, 10 January 2007. "The US State Department and the Public Relations Coalition on January 9 to 10 are co-hosting a summit at the State Department that will look at how businesses and other private sector organizations can support and improve US public diplomacy." PRWeek, 8 January 2007. President of Indiana University will speak at the summit. "We are internationalizing our curriculum and expanding our research efforts through outstanding area studies programs." IU press release, 10 January 2007. Update: "There are parts of the American image that are absolutely fantastic. The world definitely sees us as ahead on entertainment, technology and medicine. But the world questions whether we listen and whether we are trying to impose our values and standards -- capitalism, free market -- on them." Fox News, 10 January 2007.