Offices and Departments

Press and Media Activities

The Press Section in the Public Affairs Office (PA) of the U.S.Consulate General, Kolkata is headed by the Public Affairs Officer (PAO),who also serves as the Director of the American Center.

The PAO is the official spokesperson of the U.S. Consulate General in Kolkata. The Press Section's principal jobs are to provide authoritative information on U.S. Government policies to individuals and organizations in the media and government offices in Eastern and Northeastern India and to track -- and report to Embassy New Delhi -- media opinion on a range of issues important to the United States and India. It coordinates the Consulate's contact with the media in West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Tripura, Assam, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

In addition to issuing press releases five days a week from the Washington File on U.S. Government domestic and foreign policies, it programs visits and press contacts by senior U.S. Government officials, organizes events and prepares and distributes press materials on them, which are of interest to the media and general public. Besides materials in English, it sends out edited and translated press information in vernacular Bengali, Assamese and Oriya languages.

The Press Section also distributes a host of informative and resourceful publications and electronic journals, prepared by the U.S. Department of State on a varied topics of global importance. All press releases issued by Kolkata PA are posted on the Consulate's website
and duly archived.