Bag of Worms Yet Words

Propaganda and News (9)

Hiding Intent to Coerce

I can now drawn together my themes. To summarize - In political competition, parties sometimes claim that the views of broadcast media and political organizations who oppose them are propaganda. This charge involves conceptually expanding the definition of propaganda as governmental coercion of political views to include nongovernmental organizations. This is conceptual equivalency; nongovernment equals government. It is usually political parties on the left, representing collectivism, that make charges of propaganda. Deliberate verbal confusion and making of equivalencies often hide intentions of revolutionary change.

What is being hidden by the Left's accusation of propaganda against conservative news media? It is the Left's intent to coerce the individual in the name of collectivism. Get rid of this basic agenda and not much remains to socialism. The Left plays a familiar game. Accuse someone of what you intend to do, to divert attention from your own intentions. We do not need rehearse the history of the Marxist Left in Western society for the past century to establish this point. After all, it is the collectivists of all stripes - socialists, communists, radical feminists, and postmodernists - who deny the existence of the autonomous individual able to make rational political choices. And it is the collectivists who wish to reform society by re-forming individuals, a goal that can only be accomplished by denying individuals their autonomy.

The best way to thwart the political verbalisms of the Left, and unmask its intent, is to chop apart its conceptual equivalencies. Regarding propaganda, we can do this by restricting the word propaganda to governmental coercion of political beliefs through control of information. This definition respects the notion that the individual is autonomous and rational. The point of the definition is that we need to protect the individual's independence and ability to choose. We should use familiar words to label the blatant misuse of news reporting for political purposes. Biased journalism, editorial journalism, opinion journalism, dishonest journalism, and yellow journalism are terms that should carry significant rebuke to news organizations.

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Individual versus Collective in Public Policy

The struggle between justice based on individual merit and collective justice appears in affirmative action and sexual harassment policies. Affirmative action originated as an executive policy of President Lyndon Johnson to implement Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Executive Order 11246, September 1965, required federal contractors to "take affirmative action" to hire and employ racial minority (black) workers. The next month, the President added women to the requirement. These executive orders represented collective justice. They did not distinguish between black workers and women who had previously experienced employment discrimination and those workers who had not. The purpose of affirmative action was to advance all persons in protected categories on the basis of a class definition, not on the basis of individual merit.

The general justification for collective justice through affirmative action was that certain groups had been collectively discriminated against, so a collective remedy was appropriate. A black person was discriminated against on the basis of membership in a class of skin color, not on the basis of individual behavior. A similar argument was made for collective remedies for women. Women had been, because of membership in a gender class, historically prohibited from enjoying property and civil rights, for instance. In employment, state laws sometimes prohibited specific kinds of employment by women and both trade unions and employers discriminated against women on the basis of gender, regardless of merit. This history provided a basis for collective remedy.

The problem with the justification of collective justice was that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. constitution requires equal protection of the law for all citizens. Discrimination by category was illegal; should not the act also prohibit favoritism by category? This issue would be worked out in the courts. The second problem with the collective justification of affirmative action was that the policy has no inherent end date. The executive orders requiring affirmative action made the policy an instrument for enforcing equality. When would the policy no longer be needed? If it had no practical end date, then it would essentially create by governmental action a class society in which some persons, by reason of their membership in a group, were permanently privileged. This would clearly violate the fourteenth amendment.

Sexual harassment regulations illustrate another feature of collective justice. Sexual harassment is more than discrimination on the basis of sex. It means sexual behaviors that place barriers before the employee. Removing these barriers - relics from an age of collective discrimination - was an important tactic in affirmative action. The definition of the category of sexual harassment grows by subsuming more and more instances of behavior - instances that were not originally thought to be included in the category. In the 1970s, sexual harassment was interpreted in terms of unwanted sexual advances that became conditions or obstacles to employment and advancement (quid pro quo). In the 1980s, the definition expanded to include insults; making an employee feel uncomfortable by word or action, even if the behavior was not sexual in content; even if the behavior did not result in harm; and even if the behavior was unintentional (hostile environment). The definition of sexual harassment as a hostile environment expands the definition of victimhood to include all women (and, later, homosexuals) in the environment, regardless whether they individually experienced hostility. Collective merit became more important than individual merit; hence, the basis for class-action law suits.

Feminists promoted prosecution of sexual harassment as a political position beginning in the 1970s. Their sponsorship transformed affirmative action regulation from a policy for collective compensation for prior gender discrimination to a political movement with ambitions for power in American life. Feminists worked aggressively to expand the concept of sexual harassment into new kinds of behaviors, because it opened new benches of power, not simply new arenas of opportunity. Only a narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court thwarted the most extreme instances of feminists' ideological agenda.

Propaganda and News (7)

Political Engines of Words and Meanings

In the past two centuries, two powerful ideological traditions have driven word creation and formation of meanings in Western politics. These traditions are bourgeois liberalism and collectivism.* On the side of bourgeois liberalism, we locate (among many contributors) English constitutionalism, individual property rights, individual civil rights, and utilitarianism, Jeffersonian democracy, and libertarianism, and the French revolution's destruction of social caste and promotion of secularism. On the side of collectivism, we place (among many contributors) the vast influence of Rousseau, the French Revolution's communalism and attack on individualism, European socialisms, communisms, fascisms and ethnic nationalisms, and American racial nationalisms, socialist feminism, and contemporary communitarianism.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the welfare state fused liberalism and collectivism in a fundamental commitment of Western societies to the collective support of all citizens' material comfort and security. Afterward, the political fortunes of the two philosophies have shifted. We can only point to several of the remarkable developments. In the U.S., collectivism spawned affirmative action, a momentous political contribution to law. Liberalism revived free market theory and began to challenge the assumptions of social ownership and government regulation of economic and social activity.

These two traditions have different strategies in using words and concepts to analyze our social world. Liberalism looks for differences between persons, events, and situations. It draws distinctions between words, concepts, and meanings. The collectivist tradition, in contrast, collapses differences and distinctions, searching for similarities and equivalencies between apparently different persons, events, and situations.

The concept of homicide provides an example of the different approaches of the two traditions. In U.S. law, homicide means simply the killing of a human being. Many different kinds of homicide are distinguished in case law and statute. Some kinds of homicide are justifiable, as provided by statute, such as abortion and the death penalty; some are excusable, such as killing in self-defense. Some kinds are inexcusable. Felonious homicide is wrongful killing. There are two kinds of felonious homicide - manslaughter and murder. Manslaughter is killing without malice, as when a store clerk is accidently killed by a robber in commission of a robbery. Murder is killing with malice aforethought. Manslaughter has been differentiated by state statute in the U.S. into as many as four degrees. Murder has also been differentiated into four degrees. The philosophy of justice associated with bourgeois liberalism has, in summary, created a very complicated taxonomy of homicide. Thus:

Click thumbnail for a full size image.

The purpose of the complicated taxonomy of differences and distinctions is to tailor the punishment or exoneration for homicide to the specific details of the act committed by persons involved in the act. This is justice on the basis of individual merit.

Collectivism provides stark contrast to the liberal individualistic scheme. Anarchists influenced by Marxism and Communism as practiced by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, for instance, collapsed the distinction between excusable homicide and felonious murder, reclassifying certain felonious murders as excusable homicides. For them, it was excusable to kill democratically elected officials and businessmen, for a host of political reasons elaborated by their revolutionary philosophies. This point of view led to murders and bombings of innocent (in terms of bourgeois justice) victims in the U.S. before world war one and in Europe and Russia before world war two.

Similarly, today, the collectivist ideology of Muslim terrorists destroys the distinction between excusable homicide and felonious murder. According to Hamas, it is not manslaughter for Hamas leaders to force women and young boys to commit bombings, and it not murder for the bombers to kill women and children with malicious and hateful intent against them because they are Jews. From the Palestinian point of view, the bombings are excusable homicides. Similarly, it is excusable homicide when Chechen and radical Islamist terrorists murder hundreds of children and adults in a school in Beslan. In the collectivist tradition, justice is what advances collective merit.

We can suggest that in public discussion in liberal democracies a party collapsing taxonomic distinctions and meanings is probably (this is the sad Western history) hiding an intent involving revolutionary change or at worst crimes (from a liberal point of view) behind its rhetorical strategy. In the next article, we explore two more examples of collectivist rhetorical strategy - affirmative action and sexual harassment. Then we shall return to apply these lessons to our central issue of propaganda and news.

*We are not including Christian socialism and Christian democratic socialism as a separate political tradition, because they were not of major significance in the UK and US, although important in, especially, Germany.

CBS's Killian Memos Fraud

CBS's investigation and use of the fraudulent Killian memos are a perfect example of the fundamental flaws of news journalism, as I explained in my "Folly of News Journalism" articles. The reliance upon interviews and procedures of confirmation are invalid means of establishing fact. And the successful unmasking of these memoes by Bloggers is the perfect instance of my recommended correct procedures for news journalism in the same articles. They proceeded first to prove the null hypothesis, meeting success instantly. Start reading article 1 of "The Folly of News Journalism" here.

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Making Words Mean

The term, "propaganda", has been given different meanings by different dictionaries and encyclopedias (see previous article notes). Why should we want the word specifically and narrowly defined, rather than broadly and vaguely? If the word "propaganda" has multiple and contradictory meanings, it must be because people who use it find it useful for multiple purposes; what is wrong with that?

I will argue, in a later article, that how words are given new meanings has a lot to do with political strategies. There have been - in the past century - several clearly distinguished ways to make words mean. One way involves creating different meanings to apply to different situations, intents, and so on. Another way involves collapsing distinctions, saying, in effect, that different situations are not really so different. This rhetoric device has been a favored by Marxists, Communists, and Post-modernists in their political struggles. To see how that strategy works and what effect it has on political argument, I need first to lay foundations.

A term means according to conventions, the user's intent, the audience's expectations, and the situation in which the term is used. Conventions are important; different arenas of life have their own specialized vocabularies and specialized meanings. We usually decide what meaning is intended by an author by assigning the term to the relevant convention (or tradition or genre). In ordinary life, people want different words to have different meanings in a practical sense; different words point to different events and consequences in the real world. If a fireman shouts out, "We need water," the audience (other firemen) know to turn on a motor to pump water from a truck through a hose. If a paramedic, attending a dehydrated patient on a hot day, shouts out, "We need water," the audience (another paramedic) knows to bring an intravenous saline solution kit. The meanings of the same word, "water", are different, because the practical effects desired by the persons using the words are different. The fireman wants a high-pressure stream of water to put out a fire. The paramedic wants a saline solution to rehydrate a patient and increase the patient's blood pressure.

Notice that effective meanings are narrow meanings. Narrow meanings convey specific information. Persons using language do not want their intent to be mistaken.

Precise meanings are important, not only in practical situations, but also in debate. The purpose of debate - for instance, political debate - is to clarify issues, solve verbal problems, and persuade opposing parties (and audiences). Establishing evidence within the framework of a debate, for instance, requires precise meanings. When these aims are being achieved, we say that the debate is being advanced. Understanding is being advanced.

On the other hand, suppose that someone deliberately uses a term in a way that its meaning is unclear, or unexpected, or intuitively confusing. When meanings are so mistaken, it is possible that the speaker (or writer) is trying to mask something. We say, as a rule, when articulate persons, who know how to use words correctly, use words in ways that produce confusion, they are trying to hide something; they are not making mistakes. When speakers use the term, propaganda, for instance, in a broad, vague, or confusing way, they are probably trying to hide something. In the next article, we will see how confusing language often has hidden political purposes.

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What Propaganda Is Not

To make clearer our definition of propaganda and differentiation of kinds of propaganda, we need also to explain what, we are claiming, propaganda is not.

Truth
If you compare our definition of propaganda with several definitions given in note 1 (below), you will notice that we do not require that information, to be labelled as "propaganda," must be false. It has often the case that propaganda tries to pass off false information as true, because without psychological manipulation citizens would not accept falsehoods as true.

Nevertheless, the issue of truth or falsity of the information is secondary. Governments can try to compel political belief with true information, as well as with falsehoods. What is objectionable is the coercion, not the falsehood. The citizenry would object to coercion whether the coercion was on behalf of a truth or on behalf of a falsehood.

Private Communication
Advertising is not propaganda. We exclude from our definition of propaganda all communication from private organizations, individuals, and corporations, even communication which has a political intent. This exclusion follows from our attention to the presence of coercion in propaganda. Only governments have the legal power to coerce citizens. This power is exercised through law, through policing public health and safety, and through civil administration of regulations (for instance). Propaganda is a legal means involving information by which government tries to coerce its citizenry.

Private citizens might try to coerce each other - for instance, a landlord forcibly to evict a tenant - but such action is done through the courts and the coercion is done by the police power of the state.

Private corporations often try to influence public political opinion and public consumption. Their use of advertising is sometimes so insistent and pervasive that consumers feel like they are being pressured beyond their control to buy a product. No doubt this advertising pressure is objectionable; but it does not constitute coercion. Many times a day consumers resist considerable pressure to buy products or adopt advertised political doctrines; their resistance testifies to the sharp distinction between advertising and governmental propaganda. Advertising is not propaganda.

Proselytizing is not propaganda. In societies with religious freedom, religious groups must compete for members. They compete by mass communication of their religious doctrines and the benefits of membership in their churches. This activity is not propaganda, because the churches have no legal power of coercion over the persons to whom they are appealing.

News Journalism
Privately owned media not under governmental control, such as newspapers, television and radio broadcasters, bloggers, and even your neighbor distributing leaflets in your neighborhood, cannot - by our definition - be engaged in propaganda. News that is subtly, politically biased and editorials that are overly political in opinion cannot be called propaganda. News reports may be wrong, or biased, or dangerous, or ignoble, and have many other annoying qualities; but they are not propaganda. When commentators complain that "Fox News is conservative propaganda" or "The New York Times is liberal propaganda," the commentators are making an analogy. They are making a mistake if they claim that Fox news stories or New York Times news stories are actually propaganda. They are making as simple a mistake as if they claimed that novels are poetry and theatrical plays are movies.

This discussion has no force if you reject, to begin with, our definition of propaganda. In the next article, therefore, we shall address why it useful to maintain a narrow definition of propaganda and to distinguish between kinds of propaganda as we have done. We shall also explain the social forces that seek to obliterate such distinctions and what their ultimate purpose is.

Other Definitions of Propaganda

Here are a variety of definitions, which differ to some extent from the narrow definition we are providing.

"By propaganda is not meant the control of mental states by changing such objective conditions as the supply of cigarettes or the chemical composition of food. Propaganda does not even include the stiffening of moral [sic; morale - editor.] by a cool and confident bearing. It refers solely to the control of public opinion by significant symbols, or, to speak more concretely and less accurately, by stories, rumours, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication. Propaganda is concerned with the management of opinions and attitudes by the direct manipulation of social suggestion rather than by altering other conditions in the environment or in the organism." Lasswell, Propaganda Techniques, pp. 8-9.

"Propaganda is a form of communication that attempts to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist." Jowett and O'Donnell, Propaganda, p. 1.

"Propaganda can be called the attempt to affect the personalities and to control the behavior of individuals toward ends considered unscientific or of doubtful value in a society at a particular time." Doob, Public Opinion, p. 241.

"Propaganda can be characterized as any communication whose goal is simply to create or reinforce social capital." From the article, "Propaganda," from Disinfopedia, the encyclopedia of propaganda. [http://disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=propaganda. Accessed August 15, 2003.] Disinfopedia is a project of PR Watch / Center for Media & Democracy, 520 University Ave., Suite 310, Madison, WI 53703.

"Propaganda refers to deliberately false or misleading deceptive information that supports a political cause or the interests of those in power." From the article, "Propaganda," from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda. Accessed August 15, 2003.]

"1: A congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions 2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person 3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread delibeately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such a effect." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition.

(Bibliography with complete references to follow at end of series of articles.)

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Discussion of Three Kinds of Propaganda

In previous articles, we distinguished three kinds of propaganda: first-order (totalitarian), second-order (crisis), and third-order (defensive).

Totalitarian propaganda occurs when government is controlled by a single political party and opposition parties are outlawed. In nineteenth and twentieth century West, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are outstanding examples of single-party states. Today, North Korea follows their examples. Revulsion toward the fascist agendas led, after 1945, some fascist states to tolerate opposition parties, while at the same time neutralizing the political effectiveness of those parties. Strong-man rule and dictatorial rule usually means that a state has only one effective political party - the ruling party. In such states, dictators are "elected" with nearly 100% mandates. Iran today fits this example. In totalitarian states, political dissent is persecuted. Therefore, "government" is synonymous with the governing political party.

In totalitarian society, no institutions or organizations, such as newspapers, can effectively oppose governmental policy. As a result, first-order propaganda is unopposed. Because it is unopposed, it is also open, direct, and effective. The propaganda is an essential and permanent feature of the state.

Crisis propaganda is often indirect and impermanent. The government uses propaganda to (try to) create a set of attitudes in citizens favorable to governmental policy or political party doctrine. The government hopes citizens will convince themselves to accept the policy or doctrine.

In nominally free societies, undergoing crisis, such as the United States and Britain in world wars I and II, public opposition to governmental policy and political doctrine can be expressed, but there are limits to its expression. For instance, a newspaper editorial might criticize a military strategy, but the newspaper would not be permitted to call for the defeat of its national military forces (which would be treason).

These attitudes are usually promoted by hidden psychological techniques. In a sense, second-order propaganda tries to trick the citizenry into adopting attitudes favorable to government policy or party doctrine. Calls for patriotism can be used to dampen dissent against war policies. Government warnings about espionage in the homeland might promote division among ethnic groups that inhibits joint political action against war policies. Claims that the enemy are demonic promote acceptance of governmental policies because our policies, though not perfect, are tolerable by comparison with the enemy's action. Britain engaged in such propaganda during the Napoleonic Wars. Britain and Germany used propaganda about enemy atrocities to justify war policies.

Defensive propaganda, our third kind of propaganda, occurs in a society with actively exercised freedoms of press, speech, and political association. Opposition can freely include calls for the dissolution of government. Free opposition to governmental policy and political doctrine deprives government and the governing party of the ability to coerce political beliefs openly.

Government officers of one party must engage in public discussion with their opponents about the merits of policy and doctrine. Whether or not government policy is meritorious, governments seek to obtain agreement with their policy by promoting an interpretation of events. This interpretation appears to meet the rules of public debate, but actually takes unfair advantage of the government's position to make the governmental interpretation seem more truthful than the interpretation of opponents. Put somewhat differently, using defensive propaganda, the government attempts to control the news, by managing what the news is.

A government might try to tilt interpretation in its favor by denying to political opponents the information the opponents need to refute the governmental interpretation. Documents containing damaging information might be designated, for example, "Classified Top Secret," on the grounds that public knowledge of it might compromise national military security.

Another common tactic of defensive propaganda is for governmental officials to blur the line between governmental and political activities. In the U.S., political attacks against a president of one party by opposing politicians situated in Congress might be met with a constitutional defense. For instance, calls for documents (that might reveal governmental officers were acting politically beyond their official duty) are met with refusals based on the Constitutional separation of governmental powers.

Defensive propaganda was common during the Vietnam War, after opposition to the war became well organized. The Defense Department and the Department of State, as well as the President's Executive Office directly, would release incomplete information relating to events and policy. If taken as the whole story, the incomplete information would lead the public to an interpretation of events favorable to governmental policy.

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Kinds of Propaganda

We distinguish between three kinds of propaganda: first-order or totalitarian propaganda; second-order or crisis propaganda; and third-order or defensive propaganda. We will define the kinds of propaganda in this article and discuss them in the next article.

First-Order (Totalitarian) Propaganda

Definition: First-order propaganda is mass communication by a government of any information that tries to compel persons by direct appeal, with threat of punishment, to accept governmental policy or political party doctrine. It could also be called "totalitarian propaganda."

First-order propaganda occurs in a society without the basic freedoms of press, speech, and political association, such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Second-Order (Crisis) Propaganda

Definition: Second-order propaganda is mass communication by a government of any information that tries to compel persons by hidden techniques to accept governmental policy or political party doctrine. That is to say, the government uses unfair means to persuade citizens of its political doctrine.

Second-order propaganda occurs in a society with constrained freedoms of press, speech, and political association. The United States and the United Kingdom during World War I and World War II are examples of such societies.

Third-Order (Defensive) Propaganda

Third-order propaganda is mass communication by a government of any information that tries to compel persons by unfair interpretation to accept governmental policy or party doctrine.

Third-order propaganda occurs in a society with actively exercised freedoms of press, speech, and political association. Governmental policy and party doctrine are opposed by other political parties.

Defensive propaganda was common during the Vietnam War, after opposition to the war became well organized. The Defense Department and the Department of State, as well as the President's Executive Office directly, would release incomplete information relating to events and policy. If taken as the whole story, the incomplete information would lead the public to an interpretation of events favorable to governmental policy.

We call this kind of propaganda "defensive propaganda," because it typically emerges when governmental policies are under political attack by opponents.

Propaganda and News (2)

Propaganda has been a popular subject for scholarly discussion. Recently, scholars have extended the concept of propaganda to cover intellectual activities and communications quite different from propaganda as it had been known in World War I and World War II in the first half of the twentieth century and in the subsequent Cold War. We do not think these extended meanings are useful{1}; but we will discuss them in a later article. We define propaganda narrowly.

Our definitions turn upon the degree to which two elements are present in propaganda. These two elements were part of the concept of propaganda in the early twentieth century. They are:

- Coercion of political beliefs by government, and
- Deception by the government.

Our definition of propaganda contrasts the citizen under the influence of propaganda to the ideal of the "free, rational citizen" of Western liberalism. The free rational citizen is the autonomous, mentally healthy, adult citizen. She—

- Is not physically or psychologically enslaved,
- Knows her own economic, social, and political self-interests,
- Has objective information about the issues before her,
- Can deliberate rationally about political policies and doctrines, and
- Is freely able to choose among them.

To the extent that she is not able to exercise her citizenship in this manner, because of information communicated to her by the government, she is under the influence of propaganda.

Lasswell, author of a classic study of propaganda during World War I, referred indirectly to the ideal of the rational citizen when he observed that following the war many persons realized they had been fooled by propaganda.

"Some of those [persons who participated in World War I] who trusted so much and hated so passionately have put their hands to the killing of man, they have mutilated others and perhaps been mutilated in return, they have encouraged others to draw the sword, and they have derided and besmirched those who refused to rage as they did. Fooled by propaganda? If so, they writhe in the knowledge that they were the blind pawns in plans which they did not incubate, and which they neither devised nor comprehended nor approved."{2}

The notion that the autonomous rational person can be said actually to exist has long been challenged by social scientists. From Marx and Freud to post-modernists today, many philosophically oriented social scientists have argued that the person is a social construction so embedded in social and historical contexts that the notion of autonomous individual rationality is absurd. Among political scientists, however, the hypothesis of the "rational man" [pc: gender-neutral rational person] thesis has staged a comeback since the 1980s. It explains electoral political behavior well. It is fair to say that the possibility of autonomous rationality accords with every person's common experience in a sufficiently powerful way that makes our (conventionally) narrow definition of propaganda realistic.

Notes
1. For example: Alex S. Edelstein, Total Propaganda: From Mass Culture to Popular Culture. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1997.

2. Harold D. Lasswell. Propaganda Technique in the World War. First edition, 1927. Reprint. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1972. Page 8.

Propaganda and News (1)

Information communicated by government and intended to promote political beliefs is propaganda.

In the twentieth century, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq made propaganda a prominent feature of their public life. Today, North Korea and Iran, for instance, carry on the tradition of fascist propaganda. In unfree societies, dictators use propaganda to reinforce citizen obedience to the official political party.

Propaganda can also be broadcast by a government to the citizens of another country, in opposition to that country's government and its political doctrines. The U.S., for instance, maintained "Radio Free Europe" for nearly 50 years after the end of the second world war. Radio Free Europe broadcast news and other information to the citizens of states of eastern Europe, such as Poland, East Germany, and Hungary, which were controlled by the Soviet Union.

Propaganda is not limited to unfree nations. In the United States, governmental policy research, such as research for environmental impact reports and United States Department of Agriculture research on food and pesticides, occasionally provoke suspicion among political opponents that the research might be propaganda.

Suspicion that research is propagandistic does not mean that the research actually is propagandistic. Such suspicion always exists in free democracies, because statutory policy is created and administered within the context of political competition, and, therefore, political controversy. The practical success or failure of controversial policies will naturally be construed as proof of political assessments of the policies. Given the use of propaganda by totalitarian societies, charges of propaganda are powerful political weapons; the existence of the charges does not, however, prove that politicians in government are deliberately promoting propaganda.

In this series of articles, we shall discuss propaganda, trying to organize different forms of propaganda into useful categories. We shall examine alternative definitions of propaganda. Finally, we shall look at the claim that private broadcast media, such as newspapers and television news, are spreading propaganda.