When we last left off, We were only barely scratchin the surface of the second part of the first chapter. It's only the TRUTH that I'm after, and I have to laugh at the actual antics and lengths that the powers that never should have been in the first place have gone, and still fumbled with no one chasing you...
This is where we're at...
Chapter 1:
THE REALM OF PROPAGANDA 1 was covered in episode 1
The Propaganda Problem 2 was also covered in episode 1
And away we go....
Covert Manipulation
Propaganda is an attempt to persuade people without seeming to do so. Whereas the direct persuasion of a speech alerts our critical faculties that someone is trying to win us over, propaganda's covertness hides the manipulative element in mass communication.
Ivy Lee, a founder of the field of public relations, recognized the connection of covertness and propagandistic communication when he argued that "the essential evil of propaganda is failure to disclose the source of information." Lee put the responsibility for detecting covertness on the nation's editors who, he argued, should demand to know the exact sources of what they printed. Lee's emphasis on the possibility of manipulation through covertness was widely shared during the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.
This law required that agents in the United States who work for a foreign nation must register their activities with the U.S. government. Warriors in U.S. government psychological warfare employ the idea of covertness as one basis for distinguishing among three kinds of propaganda.
White propaganda is the open dissemination of essentially accurate information and clearly-marked opinion. When the Voice of America broadcasts an official announcement of the U.S. government, it is spreading white propaganda.
Gray propaganda contains more of a biased slant in its treatment, and gray sources either are partially concealed or are only vaguely suggested. A case in point is when the Central Intelligence Agency arranges with a commercial publishing house to subsidize publication of a book that the agency views as useful. For instance, the CIA once supported publication of The Dynamics of Soviet Society, by Walt Rostow, a social scientist.
Black propaganda, more often known now as "disinformation," is the product not only of a considerable effort to conceal the source of the information but also employs a significant number of distortions or outright falsehoods.
For instance, the CIA manufactured a variety of bogus leaflets that were presented as having been written by Vietnamese communists during the time when Americans fought in that country. A visiting American newspaper columnist, Joseph Alsop, once picked up such a leaflet which stated that many South Vietnamese were to be sent to China to work on the railways there. Believing that the CIA's leaflet had been written by the communists, Alsop used it as a reference point in his
newspaper columns.
Massive Orchestration
If covertness is the first defining characteristic of propaganda, a second essential feature is the massive orchestration of communication.
The importance of size and scope flows naturally from today's tendency for important communications to originate in institutions and organized groups instead of from individual speakers and essayists.
Modern conditions seem to demand that we characterize propaganda as large-scale symbolic orchestration to distinguish it from persuasion, a term which is easily applicable to single speeches and essays. The massiveness of propaganda is what turns its self-serving and unreflective character into a problem. All persuasion tends toward self-advantage and, therefore, contains an inherent bias.
Aristetle long ago observed that rhetoric was the art of emphasizing what favors our case and of minimizing what is unfavorable to our purposes. Where minimizing and maximizing occur among advocates of equal strength, and where the public is treated to more than one side of a question, the self-serving nature of rhetorical communication cannot only be tolerated but, from the point of democracy, deserves encouragement.
When coupled with symbolic giantism, however, the self-serving nature of communication can become dangerous. One-sided communication threatens the ability of the public to decide wisely whenever an advocate marshalls huge symbolic resources through control of a large institution, access to tremendous funds, support of a powerful interest group, or preponderance in mass media.
For this reason, propaganda tends to be associated with communications from government, from business, and from large pressure groups, especially as diffused through giant media channels.
Tricky Language
A third defining characteristic of propaganda is its tendency to emphasize tricky language designed to discourage reflective thought. Any persuasive devices that help short-circuit logic are associated with
propaganda.
This notion is reflected in the classic seven propaganda devices developed by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis:
name calling:
glittering generalities (use of good/bad words such as "freedom"or "injustice")
transfer (use of prestigious symbols, such as the flag)
testimonial (endorsements from prestigious persons)
plain folks (propagandists representing themselves as "next door"- type of people)
card stacking (minimizing and maximizing)
bandwagon (the idea that everybody is doing it or thinking it)
The danger of bias through tricky language is particularly worrisome in propaganda as compared to speeches.
Aristotle and other classical rhetoricians believed that orators, however pleasing and attractive their claims were, nevertheless needed to support their conclusions with a train of reasons. Speakers required good arguments not only because they stood before their fellow citizens to ask for public action but also because they risked challenge from opposing advocates.
In contrast, propagandists can cast their conclusions widely, sometimes modifying the basic message to fit different groups in an atmosphere that, as often as not, neither calls for a particular public decision nor brings direct point/counterpoint debate. Therefore, one way to characterize propaganda is to note that it typically purveys conclusions, packaged in attractive language, often entirely without support of developed reasons or arguments.
The emphasis of propaganda upon conclusions, and its concomitant deemphasis of developed reasons, became the basis on which early theorists distinguished propaganda from education.
For instance, sociologist Frederick Lumley argued that educators try to teach people to seek out evidence, whereas propagandists dampen critical facilities by feeding people conclusions. According to Lumley's line of thinking, even a competition of propagandas still means that the public is malnourished by an empty diet of prepackaged conclusions.
Educator William Biddle argued, therefore, that propaganda inherently acts to "diminish independent, critical intelligence."
The idea of hollow but glittering symbols as typical of propaganda probably accounts for why many people refer to advertising as propagandistic.
On the other hand, advertising as it is usually pitched directly touts a named product, and the audience is correspondingly aware of the effort to sell. According to the criterion of covertness, therefore, advertising ought not to be classified as communication universally falling into the category of propaganda.
Yet, as I observe in chapter 6, advertising can become highly propagandistic when a plug for a product is embedded as part of the ostensible content of an entertainment program. When, between 1982 and 1989, Coca-Cola owned 49 percent of Columbia Pictures, Coke attempted to profit by inserting into Columbia films not only close-up shots of its drinks but actual dialogue that mentioned them.
Particular Interests
In the late 1940s, a number of scholars developed the concept of pro-tolerance propaganda to signify their hopes that what scientists had learned about large-scale social influence might be harnessed to good social purposes.
Although these researchers recognized that attitudes were hard to change, they were optimistic that communication research might help alleviate anti-Semitism and other forms of social prejudice.
They were hopeful that mass media might be employed to spur grass roots efforts by local volunteers who would nudge their fellow citizens into patterns of greater religious and social tolerance.
If propaganda can be used to combat unsavory prejudices, does this mean that some varieties of symbolic orchestration are good?
I once posed this question to George Seldes, dean of American media critics and longtime political journalist. Seldes has spent a lifetime crusading against commercial and political pressure artists who frequently gain a stranglehold over important media channels.
In Lords of the Press (1938), his classic expose, Seldes explained that wealthy media owners sometimes abused their power, for instance, to trample the Consumers Union, which was refused the right to advertise in mainstream publications of the era.
In more recent times, Seldes has expressed the opinion that the American press exhibits far greater honesty than when he was a young man during the Roaring Twenties; however, he has continued to crusade against such special interests as the tobacco industry which, he argued, exerts pressure to prevent accurate presentations of the adverse effects of smoking on health.
Given Seldes's career as an exposer of pro-business and pro-conservative propagandas in journalism, I questioned him about propaganda emanating from the liberal side of society. The Left, Seldes responded, consists of "all the writers and artists, and liberals and all like that"; in contrast, "on the right you will find all the corporations, and all the big money." In this context, Seldes explained, "if both engage in propaganda, one is, you might say, [promoting] social service or general welfare."
Seldes set the propaganda of the Tobacco Institute which aims at enriching this particular industry in contrast to the propaganda of labor unions which aspire to a more general utopia. In Seldes's estimation, these two propagandas "are not equal." "One is on the general welfare side and the other is anti-general interest and pro-special interest.
Pressing Seldes on the matter of special versus general interests as a test of propaganda, I asked him to comment on the argument made by critics of affirmative action that such policies had become a special interest reverse discrimination disguised as a general social good. No, Seldes responded, although affirmative action disadvantaged some people, these policies provided a general benefit by promoting social equality. In this view, promotions favoring affirmative action would represent an honest propaganda toward a general interest, even if the immediate benefits were not available to everyone.
This colloquy took place in 1984, six years before the "political correctness" controversy emerged as a major topic of discussion in America.
By 1990-1991 (see discussion in chapter 5), a number of conservative and liberal critics began to raise alarms about what they alleged were quasi-totalitarian pressures exerted to force college faculties and students into "politically correct" (P.C.) speech on social issues pertaining to race, gender, and homosexual.
Debate about whether or not the P.C. controversy bespeaks a general or special-interest propaganda
probably will remair a topic of heated discussion throughout this decade. The P.C. debate suggests that it is no simple matter to separate general interests from special interests and, in turn, good propaganda
from bad propaganda.
However, Seldes's essential point rings true that society exempts propaganda from condemnation when social influence is perceived to be in the general interest. For this reason, few complained when Hollywood began to produce films in the early 1940s that glorified military service.
What kind of slacker would presume to naysay John Wayne in The Fighting Seabees (1944) for dramatizing the heroism of the Navy's dedicated and tough construction crews who risked life
and livelihood near Japanese lines.
Moviedom's turn to martial themes was regarded as quite appropriate in the context of a world-wide struggle against fascism.
Channels of Propaganda
What emerges from the foregoing discussion is a general definition of propaganda. Propaganda represents the work of large organizations or groups to win over the public for special interests through a massive orchestration of attractive conclusions packaged to conceal both their
persuasive purpose and lack of sound supporting reasons.
This is going to get into the meat & Potatoes in just a few moments...
Oh this is just the beginning of us tappin in to making a new decision about the direction they have us headin?!
If you read this far, it's gotta be mando that you leave your opinion of what you have read so far.
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Someone cares enough for the both of us!
POPE Ben E. Ficial the First
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