• PROPAGANDA, as it is generally used, means using the media to spread political lies in order to mislead the public (that’s you and me.) Propaganda has always been used as a political tactic, used to one extent or another by almost every political party.
• Propaganda has a cousin named “SPIN” — which means pushing your interpretation of the facts rather than just presenting the facts as they are., but there’s a fine line between spin and outright propaganda. Spin is trying to get the public to see things your way – even if that’s not 100% factual.

Have you ever done something wrong — something you’ll get in trouble for — and you think “I better tell Mom about this before she hears it from somebody else“? (Yes, you have…) You wanted to spin the story — get your set of facts (and maybe not-quite-facts) in front of her and convince her of your interpretation of the story.

• Whenever some piece of news comes out that makes a political party or a politician look bad, they send out a bunch of their “spokespersons” to get on all the news and TV shows to spin the story to their advantage. For every single item of truth you will see on TV news or in the newspapers
• American politics is dominated by what some call “the Spin Machine” — the multi-billion dollar complex of politicians, spokespeople, reporters, media figures, public relations hacks, political pundits and all those “talking heads” you see on all the news show. Their job is to tell you how to look at and interperet the facts — and always to their own advantage.
  
• 
  
• They say a big problem is really just a very small problem; no problem at all, really, and then they change the subject (”Paris Hilton’s DUI!!!”) When they get caught lying, they call it a “misstatement.” They brag about the tax-cut they’re giving Americans — without telling you that the cut is only for the richest 1% of Americans.
• In Macbeth, Shakespeare talked about “the fiend that lies like truth” — and that’s a good definition of spin. It sounds true, it smells true, it feels true. But is it 100% true, or is it 1% truth and 99% spin? They depend on you not knowing the difference.

Bottom Line:

Both propaganda and spin are obstacles between you and the truth. 

PROPAGANDA IN THE NEWS:

Some background on propaganda and the news…

“The Chief Magistrate [the President] cannot enter the arena of the newspapers.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1811. ME 13:64

Thomas Jefferson believed that the government should not interfere with the Freedom of the Press — the press meaning newspapers in his day, and now that would include television and Internet. He and James Madison made sure that Freedom of the Press was the very first right guaranteed to Americans in the Bill of Rights.
He believed that newspapers — free from government influence — kept the public factually informed, and that an informed public was absolutely neccessary for a Democray to thrive. An uninformed public — or in the case of propaganda, a misinformed public — does not know how to vote because they don’t understand (or misunderstand) what’s going on in the world and what the government is really doing.

• He knew that if the Government could control the press, they could control what people knew — and thereby control what they thought and how they voted.

• A government that controls the people’s knowlege and thinking becomes all-powerful. 
• Jefferson believed that the people — not the government — should be all-powerful.

In fact, Jefferson said that the newspapers were more necessary than the government itself: “… were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. … every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

• So what would Jefferson think of the government paying a private company to write stories favorable to the government and to plant them in newspapers as “news”?

• Planting stories in the news to make yourself look good is not news, it is “Public Relations.” The purpose of public relations is to make someone look good, not to give all the facts in an honest and un-biased way. Strictly speaking, it is advertising disguised as news.

• It is the job of the press to put out information. It is the job of propagandists to put out disinformation.

• Disinformation is “Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion…” or ” the spreading of deliberately false information to mislead… It also includes the distortion of true information in such a way as to render it useless.”

When the press (the media — the television news and the newspapers and magazines) puts out disinformation, it is no longer news — it is propaganda.

Why is this important?

“To preserve the freedom of the human mind… and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.” Thomas Jefferson

Paraphrase: “Every American should be willing to die for freedom of the press and freedom of thought. As long as we have those two freedoms, the world will continue to improve.”

• Planting stories goes against freedom of the press, and

• propaganda’s goal is to control your thinking and eliminate freedom of thought.

Does it really work for the government to put out propaganda?

Does it really keep Americans from knowing the truth?

Consider this question. It’s one of the most important questions of your lifetime:

• President Bush said we must go to war with Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction that presented an immediate threat to the safety of the United States. We have now been at war in Iraq for three years.

Q: Have American Forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

• In a recent poll, over 50% of Americans said that, yes, there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We found them when American soldiers went over there.
  

Except there weren’t. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. America faced no “immediate threat” from Iraq. We found no weapons of mass destruction. We couldn’t, because there were none.

“But what about 9/11?”

46% of Americans know that Saddam played a role in the 9/11 attack.

Except he didn’t. None.

Even Bush has finally admitted that these two “facts” are not facts at all.

• So why do over half of the people in the US believe facts that are simply not true?

Propaganda.

We believe things that aren’t true because we listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, because we watch Bill O’Reiley and FOX news, and we read best-selling books by Anne Coulter.

Studies took three mistaken impressions that contributed to much of the popular support for the war: All three originated in the Bush White House and all three proved to be untrue.

1. U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
2. There’s clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the September 11 terrorists.
3. People in other countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it.

The study found that a majority of Americans believed one or more of these false stories.

To find out why people believed these misconceptions, they asked the people where they got their news, FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, newspapers or PBS/ National Public Radio

The results were dramatic and unsurprising.

“The frequency of Americans’ misperceptions varies significantly depending on their source of news. The percentage of respondents who had one or more of the three misperceptions listed above is shown below.”

• 77% of people who watch PBS or listen to NPR knew the truth on all three stories.
• Only 20% of FOX viewers knew the truth about those three critically important points.
• 80% of the FOX viewers believed one or all of the lies.

FOX is widly considered a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. Not surprisingly, people who depend on FOX for their news overwhelmingly believe what the White House says, whether it turns out to be true or not.

• Someone in the propaganda business is not trying to report the facts, they are trying to convince the public of a particular political agenda, whether it is true or not. But propagandists always claim they are giving you the facts.
• Consequently, as comedian Al Franken said, “The more you watch FOX, the less you know.” The studies certainly indicate this is true.

Additionally, many prominent Republicans have continued to push these “talking points” as if they were facts. 

• Two Republicans, Senator Rick Santorum and Representative Pete Hoekstra recently announced that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, even as Bush was admitting that this wasn’t true.
• Long after we knew that Saddam was not involved in 9/11, Vice President Cheney said that the administration is learning “more and more” about connections between Al Qaeda (the 9/11 terrorists) and Iraq. In fact, we were learning that there were no such connections.

Surveys of all the major television networks show a continuing over-representation of Republican / right-wing views. This chart, for example, shows the predominance of the Conservatives on the Sunday morning political news broadcasts:

BOTTOM LINE: You have to learn to look beyond random headlines and biased news shows to find out the truth about what is happening in America and the world.

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT THE TRUTH IS?

Here’s a recent news story:

Remember That Company That Planted Good News In Iraq? So Does The Government, Who Hired Them Again

Posted Thursday September 28, 2006 at 07:10 AM

Good work is rewarded! The Lincoln Group, which you may know better as the PR firm that paid Iraqi newspapers to write positive articles about the U.S. military, has just been awarded a two-year, $6.2-million dollar contract to “monitor a number of English and Arabic news outlets and to produce public-relations products like talking points or speeches for American forces in Iraq, officials said Tuesday.” From the AP:

The idea, according to contract documents, is to use the information to “build support” in Iraqi, Arab, international and American audiences for what the military describes as its goals in Iraq, such as destroying the insurgency and helping Iraqis build a democracy.The list of news outlets to be watched includes The New York Times, Fox Television and the satellite channel Al Arabiya.

Last year there was controversy when it was discovered that the Lincoln Group had been planting positive articles about the U.S. military in Iraqi news outlets; after an investigation, no contravention of military policy was found. This contract apparently does not “include any provisions to purchase favorable coverage or pay for favorable articles.”

What would Thomas Jefferson say?

Techniques of Propaganda:

from an outstanding online booklet from

Cuesta Community College

Recognizing Propaganda Techniques
and Errors of Faulty Logic

Propaganda Techniques

• The BEST WEBSITE for understanding how Propaganda works is the Center for Media and Democracy.

What are Propaganda Techniques? They are the methods and approaches used to spread ideas that further a cause - a political, commercial, religious, or civil cause.

Why are they used? To manipulate the readers’ or viewers’ thinking and emotions; to persuade you to believe in something or someone, buy an item, or vote a certain way.

What are the most commonly used propaganda techniques? See which of the ten most common types of propaganda techniques you already know.

Types:

Name calling: This techniques consists of attaching a negative label to a person or a thing. People engage in this type of behavior when they are trying to avoid supporting their own opinion with facts. Rather than explain what they believe in, they prefer to try to tear their opponent down.

Glittering Generalities: This technique uses important-sounding “glad words” that have little or no real meaning. These words are used in general statements that cannot be proved or disproved. Words like “good,” “honest,” “fair,” and “best” are examples of “glad” words.

Transfer: In this technique, an attempt is made to transfer the prestige of a positive symbol to a person or an idea. For example, using the American flag as a backdrop for a political event makes the implication that the event is patriotic in the best interest of the U.S.

False Analogy: In this technique, two things that may or may not really be similar are portrayed as being similar. When examining the comparison, you must ask yourself how similar the items are. In most false analogies, there is simply not enough evidence available to support the comparison.

Testimonial: This technique is easy to understand. It is when “big name” personalities are used to endorse a product. Whenever you see someone famous endorsing a product, ask yourself how much that person knows about the product, and what he or she stands to gain by promoting it.

Plain Folks: This technique uses a folksy approach to convince us to support someone or something. These ads depict people with ordinary looks doing ordinary activities.

Card Stacking: This term comes from stacking a deck of cards in your favor. Card stacking is used to slant a message. Key words or unfavorable statistics may be omitted in an ad or commercial, leading to a series of half-truths. Keep in mind that an advertiser is under no obligation “to give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Bandwagon: The “bandwagon” approach encourages you to think that because everyone else is doing something, you should do it too, or you’ll be left out. The technique embodies a “keeping up with the Joneses” philosophy.

Either/or fallacy: This technique is also called “black-and-white thinking” because only two choices are given. You are either for something or against it; there is no middle ground or shades of gray. It is used to polarize issues, and negates all attempts to find a common ground.

Faulty Cause and Effect: This technique suggests that because B follows A, A must cause B. Remember, just because two events or two sets of data are related does not necessarily mean that one caused the other to happen. It is important to evaluate data carefully before jumping to a wrong conclusion.

Errors of Faulty Logic

Errors of Attack

Errors of Weak Reference

===========================

Here’s another great resource:

SourceWatch is an encyclopedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda. It is a project of the Center for Media & Democracy

Kinds of Propaganda

Propaganda shares many techniques with advertising or public relations; in fact, advertising and PR can be said to be propaganda promoting a commercial product. As commonly understood, however, the term usually refers to political or nationalist messages. It can take the form of leaflets, posters, TV broadcasts or radio broadcasts.

In a narrower and more common use of the term, propaganda refers to deliberately false or misleading information that supports a political cause or the interests of those in power. The propagandist seeks to change the way people understand an issue or situation, for the purpose of changing their actions and expectations in ways that are desirable to the interest group. In this sense, propaganda serves as a corollary to censorship, in which the same purpose is achieved, not by filling people’s heads with false information, but by preventing people from knowing true information.

What sets propaganda apart from other forms of advocacy is the willingness of the propagandist to change people’s understanding through deception and confusion, rather than persuasion and understanding. The leaders of an organization know the information to be one sided or untrue but this may not be true for the rank and file members who help to disseminate the propaganda.

Propaganda is a mighty weapon in war. In this case its aim is usually to dehumanize the enemy and to create hatred against a special group. The technique is to create a false image in the mind. This can be done by using special words, special avoidance of words or by saying that the enemy is responsible for certain things he never did. In every propaganda war two things are needed: Injustice and Faint. The faint or the injustice may be fictitious or may be based on facts, the aim is always to create hate.

Propaganda is also one of the methods used in psychological warfare. More in line with the religious roots of the term, anti-cult activists accuse the leaders of cults of using propaganda extensively to recruit followers and keep them.

Examples of political propaganda:

• English propaganda against Germany in the First World War, see RMS Lusitania
• German propaganda against Poland to start the Second World War, see Attack on Sender Gleiwitz

Propaganda in Nazi Germany

Most propaganda in Germany was produced by the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (”Promi” in German abbreviation). Joseph Goebbels was placed in charge of this ministry shortly after Hitler took power in 1933. All journalists, writers, and artists were required to register with one of the Ministry’s subordinate chambers for the press, fine arts, music, theater, film, literature, or radio.

The Nazis believed in propaganda as a vital tool in achieving their goals. Adolf Hitler, Germany’s leader was impressed by the power of Allied propaganda during World War I and believed that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and revolts in the German home front and Navy in 1918. Hitler would meet nearly every day with Goebbels to discuss the news and Goebbels would obtain Hitler’s thoughts on the subject; Goebbels would then meet with senior Ministry officials and pass down the official Party line on world events. Broadcasters and journalists required prior approval before their works were disseminated. Hitler and other powerful high ranking Nazis such as Reinhard Heydrich had no moral qualms about spreading propaganda which they themselves knew to be false. Nazi disinformation came to be known as the Big Lie (ironically, a term that Hitler coined initially to describe what he characterized as dishonest propaganda by Jews).

Nazi propaganda before the start of World War II had several distinct audiences:

• German audiences were continually reminded of the struggle of the Nazi Party and Germany against foreign enemies and internal enemies, especially Jews.
• Ethnic Germans in countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, and the Baltic states were told that blood ties to Germany were stronger than their allegiance to their new countries.
• Potential enemies, such as France and Great Britain, were told that Germany had no quarrel with the people of the country, but that their governments were trying to start a war with Germany.
• All audiences were reminded of the greatness of German cultural, scientific, and military achievements.

Until the Battle of Stalingrad’s conclusion on February 2, 1943, German propaganda emphasized the prowess of German arms and the humanity German soldiers had shown to the peoples of occupied territories. In contrast, British and Allied fliers were depicted as cowardly murderers, and Americans in particular as gangsters in the style of Al Capone. At the same time, German propaganda sought to alienate Americans and British from each other, and both these Western belligerents from the Soviets.

After Stalingrad, the main theme changed to Germany as the sole defender of Western European culture against the “Bolshevist hordes.” The introduction of the V-1 and V-2 “vengeance weapons” was emphasized to convince Britons of the hopelessness of defeating Germany.

Goebbels committed suicide shortly after Hitler on April 30, 1945. In his stead, Hans Fritzsche, who had been head of the Radio Chamber, was tried and acquitted by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

Techniques of Propaganda

Saddam Hussein pictured as a decisive war leader in an Iraqi propaganda picture

A number of techniques are used to create messages which are persuasive, but false. Many of these same techniques can be found under logical fallacies since propagandists use arguments which, although sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid.

Some time has been spent analyzing the means by which propaganda messages are transmitted, and that work is important, but it’s clear that information dissemination strategies only become propaganda strategies when coupled with propagandistic messages. Identifying these propaganda messages is a necessary prerequisite to studying the methods by which those messages are spread. That’s why it is essential to have some knowledge of the following techniques for generating propaganda:

Appeal to fear: Appeals to fear seeks to build support by instilling fear in the general population - for example Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore Kaufman’s Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people.

Appeal to authority: Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position idea, argument, or course of action.

Bandwagon: Bandwagon-and-inevitable-victory appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to take a course of action “everyone else is taking.” “Join the crowd.” This technique reinforces people’s natural desire to be on the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their interest to join. “Inevitable victory” invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already, or partially, on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is the best course of action.

Obtain disapproval: This technique is used to get the audience to disapprove an action or idea by suggesting the idea is popular with groups hated, feared, or held in contempt by the target audience. Thus, if a group which supports a policy is led to believe that undesirable, subversive, or contemptible people also support it, the members of the group might decide to change their position.

Glittering generalities: Glittering generalities are intensely emotionally appealing words so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that they carry conviction without supporting information or reason. They appeal to such emotions as love of country, home; desire for peace, freedom, glory, honor, etc. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. Though the words and phrases are vague and suggest different things to different people, their connotation is always favorable: “The concepts and programs of the propagandist are always good, desirable, virtuous.”

Rationalization: Individuals or groups may use favorable generalities to rationalize questionable acts or beliefs. Vague and pleasant phrases are often used to justify such actions or beliefs.

Intentional vagueness: Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply its own interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases, without analyzing their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or application

Transfer: This is a technique of projecting positive or negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or value (an individual, group, organization, nation, patriotism, etc.) to another in order to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. This technique is generally used to transfer blame from one member of a conflict to another. It evokes an emotional response which stimulates the target to identify with recognized authorities.

Oversimplification: Favorable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social, political, economic, or military problems.

Common man: The “plain folks” or “common man” approach attempts to convince the audience that the propagandist’s positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and style of the audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms (and clothes in face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person.

Testimonial: Testimonials are quotations, in or out of context, especially cited to support or reject a given policy, action, program, or personality. The reputation or the role (expert, respected public figure, etc.) of the individual giving the statement is exploited. The testimonial places the official sanction of a respected person or authority on a propaganda message. This is done in an effort to cause the target audience to identify itself with the authority or to accept the authority’s opinions and beliefs as its own.

Stereotyping or Labeling: This technique attempts to arouse prejudices in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates, loathes, or finds undesirable.

Scapegoating: Assigning blame to an individual or group that isn’t really responsible, thus alleviating feelings of guilt from responsible parties and/or distracting attention from the need to fix the problem for which blame is being assigned.

Virtue words: These are words in the value system of the target audience which tend to produce a positive image when attached to a person or issue. Peace, happiness, security, wise leadership, freedom, etc., are virtue words.

Slogans: A slogan is a brief striking phrase that may include labeling and stereotyping. If ideas can be sloganized, they should be, as good slogans are self-perpetuating memes.

===================

Here’s an interesting example of a journalist analyzing the specific techniques of White House propaganda concerning the war in Iraq:

How Bush lies: The Techniques of Deceit

Although Bush presents himself to the world as a plain-spoken, straight-shooting friend of the common man, he regularly employs a variety of techniques to deceive the very people most inclined to trust him.

So far, I have tallied 14 techniques. But there are more to be uncovered, and there are far more examples than I can include here. Consider this the tip of a deceitful iceberg.

In the paragraphs that follow I first will describe the technique of deceit. Then I will illustrate it with one or more quotations or propaganda themes, placing within brackets that portion of the quote that illustrates the technique. Then I will explain how the president applied the technique. Unless otherwise noted, the president’s words are from the State of the Union address.

1) Stating as fact what are allegations (accusations that have not been proven) — often highly dubious ones (this is a staple of Bush’s speeches and Powell’s U.N. presentation; I’ll limit myself to three):

a) “From three Iraqi defectors [we know] that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein [has not disclosed] these facilities. He [has given no evidence] that he has destroyed them.”

Comment: What we “know” is that defectors made this unproven claim. We don’t know if they were paid or coached to make the claim, or volunteered it on their own. For more on this, see Point 9 of the analysis ( http://www.traprockpeace.org/firstresponse.html) of Powell’s address by Dr. Glen Rangwala, Lecturer in Politics at Cambridge University, an advisor to Labor Party opponents of Tony Blair and perhaps the world’s foremost authority on U.S. claims about Iraq, which may explain why one never sees him in the U.S. media. Rangwala notes that one defector made no mention of the labs in his first press conferences. It was several months later, after “debriefings” by the U.S. and the Iraqi National Congress, that he started talking about mobile labs. Hans Blix told the Guardian newspaper of Britain ( http://truthout.org/docs_02/020603A.htm) he has seen no evidence that these mobile labs exist. Acting on tips from the U.S. about labs disguised as food-testing trucks, he investigated. “Two food-testing trucks have been inspected and nothing has been found,” he said. That doesn’t mean that such labs don’t exist, but at this point there simply is no proof of that claim. It is NOT an established fact.

b) “The British government [has learned] that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Comment: Wrong verb. What he should have said is the Brits assert this but have produced no evidence of its veracity. The Brits have offered no date for these efforts, but “recently,” in this case, may well mean “the 1980s.” IAEA director Mohamed Elbaradei has for weeks been asking — so far, in vain — for the U.S. and Britain to provide “specifics of when and where.” He said in a Jan. 12 interview, “We need actionable information.” (Interview cited by Rangwala in his invaluable “Counter-Dossier II,” ( http://traprockpeace.org/weapons.html).

c) “We’ve [learned] that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases.” (Bush’s televised October speech)

Comment: The L.A. Times reported a few days after that speech that CIA director “Tenet’s letter was more equivocal, saying only that there has been ‘reporting’ that such training has taken place. Unlike other passages of the letter, he did not describe the reporting as ‘solid’ or ‘credible.’” http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/la-na-cia11oct11.story

2) Withholding the key fact that destroys the moral underpinning of an argument (and, in Powell’s case, reveals him to be a blood-drenched hypocrite):

“Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who [has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people.]” (Bush’s October speech)

Comment: The problem here is that much of Bush’s national-security team aided and abetted those crimes. After the worst attack, on Halabja in 1988 near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the Reagan team covered for Saddam by implicating Iran, then prevented Congress from imposing tough sanctions on Iraq. Joost R. Hiltermann, an official with Human Rights Watch, shows in a recent column for the International Herald Tribune ( http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0117-01.htm) that Saddam was likely emboldened to use ever more lethal concoctions to polish off the Kurds because he knew from past gassing experience in 1983, 1984 and 1987 that he could always count on the support of Reagan, Powell and George H. W. Bush. The latter’s son has yet to mention this in any of his righteous condemnations of Saddam. There are any number of governments who have the moral standing to condemn Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds. The one headed by George W. Bush does not.

Powell, of course, is the current administration’s knight in shining armor, the trusted figure who commands the respect even of the European leaders who cannot stomach Bush. But give a listen to Peter W. Galbraith, former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and now professor of national-security studies at the National War College in Washington, D.C.:

“the Kurds have not forgotten that Secretary of State Colin Powell was then the national security adviser who orchestrated Ronald Reagan’s decision to give Hussein a pass for gassing the Kurds.” http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2002/1215/coverstory_entire.htm

3) Misrepresentation/Invention:

a) “I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access, a [report] came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were [six months away from developing a weapon]. I don’t know what more [evidence] we need.” (Bush speaking at a news conference Sept. 7 with Tony Blair)

Comment: As Joseph Curl reported three weeks later in the conservative Washington Times, there was no such IAEA report: “In October 1998, just before Saddam kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq [actually, they were withdrawn], the IAEA laid out a case opposite of Mr. Bush’s Sept. 7 declaration: ‘There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance,’ IAEA Director-General Mohammed Elbaradei wrote in a report to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan” ( http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020927-500715.htm). To this day, the administration has yet to produce a convincing explanation for Bush’s bogus assertion.

4) Delegated lying/Team lying:

Iraq was involved with 9-11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, via an Iraqi agent who met him in Prague in the spring of 2001, and thus the Iraqi regime may have participated in some fashion in 9-11. (summary of major, long-lasting propaganda theme)

Comment: For the most outrageous, easily disproved, yet highly effective lies, such as the Iraqi connection to 9-11, sometimes the wise course is to assign personnel far removed from the president to push the lie. That way, the president’s credibility won’t suffer when the facts — known to the administration months before it stopped peddling the lie — come out. And in a perverse fashion, the man at the top of this disinformation pyramid, the president, GAINS credibility for the disinformation in his own speeches, because commentators will note what a cautious and careful performance it was, given that he steered clear of the not-yet-confirmed 9-11 connection.

The farther out of the loop the designated lie-pushers are, the better: The administration can more easily keep from them the intelligence data that flat-out refutes the lie, which helps those lie-pushers who are more convincing when they THINK what they’re saying might be true than when they know for a fact it’s not true. For our purposes, whether the speaker believes what he says is irrelevant. What matters is that the administration is consciously deceiving the public.

The most aggressive pushers of this story have been neoconservative extremists Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Ken Adelman and Frank Gaffney, who either serve on the Defense Policy Board or are otherwise tangentially connected to the administration. (Gaffney has even tried to link Iraq to the 1995 terror bombing in Oklahoma City.) See this article ( http://slate.msn.com/id/2070410/) for details on how this myth stayed alive long after intelligence pros definitely disproved it. Of course, now that the Atta link has petered out, another al Qaeda “connection” of comparable validity is being spread — this time by Powell and Bush.

5) Straw man:

“The risks of doing nothing, the risks of assuming the best from Saddam Hussein, it’s just not a risk worth taking.”

Comment: Notice that Bush doesn’t name anyone who advocates “doing nothing.” The whole idea behind DOING inspections and containment is that everyone knows we can’t take Saddam at his word. Here, for instance, is former President Jimmy Carter’s eminently sensible and non-violent “do-something” strategy to ensure the security of Iraq’s neighbors as well as the United States: http://alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=15084.

6) Withholding the key fact that would alert viewers that the purported serious threat is non-existent:

“We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using UAVs for missions [targeting the United States].” (October speech)

Comment: Bush omits the fact that the vehicles have limited range, thus requiring Saddam to transport the vehicles to our coast line WITHOUT BEING DETECTED. The odds of that happening start at a billion to one. (Dana Millbank exposed this lie last October in the Washington Post. The Post link has expired, but you can read this summary of the lies Millbank exposed: http://www.thedubyareport.com/malleablefacts.html.

7) Using mistranslation and misquotation to plant a frightening impression in the minds of trusting citizens that is the exact opposite of what you know to be true:

“Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls [his ‘nuclear mujahedeen’ -- his nuclear holy warriors].” (October speech)

Comment: Here Bush plays on two fears of the public: of Islamist holy warriors and nuclear weapons. But Saddam runs a secular state and has no ties to Islamist terrorists such as al Qaeda (despite other lies to the contrary). As for nukes, Iraq’s production capabilities had been destroyed completely by 1998, and today Elbaradei is in the process of verifying that Iraq has not taken even the first baby steps in what would be a mammoth effort to rebuild a nuclear infrastructure — an infrastructure that would be virtually impossible to hide.

Equally insidious on Bush’s part is the mistranslation and misquotation. In “Counter-Dossier II” ( http://traprockpeace.org/weapons.html), Dr. Glen Rangwala, observes that the speech Bush is referring to was delivered by Saddam “on 10 September 2000 and was about, in part, nuclear energy. The transcription of the speech was made at the time by the BBC monitoring service. Saddam Hussein actually refers to ‘nuclear energy mujahidin,’ and doesn’t mention the development of weaponry. In addition, the term ‘mujahidin’ is often used in a non-combatant sense, to mean anyone who struggles for a cause. Saddam Hussein, for example, often refers to the mujahidin developing Iraq’s medical facilities. There is nothing in the speech to indicate that Iraq is attempting to develop or threaten the use of nuclear weapons.”

Was Bush aware of the mistranslation and misquotation? We’d have to inject him with truth serum to find out. Even if some senior intelligence official did the deed and kept the accurate quote and translation from Bush, it’s obvious who is setting the deceitful tone in the administration. The official would have every reason to believe that this is just the sort of dirty trick — played on the unsuspecting American citizenry, not Saddam Hussein — that this president would love.

Putting the most frightening interpretation on a piece of evidence while pretending that no other interpretation exists:

“Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes [suitable for nuclear weapons production].”

Comment: Those tubes, unaltered, happen to be a perfect fit for a conventional artillery rocket program. For details, see the tubes section in my essay “An Open Letter to the U.N. About Colin Powell” ( http://commondreams.org/views03/0204-07.htm).

The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35360-2003Jan23.html) adds this: “The tubes were made of an aluminum-zinc alloy known as 7000-series, which is used in a wide range of industrial applications. But the dimensions and technical features, such as metal thickness and surface coatings, made them an unlikely choice for centrifuges, several nuclear experts said. Iraq used a different aluminum alloy in its centrifuges in the 1980s before switching to more advanced metals known as maraging steel and carbon fibers, which are better suited for the task, the experts said. Significantly, there is no evidence so far that Iraq sought other materials required for centrifuges, such as motors, metal caps and special magnets, U.S. and international officials said.”

Following Powell’s address, Susan Taylor Martin of the St. Petersburg Times ( http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/06/Worldandnation/A_strong_case__but_is.shtml) reported this: “Powell’s speech was ‘not quite accurate’ on two points, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan organization in Washington that deals with technical aspects of nuclear proliferation. Contrary to Powell’s claim, anodized tubes are not appropriate for centrifuges and the anodization, designed to prevent corrosion, would have to be removed before the tubes could be used, said Corey Hinderstein, assistant director: ‘It’s not to say it would be impossible to use anodized tubes for centrifuges but it adds an extra step.’ She also challenged Powell’s comment that the tubes must be intended for a nuclear program because they meet higher specifications than the United States sets for its own rocketry. ‘In fact, we found European-designed rockets that had exactly this high degree of specificity,’ Hinderstein said.”

9) Withholding highly relevant information that would weaken your case, because what you really want to obtain from the citizenry is “the UNINFORMED consent of the governed”:

North Korea’s “secret” nuclear-weapons program wasn’t a secret to the administration last fall. Yet it kept the information to itself, waiting till very late in the congressional debate over Iraq to inform not the entire public and Congress, but merely a relative few members of Congress. Thus, the Bush team didn’t have to explain — well before each House even began to debate the various Iraq resolutions — exactly why the administration had no problem seeking a non-invasion solution to a crisis far more grave and imminent than Iraq.

10) Bold declarations of hot air:

a) “[The only possible explanation], the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate or attack.”

Comment: “Deterrence” is also a generally understood reason to develop WMD. Just ask the leaders of North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and the U.S. Deterrence and regional “balance of power” considerations were obvious factors in Saddam’s efforts in the 1980s to develop nuclear weapons. Not the only factors, but factors nonetheless.

b) “Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or [makes] is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991.” (October speech, national television)

Comment: As Rahul Mahajan correctly observes ( http://www.accuracy.org/bush/), “There are no credible allegations that Iraq produced chemical or biological agents while inspectors were in the country, until December 1998. The reason we don’t know whether they are producing those agents or not since then is that inspectors were withdrawn at the U.S. behest preparatory to the Desert Fox bombing campaign.” Visit the Institute for Public Accuracy website ( http://www.accuracy.org) for detailed critiques of Bush’s major addresses on Iraq.

11) Creating in the public mind an intense but unfounded fear:

“[Knowing these realities], America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a [mushroom cloud].” (October speech)

Comment: Iraq cannot turn American cities into mushroom clouds because it has no nuclear weapons and no long-range missiles to fire the nukes it does not have. The world is not about to let Iraq under Saddam resurrect its nuclear-weapons program. But even if the world did, Iraq would still be several years away from being able to develop that bomb.

12) Citing old news as if it’s relevant today, while leaving out the reason it’s not:

a) “The International Atomic Energy Agency [confirmed] in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein [had] an advanced nuclear weapons development program, [had] a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.”

Comment: IAEA has also confirmed, that they shut the program down and destroyed all the production facilities – seemingly relevant facts: In October 1998, Elbaradei reported to the U.N: “There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance” ( http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020927-500715.htm).

13) Transference:

“[This nation fights reluctantly], because [we] know the cost, and [we] dread the days of mourning that always come.”

Comment: Bush is deliberately confusing the sensible, compassionate American people with his bellicose, bullying self.

14) Hallucinatory lying:

Bush’s assertion, based on absolutely no evidence, that Saddam hopes to deploy al Qaeda as his “forward army” against the West: “We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind,” he told a Republican audience in Michigan prior to the congressional elections. (See David Corn’s report at The Nation’s website: http://thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=124.)

Comment: “We need to think about” Bush using Adelman, Woolsey, Perle and Gaffney to do Bush’s dirty work, so as to not leave presidential fingerprints on the hoariest lie of all — that Iraq was an accomplice in 9-11.

15) Withholding the key fact that would show your principled pose to be a pose devoid of principle:

“Saddam Hussein [attacked Iran in 1980] and Kuwait in 1990.” (U.N. speech, Sept. 12, 2002)

Comment: The Swedish government is entitled to condemn Iraq for invading Iran. The current U.S. government — featuring key players from the very Reagan administration that supported Iraqi aggression through much of the 1980s— is not. If you surround yourself with officials who supported the aggression in real time, you’re not entitled to be angered by it 20 years later.

- Bio: Dennis Hans is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Post (Canada) and online at TomPaine.com, Slate and The Black World Today (tbwt.com), among other outlets. He has taught courses in mass communications and American foreign policy at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, and can be reached at HANS_D@popmail.firn.edu.***********

The primary tool of propaganda is “The Media” – television, newspapers, news programs, entertainment, magazines… all the ways inwhich Americans are “informed” about their world. It is very hard to get the truth out to the people when the media is buying in to propaganda. We believe what we hear and see in The Media because — well, we don’t know any different, right? And they wouldn’t lie to us… right?
Here’s an article about the techniques and methods The Media use to manipulate the information — and the misinformation — that they present to you as truth:     

Methods of Media Manipulation

by Michael Parenti

from the book

20 years of Censored News

by Carl Jensen and Project Censored

 

We are told by people in the media industry that news bias is unavoidable. Whatever distortions and inaccuracies that are found in the news are caused by deadline pressures, human misjudgment, limited print space, scarce air time, budgetary restraints, and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a concise report. Furthermore, the argument goes, no communication system can hope to report everything. Selectivity is needed, and some members of the public are bound to be dissatisfied.

I agree that those kinds of difficulties exist. Still, I would argue that the media’s misrepresentations are not merely the result of innocent error and everyday production problems. True, the press has to be selective- but what principle of selectivity is involved? Media bias does not occur in random fashion; rather it moves in the same overall direction again and again, favoring management over labor, corporations over corporate critics, affluent whites over inner-city poor, officialdom over protesters, the two-party monopoly over leftist third parties, privatization and free market “reforms” over public sector development, U.S. dominance of the Third World over revolutionary or populist social change, nation-security policy over critics of that policy, and conservative commentators and columnists like Rush Limbaugh and George Will over progressive or populist ones like Jim Hightower and Ralph Nader (not to mention more radical ones).

The built-in biases of the corporate mainstream media faithfully reflect the dominant ideology, seldom straying into territory that might cause discomfort to those who hold political and economic power, including those who own the media or advertise in it. What follows is an incomplete sketch of the methods by which those biases are packaged and presented.

Omission and suppression

Manipulation often lurks in the things left unmentioned. The most common form of media misrepresentation is omission. Sometimes the omission includes not just vital details of a story but the entire story itself, even ones of major import. As just noted, stories that might reflect poorly upon the powers-that-be are the least likely to see the light of day. Thus the Tylenol poisoning of several people by a deranged individual was treated as big news but the far more sensational story of the industrial brown-lung poisoning of thousands of factory workers by large manufacturing interests (who themselves own or advertise in the major media) has remained suppressed for decades, despite the best efforts of worker safety groups to bring the issue before the public.

We hear plenty about the political repression perpetrated by left-wing governments such as Cuba (though a recent State Department report actually cited only six political prisoners in Cuba), but almost nothing about the far more brutal oppression and mass killings perpetrated by U.S.-supported right-wing client states such as Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, El Salvador, Guatemala, and others too numerous to mention.

Often the media mute or downplay truly important (as opposed to sensationalistic) stories. Thus, in 1965 the Indonesian military-advised, equipped, trained, and financed by the U.S. military and the CIA-overthrew President Achmed Sukarno and eradicated the Indonesian Communist Party and its allies, killing half a million people (some estimates are as high as a million) in what was the greatest act of political mass murder since the Nazi Holocaust. The generals also destroyed hundreds of clinics, libraries, schools, and community centers that had been opened by the communists. Here was a sensational story if ever there was one, but it took three months before it received passing mention in Time magazine and yet another month before it was reported in The New York Times (4/5/66), accompanied by an editorial that actually praised the Indonesian military for “rightly playing its part with utmost caution.”

Lies, bald and repetitive

When omission proves to be an insufficient form of suppression, the media resort to outright lies. At one time or another over the course of forty years, the CIA involved itself with drug traffickers in Italy, France, Corsica, Indochina, Afghanistan, and Central and South America. Much of this activity was the object of extended congressional investigations and is a matter of public record. But the media seem not to have heard about it.

In August 1996, when the San Jose Mercury News published an in-depth series about the CIA-contra-crack shipments that were flooding East Los Angeles, the major media held true to form and suppressed the story. But after the series was circulated around the world on the Web, the story became too difficult to ignore, and the media began its assault. Articles in the Washington Post and The New York Times and reports on network television and PBS announced that there was “no evidence” of CIA involvement, that the Mercury News series was “bad journalism,” and that the public’s interest in this subject was the real problem, a matter of gullibility, hysteria, and conspiracy mania. In fact, the Mercury News series, drawing from a year long investigation, cited specific agents and dealers. When placed on the Web, the series was copiously supplemented with pertinent documents and depositions that supported the charge. The mainstream media simply ignored that evidence and repeatedly lied by saying that it did not exist.

Labeling

Like all propagandists, media people seek to prefigure our perception of a subject with a positive or negative label. Some positive ones are: “stability,” “the president’s firm leadership,” “a strong defense,” and “a healthy economy.” Indeed, who would want instability, weak presidential leader ship, a vulnerable defense, and a sick economy? The label defines the subject, and does it without having to deal with actual particulars that might lead us to a different conclusion.

Some common negative labels are: “leftist guerrillas,” “Islamic terrorists”, “conspiracy theories,” “inner-city gangs,” and “civil disturbances.” These, too, are seldom treated within a larger context of social relations and issues. The press itself is facilely and falsely labeled “the liberal media” by the hundreds of conservative columnists, commentators, and talk-show hosts who crowd the communication universe while claiming to be shut out from it.

Face value transmission

One way to lie is to accept at face value what are known to be official lies, uncritically passing them on to the public without adequate confirmation. For the better part of four years, in the early 1950s, the press performed this function for Senator Joseph McCarthy, who went largely unchallenged as he brought charge after charge of treason and communist subversion against people whom he could not have victimized without the complicity of the national media.

Face-value transmission has characterized the press’s performance in almost every area of domestic and foreign policy, so much so that journalists have been referred to as “stenographers of power.” (Perhaps some labels are well deserved.) When challenged on this, reporters respond that they cannot inject their own personal ideology into their reports. Actually, no one is asking them to. My criticism is that they already do. Their conventional ideological perceptions usually coincide with those of their bosses and with officialdom in general, making them faithful purveyors of the prevailing orthodoxy. This confluence of bias is perceived as “objectivity.”

False balancing

In accordance with the canons of good journalism, the press is supposed to tap competing sources to get both sides of an issue. In fact, both sides are seldom accorded equal prominence. One study found that on National Public Radio, supposedly the most liberal of the mainstream media, right-wing spokespeople are often interviewed alone, while liberals-on the less frequent occasions they appear-are almost always offset by conservatives. Furthermore, both sides of a story are not necessarily all sides. Left-progressive and radical views are almost completely shut out.

During the 1980s, television panel discussions on defense policy pitted “experts” who wanted to maintain the existing high levels of military spending against other “experts” who wanted to increase the military budget even more. Seldom if ever heard were those who advocated drastic reductions in the defense budget.

Framing

The most effective propaganda is that which relies on framing rather than on falsehood. By bending the truth rather than breaking it, using emphasis and other auxiliary embellishments, communicators can create a desired impression without resorting to explicit advocacy and without departing too far from the appearance of objectivity. Framing is achieved in the way the news is packaged, the amount of exposure, the placement (front page or buried within, lead story or last), the tone of presentation (sympathetic or slighting), the headlines and photographs, and, in the case of broadcast media, the accompanying visual and auditory effects.

Newscasters use themselves as auxiliary embellishments. They cultivate a smooth delivery and try to convey an impression of detachment that places them above the rough and tumble of their subject matter. Television commentators and newspaper editorialists and columnists affect a knowing style and tone designed to foster credibility and an aura of certitude or what might be called authoritative ignorance, as expressed in remarks like “How will the situation end? Only time will tell.” Or, “No one can say for sure.” (Better translated as, “I don’t know and if I don’t know then nobody does.”) Sometimes the aura of authoritative credibility is preserved by palming off trite truisms as penetrating truths. So newscasters learn to fashion sentences like “Unless the strike is settled soon, the two sides will be in for a long and bitter struggle.” And “The space launching will take place as scheduled if no unexpected problems arise.” And “Because of heightened voter interest, election-day turnout is expected to be heavy.” And “Unless Congress acts soon, this bill is not likely to go anywhere.”

We are not likely to go anywhere as a people and a democracy unless we alert ourselves to the methods of media manipulation that are ingrained in the daily production of news and commentary. The news media regularly fail to provide a range of information and commentary that might help citizens in a democracy develop their own critical perceptions. The job of the corporate media is to make the universe of discourse safe for corporate America, telling us what to think about the world before we have a chance to think about it for ourselves. When we understand that news selectivity is likely to favor those who have power, position, and wealth, we move from a liberal complaint about the press’s sloppy performance to a radical analysis of how the media serve the ruling circles all too well with much skill and craft.

Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1962, and has taught at a number of colleges and universities. He is the author of thirteen books, including Democracy for a Few (6th edition); Power and the Powerless; Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (2nd edition); The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race; Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment; Land of Idols, Political Mythology in America; Against Empire: Dirty Truths; and Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. Dr. Parenti’s articles have appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals and political periodicals. He lives in Berkeley, California, and devotes him self full-time to writing and lecturing around the country.

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When I run across truely weird examples of media mis-reporting, spin, propaganda and  straight up lying, I will post them, along with some questions for you to ask yourself.

Here’s a good one to start with. My jaw hit the floor when I saw this one:

• BIZARRE MOMENTS in PROPAGANDA: 10/4/06

Here you see actual screenshot from FOX news. (what do you know about FOX news?)

 Look closely – or even not-so-closely:

Why is there a (D) after the name “Mark Foley”?

All the networks do that — place a D after the name of Democrats and an R after the name of Republicans.

So what is wrong with this picture?  

Just that Mark Foley is a Republican, not a Democrat.

According to google, there are over 8,900 news articles online right now talking about Foley, and every one of them says that Foley is a Republican.

Everybody in the news media knows Foley is a Republican.

FOX news knows he is a Republican.

Maybe it was just an innocent mistake.  

After all… why would FOX want to mislead their viewers by saying that Mark Foley is a Democrat?