Recently, I've discussed and looked at significant propaganda in one of my classes. It's become clear through videos and discussion that propaganda is not only a widespread and influential power, but it also acts in essentially all sides of a conflict. I can't imagine that there is anyway to safely identify propaganda other than to continuously investigate the information we take in. The first part of any analysis needs to look for the subject's bias and identify the founding facts that make such an argument possible.
In exploring blogs online, I first stumbled across Hot Potato Mash and his criticism of Fox News. It's clear from the embedded videos that the Fox corporation was in support of the war effort (see the bottom video) and this sort of agenda in a media source is important to consider. As such a critical information outlet, Fox certainly has more control than it claims and shows that we need to consider all of our news sources equally.
Another video worth discussing here is the second in which a child identifies religion as the reason for wars. There are multiple issues here. First, the child is being used as propaganda tool against religion and probably has relatively minimal idea of the political reasoning (did you know the difference between Republican and Democrats at that age?). And yet, to control YouTube (as O'Reilly appears to be suggesting) is a violation of our freedom of speech. it seems that both sides are utilizing propaganda here. Additionally, the source is in question as some YouTube commenters explain that it was a joke.... not funny?
I searched the web for the most recent occurrence of propaganda and couldn't avoid the story of the 15 British soldiers that were released from Iran last week. The soldiers were given permission to sell their stories to the private sector and as such were deemed "propaganda pawn[s]" by Muslim Public Affairs Committee of the United Kingdom. Many view these stories as way to make Iran look violent in order to stir public opinion against the country. Particular attention is paid to Faye Turney, the only captured female; her gender is commonly pointed out in what seems to be hype.
The outcry from this privatization was overwhelming and it's worth noting that British soldiers we recently banned from telling their stories. But how much of a difference will this make? And will the restriction go away once the outcry dies down? Anyway you look at it, these 15 individuals were already given permission and will be telling their stories; the damage may already be done.
We can't avoid propaganda, but we can, and should, be critical of all the information we take in. It is our responsibility to determine the validity and spin of our news such that we can generate more informed opinions of world issues...
About Me
- Scott
- Troy, New York, United States
- I'm a mechanical engineering student exploring the indoors and outdoors. But mostly the outdoors.
9 comments:
hey, nice post though i might be biased due to the link. i think your thesis, that propaganda can be found on all sides of an issue is true but far less important than the power, money and interest behind the propaganda.
for instance, fox "news" is for all intent and purpose a media arm of the White House that espouses corporatism at the expense of the people. as such, they have virtually endless funds to promote the corporation/bush administration (one in the same) and are not limited by the normal bounds of journalism. but fox news could literally lose millions of dollars, like The Weekly Standard does, and it wouldn't matter to News Corp because it acts to protect huge profits elsewhere.
worse, a singular message is reaching a great many americans that is formulated at the white house and then sent out to the masses via fox news, conservative talk radio and conservative churches privy to the once a week White House phone call. anyone caught in that loop - tens of millions - hear a very precise and coordinated message that, because of circumstances today, is almost entirely propaganda.
why do you think dick cheney or bush make comments so utterly bizarre and contrary to fact often released the same day as happened last week with cheney? not to drive me and others crazy but to supply the sound bite for its inner loop while the contardictory stuff gets cut out.
now, you could literally pit every non mainstream media outlet against the power of that message and you barely stand a chance. the barely accounts for a youtube video or online scheme that goes viral and can really make a difference. in any case, it is an uphill battle.
as for the 15 british soliers, i have a post and related short mashup worth checking out per fox.
http://www.hotpotatomash.com/2007/04/foxs_john_gibso.html
also, personally i find the british gov'ts action a bit strange to the say the least. they had to know exactly what would happen when they gave permission to the soldiers to sell their stories only to make them out to be bad guys after the fact. sounds like a set-up to me. but the intent is similar - not wanting iran to look like the good guy in the whole ordeal.
finally, per the little girl religion video - yes, clearly a pawn of propaganda - but you are making a much more profound claim about religion. if you agree it is wrong for her to be used because she clearly does not know the difference btwn republicans and democrats than i'm assuming you also believe it is wrong to indoctrinate children with any religion before a certain age since god, after life, spirituality, etc. are far more difficult concepts than republicans and democrats.
your conclusion about critical thinking and skepticism is correct but how do you break through to those who will not listen to fact or see reason? sorry for the long-winded-semi-rant and i hope you keep up with the blog! personally, i would love to learn more about the influence of the bible on our young in making war such an acceptable concept when we grow older. is there a link? kind of combines all your interests into one!
great post on subject
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/04/bush-is-on-mission-from-god.html
Pretty crazy stuff... the link between religion, war, and children... it's more common than we think. It's kind of like what hotpotatomash says in the sense that perhaps indoctrinating our children with ANY kind of religion is no different than teaching the difference between right and wrong.
When I get married, which is soon, and have children, which is a little later, I will raise them with my wife. We'll teach them to be good christians; we'll teach them our opinion of what's right and wrong; we'll teach them how to respect people to deserve it and how to interact with those who don't(in our opinion). There's so much we ALL want to teach our children. When does it cross that line where it becomes unacceptable to teach them certain things? When does the intent of the parent (nuclear OR corporate OR religious) undermine utopian desires like world peace or the "greater good"?
These are questions that aren't easily answered. From that confusion yields conflict. One such example(of any conflict) would be the Israeli/Palestinian conflict over their holy land. www.pmw.org/il is a media showcase of sorts that displays all kinds of examples of what one might describe as unacceptable indoctrination of palestinian children as enacted by the PA. Messages about the glory of shahada(martyrdom) and about replacing tows with rocks with which to throw at jewish "settlers" are the sorts of things that shocked me, initially. Also, I am, of course, slightly personally biased, being a christian and being engaged to a fervent Zionist christian... But seeing the movies and reading the reply of hotpotatomash got me wondering. Do Israeli parents not tell their children about the enemy? Do they not demonize the entire palestinian population for the actions of a few radical suicide bombers, or the actions of a government which, I believe, acts largely on its own agenda? They teach their children the same thing that PATV teaches children or Palestine; "they are right and the enemy is wrong, and should be punished for it". Whether it is rocks, guns, exile, murder, or the "will of God", they aren't that much different form each other!
It's a sad story really. But I believe that religion will always be a major source of conflict between nations because the sowing and growing of a belief is wholly dependent on such afforementioned indoctrination. As the world becomes more populated and the demand for things like food, shelter, land, and religious freedom increase, I just don't see it getting any better unless some strong leaders take their counrties by the reigns(again, by the same sort of indoctrination), and decide funally that peace is the most important leson we will teach our children. My prayers go out to those leaders and those nations, that peaceful words will he heard with open hearts.
well, if you think Fox is biased, perhaps you'd be interested in how biased CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. are in ANTI-war, ANTI-Bush reporting are...
http://somesoldiersmom.blogspot.com/2005/10/msm-anti-war-bias-what-milbloggers.html
and if hotpotatomash believes Fox is a right-leaning media outlet, there are 10x as many left or left-leaning media outlets... which is why if you watch the anti-war coverage enough, you THINK Fox is right-biased when, in fact, they are middle of the road.
it's all perspective and pre-judgement (the root words of prejudice) (and hotpotato, you BDS is showing)
here's what the troops think about the media -- and what's really going on in Iraq -- and what people back here are not hearing from CNN and other news outlets...
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/13/letting-the-troops-speak-for-themselves/
Propaganda is a dirty word for persuasion. It's everywhere. In fact I am sure you have tryed to persuade someone to do something on more then one occation. The interesting thing is that Propaganda has undertone of persuasion for self gain and not persuasion for the good of all. Then we have to ask ourselves, are we in Iraq for the good of america or the good of Kellogg, Brown, and Root. If you feel we are in this war to "Defeat Terrorism" cough cough.. I mean find Weapons of Mass Distruction then the news is persuasive. However if you think that our government is using terrorism as a scape goat for our elite to make money then some of this news may be propoganda. I must also note that its awful hard to see anything posive in a war where shit is blowing every day, thousands of people are dieing, and civil war is breaking out. The problem is that we never should have gone to war in the first place, but thats a point too late to argue. We either have to buck up and take the blame for this mess or untie our other hand and flaten the whole place. Sitting in this half ass limbo is just getting our brave service men killed and not solving the problem.
Eric J.
If you take the approach that all "news" is propaganda, it may be a much more realistic. Every organization and person sees the same event in a slightly different way. In fact this leads to the commonly held value that diveristy of thought is a good thing; we try to prompte diversity because it gives more angles of view on a topic. So take all "news" with a skeptical eye; use various sources and ways to get information about the topic. Recognize that behind all news sources there are money, power and vested interest motives. It is not a travesty that news is biased; it is a natural human thing; learn to deal with it.
Currently I am amazed at the wealth of information we are bombarded with on a daily basis from cable news, to newspapers to the internet. You make a good point that we need to evaluate the information we take in, but how do we recognize the most unbiased presentation of facts separate from the propaganda of popular thinking?
Kyle,
Probably the biggest stumbling block to peace in the Middle East is the hatred both sides build up over time courtesy of political leaders. If you teach Palistinian children that Jews have horns on their heads from the time they are born, you cannot just suddenly say forget about that because today we have peace. And the same goes for the other side. Education is the key.
And this is one element of the danger posed by the current leaders in the Repbulican party and Religious Right which has taken a politics is war approach to government. While this first became apparent to many in the Clinton years it has been a long planned strategy of those in power dating back to the Powell Memo. Google the former Supreme Court Justice's famous memo for the blue print of what we are now witnessing.
Amazingly, leaders today do not hide this fact. Karl Rove has said that his goal is to create a permanent Republican party. Grover Norquist has stated, among other things, "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitols -- and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship" and "bipartisanship is another name for date rape". Bush and Cheney have repeatedly referred to millions of Americans as unpatriotic and other derogatory words. President Bush regularly makes absurd statements like "liberal Massachusettes" to deride entire regions or someone from that region.
And the language gets much worse when the religous right gets involved. They don't hide the fact that they are at war with the left. The pro choice movement is demonized and the anti-gay rhetoric in the country has grown starkly worse in the last six years plain for all to see. There was a time when Pat Robertson and his hate spewing brethren were rightly considered fringe elements of society. Today, presidential candidates bend over backwards for these leaders and the Bush administration has literally filled the government with graduates of their schools.
And I would be remiss to not bring this back to the role of the media. Listen to the first 5 minutes of any O'Reilly Factor and you will hear him use the words liberal, left, far left, loony left in a derogatory fashion at least 5 times. A recent study of O'Reilly's "Talking Points" segment by researchers at Indiana University figured O'Reilly name-called those he disagrees with 1 time every 6.8 seconds on average over a six month period. Much of that name calling is by way of demeaning liberals and democrats.
So, I ask you, what is the long term effect of all this? Can these groups of people just one day say, "nah, liberals aren't that bad. They are part of what makes this country great. And they are right about..."? Of course not. And that, by the way, is the point. Bush, Rove, Robertson, et al all know that if current supporters, its base, knew half the truth about our government - that is only concerned with corporate profits and securing permanent power and the creation of a ruling class much to the detriment of its supporters - Bush's approval ratings would be closer to the 2% currently enjoyed by his counterpart in Israel than his current 28% mark.
In any event, there is little doubt that demonizing the other side has real consequences and we should all be worried about them. Never during my lifetime has a president or a party worked so hard to create hate and animosity between the american people. And it trully effects the daily lives of everyone and benefits so few.
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