What is Propaganda?

There are all kinds of Posters, and a poster inspired this blog.  No, not the Women's Suffrage Meeting poster from 1894, nor Movie posters or Art Reproduction posters that may have come to mind, nor the W.W. I posters many collectors seek.  The poster that inspired this blog came from worldpress.com/' titled The Nine Fundamental Principles of Propaganda, warning, "Propaganda is the backdoor hack into your mind."  

We are living in a time when we are bombarded by misleading information.  I have blogged before about using fact checking sources to attempt to avoid being misled.  I have blogged about the change in news casters, no longer adhering to the standards of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, by 'reporting' more like commentators rather than following a strict adherence to news. I posted a blog about the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, and the failed attempt in 2007 to reinstate it.     In fact, if you scroll through my blogs you may find other examples of ways we are misled.

 Obviously, I find it very important that we have access to information that is the truth, whether it is truthfulness about medicine, news events, health supplements, politics, or many other things.  I have also blogged about the tendency to stretch the truth, whether just to make a better story, to avoid embarrassment, or to intentionally mislead.  The sad fact is that doing business on a handshake or believing everything you hear or read is no longer wise.  That is why I thought it was worth it to share the Principles of Propaganda posted by Word Press.  What follows are the Propaganda Techniques to guard against.  These are the 9 tricks to watch out for!

1.  BIG LIE - Always choose the big lie over the small; the masses will believe it more readily.

2.  FOCUS - Use only one or at most two selling points.

3.  REPEAT - Use them over and over until even your enemies know them by heart.

4.  BLAME - Never waver, acknowledge no doubt; always blame, never credit the other side.  Debase, defame, dehumanize.

5.  PROVOKE - First attract attention, then appeal to emotions.  

6.  CRISIS - Shades of gray don't work:  Issues must be life/death, good/evil, freedom/slavery, love/hate.

7.  EMOTHINAL SYMBOLS - Good slogans have no literal meaning, only a strong emotional appeal.

8.  PANDER - Ignore intellectuals and reasonable arguments; target the unthinking masses with powerful emotional pitches.

9.  NO LIMITS - Ignore all moral limits whenever you deem it useful.

Now that you have this list of propaganda techniques, it might be fun to pick a program and see how many of these techniques you can identify.  If your family is watching television together, perhaps you can turn it into a game, to see who can be the first one to identify a propaganda technique, and which technique was used.  

 With this explanation of the techniques used to mislead us, we are better prepared to avoid falling for those tricks!

    

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Battling Abuses in the 1800s, The Closing of the Series

From The Pratt Tribune

The same week I began this series about the role of muckrakers and the important role they have played in print news, our local newspaper announced that it was going to a single paper each week.  I identified with J.S. who wrote:  "Wow, quite a change...when I worked there... we printed Monday-Saturday…"  

I grew up with our family getting The Pratt Tribune, (and some of you may recall my blog about finding an old copy of that newspaper inside the wall when we did our recent remodeling at the farm).  Back then, when we walked out to the mailbox, the news was only a day old.

The same week that my Battling Abuses series began, the CBS Sunday Morning show broadcast a special interview of Pete Hamill that included respect for his fellow reporter, Jimmy Breslin.  Breslin died in 2017, and Hamill has slowed down considerably from the days when the two of them were, as filmmaker Spike Lee described:  "Back in the day, I mean, you would buy the paper to see what Jimmy Breslin's saying.  You know, what Pete Hamill [says]…[T]hose guys were like superstars."

I have written in past blogs about the essential role of journalists for our democracy, and we cannot forget their importance.  Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of a Free Press, but too many of us fail to respect the absolute necessity of the role played by the press.

Ad from a local business in Isaac's time

On the CBS Sunday Morning show October 6, 2019, Hamill explained:  "The papers gave a sense of meaning.  It was a binding element.  You could see it on the subway.  You [reporters] were trying to help the new arrivals to understand the city, and the older people to understand the new arrivals."    Small town newspapers play that role as well, but not if most of the contents are canned stories written by strangers.

After my father died and my mother moved into town, she became a reporter.  She loved it.  Being a reporter gave her an excuse to attend community events and to get on the phone and call people for news about visitors or trips or achievements.  It may have been small town news, but it was consistent with the role Hamill played in a big city--binding the people who lived there to one another.

Times change.  The number of shops that lined Main Street in small towns and cities are no longer there, so far fewer local ads that supported local papers now exist.  Today people are warned to protect personal information, making them less willing to supply the stories that would once have appeared in the newspaper.  The internet has replaced chatty phone calls and handwritten letters, and now it is replacing small town newspapers.  Even large city newspapers are struggling.

Once there were both morning and evening editions for newspapers, but today we want our news as quickly as it happens.  "Hot off the press!" isn't fast enough, nor is Uncle Walter* on the evening news.  Now we have televisions and the internet with constant news reports, crawls across the bottom of the screen, and news fed to our phones.

Political Cartoon about a biased press

In earlier blogs I have emphasized the importance of professional standards for the news reporters we read and to whom we listen and watch.  For me, biased news is like reading fiction, or, at its worst, propaganda.  If we are to keep news reporters accurate, we need to take the time to find the original source at least occasionally to check it for ourselves.

We also need to stop watching/reading only those with whom we agree, especially if we catch them twisting the truth.  Like the old saying when computers were new, junk in--junk out.  I realize that it is easier for some of us to fact check than for those employed 8+ hours a day, those busy raising children and caring for elderly parents, or those otherwise involved in commitments that fill their days, but it is important that all of us to try to be accurately informed.  We need to be clear about the difference between those delivering Opinion Editorials, those intentionally slanting  or distorting information, and those abiding by professional standards for the delivery of news.

I will close with what I found most interesting in the interview of Pete Hamill.  He was asked, "Would you say you grew up poor?"

"Oh, we grew up poor, but not impoverished," Hamill said.

What's the difference, the interviewer asked.

"The library." 

Hamill continued, "I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for the lessons I learned in this place.  [the public library]"  Later, Hamill added an enlightening story about fellow reporter Jimmy Breslin.  "One day he needed to find something in his desk.  And he asked me to go to his desk, 'open the drawer and it'll be on the right-hand side.'  Lying in front of me is The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden."  Being literate was part of being an educated person in those times, even if you were a hard-nosed reporter like Breslin.

Recognize propaganda (from my old text book)

With our present day 'need for speed,' and consumer ratings, not only are newspapers dying, so is the habit of reading.  Authors and poets have time...time to reflect, to compose, to edit, to lay their work aside and look at it with fresh more critical eyes later, to seek the opinions of respected friends and others knowledgeable about the subject...time to perfect what they publish.  Even as newspaper reporters facing quick deadlines, Breslin and Hamill knew that it was important to make time for books and poetry.  It remains true today that to be informed and literate, our reading needs to be supplemented by more than the "breaking news" that scrolls across the bottom of our screen.  Magazines are struggling to find readers, and it is important to have access to their more reflective news that gets at least a few days or weeks of research and investigation before it is published.  Before print magazines go the way of newspapers, we need to subscribe to the ones we respect for more in depth news reporting.  

Recognize propaganda (from my old textbook)

The responsibility to be reflective rests with all of us-- to read history, to check the constitution, to read biographies and non-fiction related to the subject, to see what another channel on tv or commentator on the internet or newspaper reporter with more time to check facts has to say.  To be fooled requires two people--the one who seeks to fool and the one who falls for it!

The 'Abuses in the 1800s' that Isaac and his contemporaries faced were not entirely unlike our own examples.  Today's abuses may come at us faster and from more directions, but we also have more access to ways to check what is accurate.  We need muckrakers today as much or more than ever.



*For younger readers of the blog, Walter Cronkite delivered the evening news for CBS, and had a reputation for accurate reporting.

Remember, you can click on images to enlarge.     

Then & Now--Influences

Late 1800's Ad from the County Capital

In doing research for my manuscript about Isaac Werner and the Populist Movement, I read both the Populist newspaper to which Isaac subscribed, The County Capital, and the Republican newspaper to which my paternal great grandfather subscribed, The St. John News.  There were certainly significant differences in the way news was reported by those two St. John newspapers.  I suspect, however, that the advertisements I am including in this blog from The County Capital were much the same.

Then and now, we are all influenced by where and how we obtain our information.  Of course, that definitely applies to politics, but this blog is not about politics.  Then and now we are promised cures and beauty products that we want to believe but deep down know better.  We are lured to buy things that are exciting but unnecessary, updates when our old things are still serviceable, beautiful when what we have is just a little faded. I am sharing ads from the County Capital of Isaac's era, but there is no need for me to share modern ads, since you are bombarded with them on television and teased by them in magazines.  The art of propaganda to influence our decisions is nothing new; however, the ability to influence our decisions is encountering new territory.

Late 1800's Ad from the County Capital

Recently I read an article by Justin Brown concerning remarks made by a former Facebook executive, warning the Stanford University students to whom he was speaking that they must decide how much of their intellectual independence they are willing to give up.  Chamath Palihapitiya is a former Facebook vice-president who left in 2011, so he should know about that which he speaks when he says, "you don't realize it, but you are being programmed."

I previously blogged about algorithms  (Adapting to Changing Technologies, 3-30-2017)  and about what we visit and how we purchase online are being used to track our activities, interests, and tastes, as well as how much we are willing to pay for things we want.  Palihapitiya revealed another sophisticated method being used to influence us.  "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works.  No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.  ...This is a global problem  ...  It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other."

1800s Ad, County Capital

He explained how what he called 'bad actors' can manipulate large populations, "...because we get rewarded in these short-term signals (hearts, likes, thumbs ups) and we conflate that with value and we conflate that with truth."

When asked for a solution to the damage this is causing, Palihapitiya admitted that he had no broad remedy.  "My solution is, I don't use these tools anymore.  I haven't for years."

Reflecting on his warning, I thought about whether he was being too alarmist.  Perhaps as you read this, you are doing the same thing.  I have blogged about the disappearing significance of letters between friends. (Isaac's Penmanship, 5-2-2012)  I have noticed how young people no longer join community groups as their parents once did.  The St. John Victorian Teas I blogged about (11-8-2011) have been discontinued because the women who planned and hosted the teas have grown older and were unable to recruit younger women to take their places.  Of course, part of that is the result of more women in the workplace, too busy to assume more responsibilities.  But even lodges and clubs that are merely gathering places are failing to attract younger members.  Movie theaters are closing because people prefer to watch movies at home on their own televisions with Netflix or  cable.  Friends have admitted that they often text because they don't want to get involved in a long phone conversation, and I have watched two people in the same room communicate by text rather than conversationally, excluding others in the room from their comments.  Social courtesies and common interactions are definitely changing.

Brown's article also cites Facebook's founding president, Sean Parker, who acknowledges their purpose was to "consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible."  Parker also admitted the intentional effects of  "giv[ing] you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.  And that's going to get you to contribute more content."  ..."It's a social-validation feedback loop...exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology."  http://www.ideapod.com/social/user/Justin 

Late 1800s Ad from County Capital

Justin Brown, the author of the article from which these quote are taken, is CEO and co-founder of a digital media platform providing commentary on the ideas shaping our lives.

Did the County Capital  shape Isaac Werner's ideas about populism and community issues?  Of course.  Did The St. John News shape my great grandfather's ideas, and the ideas of his son and grandson who continued to be subscribers for their entire lives? Certainly.  However, Isaac and my great grandfather knew one another and shared conversations.  Their interactions were not restricted to like-minded people.  The St. John News editor once joked that some of his subscribers stopped taking the paper in order to subscribe to the County Capital.  "Now they have to borrow someone else's paper to read The News," he teased. But as the way we communicate changes, those interactions change too.

Solo local newspapers generally tried to minimize their bias, not only from professional ethics but also because they needed as many subscribers as possible to stay in business.  Where are those newspapers today?  Small towns that once supported 2 or 3 newspapers now have none.  Small cities shrink their size and publish only once or twice a week to survive.  Even bigger cities' newspapers are slim editions.  Many families no longer subscribe to any newspaper.  

Late 1800s Ad from County Capital 

Our opinions are shaped by national news on television, which doesn't always accurately reflect regional news, reducing their reporting about a state or region to a single point of view.

When was the last time you received a letter from a friend?  Do your friends correspond regularly by e-mail as they did before facebook or other social media.  Are we often too busy to pause for conversations with friends at the post office and the grocery store?  As past means of communication decline, and social organizations lose membership, where do we get our news about friends' new babies and high school sports victories if not on social media.  

And by the way, could you take a moment to ❤❤❤❤me?  We all do it.  And we are pleased when we receive hearts and likes and thumbs up, but hearts are not conversations.  Hearts are not the exchange of ideas and opinions.  Isaac liked it when he received compliments for his ideas, newspaper articles, and speeches at community meetings, but he was also aware of opposing views in his community, expressed during informal conversations and public meetings.  Is what is happening now through social media really that different?  I just thought you might enjoy reading what people with expertise in social media think.  If they are alarmed, should we be??  

Remember, you can click on these antique ad to enlarge them.

School Days & English Texts

Studying English

I have saved my husband's and my own high school and college English texts, believing they might have a use to me as a writer.  I'm sure I have looked at them a few times over the years, but not that many times, and as our bookcases fill and more boxes of books remain, I decided to reconsider the usefulness of the old textbooks.

I picked up my husband's high school senior year English text first, and on the flyleaf, neatly written in his school boy penmanship, was the following quote:  "Do half of everything you don't want to do and you'll gain twice as much knowledge as if you would have done something you liked."  I was impressed by my 16-year-old husband-to-be choosing to write that advice in his book.  I continued to flip through the pages and was surprised to find much more than grammar exercises.  The text book is titled English in Action, and its contents live up to the title. 

Grammar

For example, Chapter 9, "Thinking for Yourself" begins by saying, "much depends upon people who have learned to think for themselves, to make decisions, and to act upon them.  The very basis of our democracy is thinking citizens."  It continues by warning "don't accept too quickly what you see, hear, and read," and continues by pointing out the distinction between objective writing, which "tends to rely principally upon reporting observable facts [and] subjective writing [which] tends to describe or convey opinions, emotions, and judgments."  Wow!  I had no recollection that my senior year English text book went so far in explaining the power of words--both the power to inform and the power to mislead and subtly influence readers' and listeners' thinking.

Name Calling

Beyond the power of words we use and words we read and hear, the text book continued with a lesson teaching students the danger of misleading themselves.  "Because we like to think of ourselves as reasonable beings, we sometimes invent reasons for doing what we want to do."  What followed was a simple but very informative summarization of logic and reasoning, beginning with ways in which emotional responses can mislead--Pride that blinds us to seeing our own failings; Fear of things new or different; Prejudice or prejudging; and allowing Daydreaming to persuade us something is reasonable or likely.

Band Wagon

Next came an explanation of Fallacies--Hasty Generalization; Mistaking the Cause; False Analogy; Ignoring the Question; Begging the Question; Attacking the Person, not the Argument; and Misusing Statistics.  A single paragraph explaining each of these was given, and in simple terms the fallacy was described so clearly that each could be understood.

Self editing

The next section dealt with Propaganda, introducing first three propaganda tricks:  Twisting and Distortion, Selective Omission, and Incomplete Quotation.  That was followed with what the text book described as "devices often harmless in themselves...that encourage unthinking acceptance."  Eight examples followed:  Testimonial, in which a well-known person promotes someone or something about which they have no special qualification to testify; Band Wagon, in which it is implied that "everybody" believes or does something; Plain Folks, in which the appeal is based on being a friendly, humble, salt-of-the-earth person just like you; Snob Appeal, which uses the opposite approach to make others feel more discriminating or exclusive; Glittering Generalities, in which words with generally positive appeal are used, like patriotic, forward looking, or other terms popular at any given time; Name Calling, which pins negative labels on those with whom the speaker disagrees, like "radical, reactionary, dictator, isolationist, or appeaser," and Transfer, in which symbols most people admire are used in order to transfer that appeal to the person using them, such as the political use of the flag.

A final example that was given in the text book was Scientific Slant, which the authors explained: "In most people science inspires awe and faith, which can easily be transferred to the product [or concept]."  I'm not sure the use of Scientific Slant necessarily has the same influence on people today, at a time in which scientific evidence is often distrusted or ignored.

Diagramming Sentences

I was surprised and impressed to find training in logic and reasoning included in an English text book published in 1960.  As a teacher, lawyer, and author, I am well aware of the importance and power of language.  I knew that grammar was emphasized when I was in school, more so in my region than in the region of the country in which I taught high school English, where the reading of great books received more emphasis. 

Isaac Werner was respected in his community because of his superior language skills.  Neighbors came to him to put their agreements into the proper words and write their contracts.  He was asked to be a speaker at the meetings where farmers gathered to find ways to educate themselves about farming, marketing, and increasing their political power.  People of Isaac's time respected the importance of education, and the building of schools was one of the earliest things settlers did.

Understanding the impression we make

My high school English text book included many pages diagramming sentences, a skill which I understand is no longer taught, and which I believe should be!  In fact, as a lawyer, I am certain many contract disputes would never happen if the lawyer drafting the contract were schooled in diagramming sentences.  My husband's old English book contains all the topics I would expect to find in a traditional English text, such as parts of speech, punctuation, grammar, and style, and that information is essential.  However, the unexpected discovery of the chapters meant to help students implement language effectively in their daily lives convinced me that as crowded as my book cases are, this book deserves a place!

(All of the images are taken from the 1960 English text book.)