Propaganda Is Lies; a presentation

All Propaganda is Lies

Introduction

·         Propaganda in war: WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Falklands etc (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLzdWO1FG6M

·         Definitions of propaganda

Oxford dictionary definitions of propaganda, the propandist, agitprop and newspeak

Newspeak was created in a similar vein to that of the constructed English language. Orwell promoted this in his work between 1942 and 1944 before rejecting the idea in his essay “Politics and the English Language”. Within it he suggests a decay in the language by focusing on dying metaphor, needless rhetoric and meaningless words. His ideas concluded with the notion “that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words or constructions.” According to Orwell, by continuing to promote newspeak he was in danger of deliberatly exploiting this degeneration with the aim of oppressing its speakers.

The idea of exploitation follows neatly into the debates and sides which are taken when it comes to arguing for and against propaganda. The examples I have chosen are twenty-first century, left-wing critiques of events and situations which could be construed as propaganda.

Attack on the American government

·         Critiscism on the action taken on the war on terrorism

Not since the sixties and seventies period of flower power and Vietnam has there been such an uproar against the American government. The opposition of the hostilities, culture and policies of Bush’s regime have been constantly documented in worldwide press. However, the harshest of criticism has come from the U.S itself with programs such as Democracy Now! Broadcasting its ideas internationally on the internet and on television; often with round-table discussions and debates on current affairs. Websites such as www.publicintegrity.org are also crucial in exercising a more traditional investigative journalistic method.

·         Is free speech always the correct manner of a journalist?:  the ‘outing’ of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson

In July 2003, journalist Robert Novak reported information in the Chicago Sun Times that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was a CIA covert operative working under the name of valerie Plame. The report was a reply to the former ambassadors article entitled “what we didn’t find in Africa” that critisized the Bush regime against its dealings with Niger over allegations of uranium yellowcake. Novak’s public disclosure of Mrs. Wilson’s then-still-classified covert CIA identity as “Valerie Plame” precipitated what is known as the Plame affair, leading to the CIA leak grand jury investigation, which resulted in the indictment , conviction and commuted sentence (prior to the anticipated full pardon by President Bush) of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in United States v. Libby on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators. A civil lawsuit filed by the Wilsons, Plame v. Cheney, against current and former government officials, followed, but was dismissed on July 19, 2007, in the District Court for the District of Columbia.

The flow of information in this particular case is documented in the above image.

The information war: Propaganda masquerading as journalism

The information war is not one that is new or unique to this era. However it could be debated that it has found proud of place within a time which is parallel to that of the past and it seems as if history is repeating itself. However, where information travels much more freely, it is getting increasingly difficult to divide the truth from the spin.

          The two case studies which I will be talking about suggest ways that the US government is aiming to change the way it is thought about. CNN’s 2005 report “Pentagon sites: Journalism or Propaganda” claims that information that is being published on websites connected to the White House is questioning the President’s pledge not to pay journalists to write copy about his policies. Although 50 independent freelance writers have been commissioned for the websites, Bush has been targeted as feeding misinformation to a global audience. One quotation from the piece which is taken from Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence. “There is an element of deception,” “The problem is that it looks like a news site unless a visitor looks at the disclaimer, which is  sort of oblique.”

 In another article by journalist Anthony York, it is suggested that one of Bush’s goals was to control the media in Iraq after power was seized. The article, which focuses on a US government run television station, states “while journalistic independence from funders is always an issue, even for private sector news outlets — pressures from advertisers or financial supporters often influence content in both subtle and obvious ways — those questions will be more acute for this network, because its sole funder, the U.S. government, is creating the network itself as part of a larger political and public relations strategy. There’s a paradox in its founding: Just as viewers in Arab countries are turning away from state-run programming and embracing independent networks like Al-Jazeera, the U.S. is trying to compete with what is essentially state-run programming, only run by the U.S., not an Arab government.”

Exposing the truth

·         Buying the war – Bill Moyer PBS report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl3zs7069UQ

·         Loose Change- documentary attacking the US government for its involvement in the 9/11 attacks (9/11 truth movement)

The idea of investigative journalism in the 21^st century, from the left wing perspective I’ve been talking about, is about exposing the truth. Documentary films such as Bill Moyer’s Buying The War and Loose Change have been made in order to differentiate the spin from the truth for an audience. Now compare this to the video I made and the people and events that were in it. All of them have one thing in common, and that is they have all been repeatedly been used to promote a political cause or point of view. The exact characteristic of propaganda they are being used to warn the same audience they are manipulating. Orwell was right when he said propaganda is lies, only I don’t think he knew the exact extent of that statement.