At times of war, or build up for war, messages of extremities and hate, combined with emotions of honor and righteousness interplay to provide powerful propaganda for a cause. Those who promote the negative image of the “enemy” may often reinforce it with rhetoric about the righteousness of themselves; the attempt is to muster up support and nurture the belief that what is to be done is in the positive and beneficial interest of everyone. Often, the principles used to demonize the other, is not used to judge the self, leading to accusations of double standards and hypocrisy.
Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support. While the issue of propaganda often is discussed in the context of militarism, war and war-mongering, it is around us in all aspects of life.
As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:
- Using selective stories that come over as wide-covering and objective.
- Partial facts, or historical context
- Reinforcing reasons and motivations to act due to threats on the security of the individual.
- Narrow sources of “experts” to provide insights in to the situation. (For example, the mainstream media typically interview retired military personnel for many conflict-related issues, or treat official government sources as fact, rather than just one perspective that needs to be verified and researched).
- Demonizing the “enemy” who does not fit the picture of what is “right”.
- Using a narrow range of discourse, whereby judgments are often made while the boundary of discourse itself, or the framework within which the opinions are formed, are often not discussed. The narrow focus then helps to serve the interests of the propagandists.
Military control of information during war time is also a major contributing factor to propaganda, especially when the media go along with it without question. The military recognizes the values of media and information control very well. The military often manipulates the mainstream media, by restricting or managing what information is presented and hence what the public are told. For them it is paramount to control the media.
It turns out the pro-war slant of military analysts was in fact part of a carefully orchestrated propaganda effort from the Pentagon. The New York Times (NYT) has revealed the Pentagon recruited more than seventy-five retired military officers to appear on TV outlets as so-called military analysts ahead of the Iraq war. Newly disclosed Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration themes and messages to millions of Americans in the form of their own opinions.
The NYT's Saturday story regarding the media's use of Pentagon-controlled "independent" military analysts, but there hasn't really been any fallout at all. Despite being accused by the NYT in a very lengthy, well-documented expose of misleadingly feeding government propaganda to their viewers and readers, virtually all media outlets continue their steadfast refusal to address or even acknowledge the story. How can "news" organizations refuse to address -- just completely ignore -- accusations which fundamentally indict their behavior as "journalists"?
The so-called analysts were given classified Pentagon briefings, provided with Pentagon-approved talking points and given free trips to Iraq and other sites paid for by the Pentagon. Their involvement was ultimately approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Retired Green Beret Robert Bevelacqua, a former Fox News analyst, said, “It was [the Pentagon] saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’”
The Pentagon even hired a private contractor to monitor the analysts’ broadcast interviews. Brent Krueger, a senior official who helped oversee the propaganda effort, said, “We were able to click on every single station, and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’”
The propaganda campaign also extended into the nation’s newspapers. Nine of the Pentagon-connected analysts wrote op-ed articles for the New York Times, and the Pentagon helped two retired military officers write a piece for the Wall Street Journal.
Many of the same retired military officers also have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they were asked to assess on air. In interviews, at least two so-called analysts admitted to deliberately tempering their on-air comments out of fear of losing military contracts for their firms. Officials from NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN all admitted to being unaware of their analysts business interests in the war. Fox News declined to comment for the New York Times.
On Military Propaganda Pushed Me Off TV, Jeff Cohen said
"But I’m also for keeping the focus and onus on CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, even NPR – who were partners in the Pentagon’s mission of “information dominance.” And for us to see that American TV news remains so corrupt today that it has hardly mentioned the Times story on the Pentagon’s pundits, which was based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents acquired by a successful Times lawsuit."Long-time journalist Norman Solomon produced a 2007 documentary detailing the historical use of propaganda by the government and media to generate American support for all of the numerous wars we've started over the years. Entitled War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, the documentary was narrated by Sean Penn, and included this exchange on the problematic aspects of using retired generals as war commentators (.pdf; h/t Scott Horton via email):
The Times reports the Pentagon continues to use the analysts in a propaganda campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
The BIG Lies : From The Book Weapons of Mass Deception.
We've always known what good PR and advertising could do for a new line of sneakers, cosmetics, or weight-loss products. In Weapons of Mass Deception, Rampton and Stauber show us a brave new shocking world where savvy marketers, "information warriors," and "perception managers" can sell an entire war to consumers. Indeed, Washington successfully brought together the world's top ad agencies and media empires to create "Operation: Iraqi Freedom" - a product no decent, patriotic citizen could possibly object to. With meticulous research and documentation, Rampton and Stauber deconstruct this and other "true lies" behind the war:
We've always known what good PR and advertising could do for a new line of sneakers, cosmetics, or weight-loss products. In Weapons of Mass Deception, Rampton and Stauber show us a brave new shocking world where savvy marketers, "information warriors," and "perception managers" can sell an entire war to consumers. Indeed, Washington successfully brought together the world's top ad agencies and media empires to create "Operation: Iraqi Freedom" - a product no decent, patriotic citizen could possibly object to. With meticulous research and documentation, Rampton and Stauber deconstruct this and other "true lies" behind the war:
- Top Bush officials advocated the invasion of Iraq even before he took office, but waited until September 2002 to inform the public, through what the White House termed a "product launch."
- White House officials used repetition and misinformation - the "big lie" tactic - to create the false impression that Iraq was behind the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, especially in the case of the alleged meeting in Prague five months earlier between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials.
- The "big lie" tactic was also employed in the first Iraq war when a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah told the horrific - but fabricated - story of Iraqi soldiers wrenching hundreds of premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and leaving them to die. Her testimony was printed in a press kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a PR front group created by Hill and Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm.
- In order to achieve "third party authenticity" in the Muslim world, a group called the Council of American Muslims for Understanding launched its own web site, called OpenDialogue.com. However, its chairman admitted that the idea began with the State Department, and that the group was funded by the U.S. government.
- Forged documents were used to "prove" that Iraq possessed huge stockpiles of banned weapons.
- A secretive PR firm working for the Pentagon helped create the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which became one of the driving forces behind the decision to go to war.
Read also the followings:
No comments:
Post a Comment