/** propaganda.rev: 9.0 **/ ** Topic: Propaganda Review 3 ** ** Written 5:45 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Propaganda Review 3, Table of Contents PROPAGANDA REVIEW A publishing project of Media Alliance, a San Francisco-based non profit organization of 2800 media professionals. Winter 1988, Number 3 Note: The following Table of Contents is 144 lines long and contains 787 words. TABLE OF CONTENTS Response No. Article Title, Author, Length _____________________________________________________________ EDITORIAL 1 "Propaganda and Postmodernism," by Frederic Stout. (586 words). A call to a conference on why propaganda is different today and what we can do about it. 2 Letters: Propaganda Review 2 sparks reader response. (997 words). 3 "Propaganda Watch": Boston University's "School for Propaganda Practitioners;" the "designated driver" campaign; "Press Freedom" in West Berlin? FEATURES 4 "Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign," by Johan Carlisle. (Part 1 of 3, 1139 words). New evidence shows that the State Department had a story all ready and waiting when the bomb went off at La Penca. 5 "Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign," by Johan Carlisle. (Part 2 of 3, 1527 words). 6 SIDEBAR to "Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign," by Johan Carlisle. (Part 3 of 3, 770 words). 7 "An Influential Ghost: The Institute for Propaganda Analysis," by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee. (Part 1 of 3, 1621 words). The modern age of propaganda began and a gallant organization set out to oppose it ... leaving its mark for all who would follow. 8 "An Influential Ghost: The Institute for Propaganda Analysis," by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee. (Part 2 of 3, 1025 words). 9 SIDEBAR to "An Influential Ghost: The Institute for Propaganda Analysis," by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee. (Part 3 of 3, 770 words). 10 "Nuclear Culture," by Chellis Glendinning. (555 words). Out of the laboratories ... and into our minds. A report by "the world's first nuclear archaeologist." 11 "Seeing Is Believing: The Strange Case of the Jackson-Arafat Photo," by Paul Rockwell. (Part 1 of 2, 1331 words). A "doctored photograph" is used to slander Jesse Jackson because the press doesn't read its own clips. 12 SIDEBAR to "Seeing Is Believing: The Strange Case of the Jackson-Arafat Photo," by Paul Rockwell. (Part 2 of 2, 247 words). 13 "Magical Mike: Falwell's Comic Book," by Frederic Stout. (431 words). Who takes credit for the major themes of the "88 Bush campaign? Jim Baker? Lee Atwater? Or maybe the Moral Majority? 14 "First Amendment: Friend or Foe?" by Peter Franck. (Part 1 of 2, 950 words). Has "freedom of the press" rhetoric become a smoke screen for corporate greed and international imperialism? 15 "First Amendment: Friend or Foe?" by Peter Franck. (Part 2 of 2, 750 words). 16 "A Propaganda Model," by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. (Part 1 of 2, 1150 words). An excerpt from a new book on propaganda and the media by Herman and Chomsky--"The Five Filters for What's Fit To Print." 17 "A Propaganda Model," by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. (Part 2 of 2, 1000 words). 18 "Brave New World Revisited, Revisited," by Claude Steiner. (1000 words). How close has Huxley's vision come to contemporary reality? REVIEWS 19 "I'm Optimal, You're Optimal," by Loretta Graziano. (1238 words). "The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics." The Economist's Way of Knowledge and why we swallow their psuedo-science. 20 "Mommy Made Me Do It!" by Hannah Silver. (1000 words). Taken In, a new book on the psychological susceptibility to propaganda comes up with a reductionist, one-dimensional view. DEPARTMENTS 21 "Ad Watch," by Mark Crispin Miller. (1115 words). The odd couple--Ronald Reagan and Michael Jackson--almost meet in front of a telling backdrop. 22 MASTHEAD (238 words) 23 RESOURCES: (788 words). We are not alone: groups and publications you"ll want to know about: Media Literacy, Censor Busters, World View, Coming In From the Cold. -30- Note: All of the above articles can be found as responses to this topic. If you have any comments or suggestions about this particular issue, please post them as responses to the next topic, Reader's Forum, Propaganda Review 3. RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, Table of Contents Next, Response 1, Editorial, "Propaganda and Postmodernism," by Fred Stout. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.1 **/ ** Written 5:47 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 1, Editorial "Propaganda and Postmodernism" By Frederic Stout Frederic Stout teaches urban studies at Stanford and San Francisco State University. *** When the Propaganda Review project was founded back in 1984, those of us on the original organizing and editorial committee began with one simple perception: that there was something different about propaganda today, something that distinguished it radically from anything that had been observed before. In part, that perception was suggested by the experience of observing and analyzing the propaganda practices of the Reagan administration. The use of market research polling to establish political themes, the production of media campaigns such as the nostalgic "Morning in America" ad and the endless repetition of "Evil Empire" rhetoric as a tool of governance all suggested that propaganda in the late twentieth century had achieved a new level of technical sophistication and cultural ubiquity. But Reaganite propaganda--which, if the evidence of the recent presidential campaign is any guide, seems likely to continue during the Bush years--was not the only experience that led a small group of us to begin publication of Propaganda Review. There was a further, deeper perception that Ronald Reagan was merely the communicator, indeed the Great Communicator, of a vastly more pervasive form of myth-creation and information-manipulation that heralded a new age of pre-digested political discourse and consciously molded popular consciousness. In August of 1989, Propaganda Review will be hosting an international conference on "Propaganda and Postmodernism." [See page 39 for details and a call for papers.] We have chosen the term postmodernism to express the original perception that today there is something radically new and different about propaganda. More specifically, the title recognizes that contemporary propaganda breaks with the propaganda tradition of the "modern" era, the highest point of which was the years leading up to World War II. However technically sophisticated propaganda may have been then, especially in the hands of Hitler and Goebbels, it is more sophisticated and all-pervasive today. Indeed, it has been the years since 1945, the years of the Cold War, that have set the stage for postmodern propaganda and established the major themes of the contemporary propaganda environment. Postmodern propaganda has created a new relationship of powerlessness and cynicism between the rulers and the governed and has led to the development of what might be called a thoroughly propagandized contemporary culture. Exploiting the unprecedented technologies of modern mass communications, propaganda has virtually merged with political discourse and popular consciousness--so much so, in fact, that its very ubiquity serves to conceal its pervasiveness and its danger as an obstacle to clear thinking and the preservation of democratic freedoms. In any period and under any circumstances, propaganda is the enemy of freedom because it is the enemy of truth. Under the conditions of the Cold War, however, the threat posed by propaganda is even greater: in the current oppressive environment of East-West confrontation, North-South exploitation, and worldwide nuclear terror, propagandistic thinking is nothing less than a threat to human survival. It is imperative, therefore, that we begin to understand that propaganda today operates through the very thought processes and explanatory frames that control and give form to our view of world politics and daily reality. And in addition to understanding contemporary propaganda, we must also devise effective strategies for combating it. To understand and to strategize--those will be the tasks of the "Propaganda and Postmodernism" conference this coming August. We urge all of you to make plans to attend and to submit papers for presentation at that time. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, Response 1, "Editorial" Next, Response 2, "Letters" ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.2 **/ ** Written 5:49 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 2, "Letters" *** Letters: Rosen ["Election Coverage as Propaganda, PR #2"] notes the low rate of popular participation in American elections. Implicit in Rosen's article seems to be the standard assumption that full scale electoral participation by the overwhelming majority of the population would be desirable and constitute evidence of democratic vitality. There is a contrary view, one which I most vehemently do not share but one clearly held in high places and presented in a work, The Crisis of Democracy written by Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki. As they see it the greater interest of the American people (in the 1960's) led to a "distemper" in government. They are offended at the challenge to authority that swelled at this time along with greater demands for expansion of government services to the people. Is it really a problem for the establishment that the turnout is low? How many media people are really aware that their employers may not regard low voter turnout as a problem? Your magazine has a lot of socially needed work to do, a gigantic social dissection that will tax your best talents -- and courage. - Ford W. Cleere, Greeley, Colorado Your look at the shallowness of the election coverage leads to a deeper problem in our society, one much concealed...; our political system... seems to assume that people are educated. It's difficult for us to accept the proposition that this isn't so. It should become clear that people can be technically proficient, but ignorant in all other ways. They can amount to a new peasantry or proletariat, tradition dominated, passive, and vulnerable to the manipulations of political leaders who speak in the language of their prejudices. The idea that we are, in fact, an educated society is one of the propaganda myths that assist in the perpetuation of the problem. - Chris Nielsen, Portland, Oregon J.A. Savage's "The Corporate Communicators" is an excellent example of propaganda. In one short article, Savage uses the propaganda techniques of card-stacking, transfer, glittering generalities and name calling. [See "An Influential Ghost", sidebar, p. 14.] She also takes corporations to task for monitoring media interviews. Corporations have decided to do this as a result of reporters like Savage who shape answers to fit their own biases. By monitoring and even tape recording the interview session, corporations can factually document inaccurate reporting. Savage would be called a hack by most flacks. - Dennis L. Wilcox Ph.D., Professor of Public Relations San Jose State University San Jose, California Well, hell. Even though J.A. Savage's piece ["The Corporate Communicators,"PR #2] was pretty critical of the parasitic relationship between people like me and the corporate flacks, here's 20 bucks. Sign me up. I'm easily flattered, and us mainstream types can always use a lecture on what running-dog lackeys we are. - Bill Walker Staff Writer, Sacramento Bee Sacramento, California In Marge Lasky's review, Ethel Rosenberg is faulted for a refusal to follow the Hitlerian precepts of kinder, kirche und kuche. Secondary is her innocence and refusal to confess she had stolen the secrets of the atom bomb. Unmentioned is her refusal to take responsibility for causing "the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000..." as alleged by Judge Irving R. Kaufman in his sentencing speech. The luxury of academic hypothesis permits ignoring McCarthyism including the concentration camps for undesirables established in the 1950's. Ethel's understanding of the 1950's did not permit her the position of those who dutifully send their children to be killed in war and then wear their exonerating Gold Stars. She was not a heartless mother, but a thinking woman. - Dr. Helen I. Sobell, San Francisco, California There is some awfully good stuff, again, in issue #2 ("Nina Eliasoph on Polling", "Kornbluh on the Propaganda Ministry" and the article on Jacques Ellul.) Out of place, I thought was the graphic spread on the Israeli occupation; this display seems to me more of an engagement in propaganda than an analysis or expos of propaganda. The Haber article subtitled "Sixties Myths Derail Student Radicals" was interesting but wasn't about propaganda. You may sabotage your effectiveness if you don't separate out material on how to run the good guys' movement to prevent making your journal canted rather than analytical. - Mark Drake, Legget, California I object to the presentation of extraordinarily partisan material as the incontestable truth. To attain the truth requires opening one's self to criticism. I find Zogby's "Jewish Souls Arab Bones" deliberately propagandistic. Have [you] set out, as claimed, on the difficult and courageous task of exposing deceit and seeking truth, or [are] your title and published aims... not a mere confirmation of Orwell's prophetic power [?] - Shmuel Klatzkin, Brookline, Massachusetts I just received the second issue of PR. It fails a certain very simple test. Is the criticism shared by both the US and the USSR? I found no criticism of the USSR despite its supremacy in the area and use of propaganda. You seek "a full blown activism ... strong and radical enough to make use of a full range of protest tactics including direct action." All this implies you already know harmful propagandists and harmful propaganda, and are ready to use extremely propagandistic methods to proscribe them. Tell me I'm wrong. - Leonard Starobin World Peace Association Elkins Park, Pennsylvania "The average North American spends eight hours a day in front of the TV..." [Marina Hirsch, "Adwatch" PR #2] Nonsense! National averages are slightly over four hours a day per person. The highest figures are 7+ hours a day per household (one or more sets, with someone, or no one viewing). - James A. Brown, Northport, Alabama I enjoyed very much the piece on Jacques Ellul. It's the sort of widening of perspective the journal needs, in my view. - Jay Rosen New York University New York, New York Just the idea of a whole magazine devoted to this subject strikes a deep interest in me... - Glenn V. Smith, Rye, Colorado -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, Response 2, "Letters" Next, Response 3, "Propaganda Watch" ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.3 **/ ** Written 6:04 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 3, "Propaganda Watch" *** Looking for a B.A. in propaganda? Boston University's College of Communications may just be your ticket. In an October 4, 1988, article, the Boston Globe revealed that the school's dean, H. Joachim Maitre, had been dabbling in activities that he now calls "part of a CIA-inspired domestic propaganda campaign run out of the National Security Council." Specifically, the diligent dean involved himself and his college in a project to train Afghan resistance fighters as journalists (a program later discontinued and described as potentially unethical by journalists and journalism educators), and to produce a favorable documentary on the Nicaraguan contras. Maitre himself gave briefings to Congressional aides on Nicaragua while receiving money from the contra-support network. Maitre's work on behalf of the contras was funded by International Business Communications, a PR firm owned by Richard Miller and The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty. Says the now contrite academic: "I was enchanted by the possibility of doing something beyond the limited political environment in Boston at the time." -- Hannah Silver *** Like a lot of things, propaganda often starts innocently enough. In many cases, it's for a good cause, something everyone can agree with, so what's wrong with that? Case in point: the Harvard Alcohol Project, a public service activity of the Harvard School of Public Health, and its media campaign for "designated drivers"--people who will take responsibility for staying sober while out drinking and partying with friends. New York Times reporter Randall Rothenberg called the campaign a way that "the communications industry can use its considerable powers of persuasion for laudable goals." Any objections? Well, yes...or at least a few raised eyebrows...because this time the media campaign is not just the production of public service announcements but the "planting" of dialogue in the scripts of entertainment-oriented TV shows. Virtually everyone favors the designated driver concept. It's an idea that could save hundreds, maybe even thousands, of lives annually. And it's not the first time that entertainment programming has been consciously used to promote good causes. Last year, several prime-time series and daytime soaps incorporated plots dealing with the problem of adult illiteracy as a part of an overall public service campaign sponsored by ABC and PBS. Defending the designated driver campaign against the charge of "social engineering," former NBC chair Grant Tinker made the case quite clearly: "There's a tune-out thing that occurs when a public service spot appears. If a message is in the body of a program coming from the mouth of a character you like and pay attention to, it can really have a tangible result." True enough...but didn't we just have eight years of that? -- Frederic Stout *** This year's annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank brought 12,000 officials and 1600 journalists from all over the world to Berlin, West Germany. Ten thousand West German police officers were on hand to protect the visitors from potential attacks by protestors who claimed that the policies of the two institutions were responsible for the impoverishment and starvation of millions of people in Third World countries. Yet another valuable item also was to be protected: the image of Berlin as a hospitable, peaceful, and politically calm site for major conferences. On September 27, 1988, more than two dozen journalists, TV crews and press photographers attending an anti-IMF demonstration of some 40,000 people were encircled by police and prevented from reporting on the event; some were actually beaten and equipment was destroyed. Official protests were issued immediately by the affected journalists as well as the chief editors of three news agencies dpa, Reuters, and Associated Press. They all agreed that the event had not been a single incident but part of a general policy with "the apparent aim of preventing the reporting of actions by opponents of the IMF/World Bank policies." The declarations were directed not only to the West Berlin Senate but also to the governments of the USA, Great Britain, and France which, by way of the Allied Control Status of Berlin, have direct control and supervision of the West Berlin police. Backed by the chief of police, a West Berlin Senator for Interior Affairs finally resorted to an official complaint to the German Press Council about false reporting and massive hindrance of police by journalists. Their alleged offense: photographing and filming. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.4 **/ ** Written 6:12 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 3, "Propaganda Watch" *** Looking for a B.A. in propaganda? Boston University's College of Communications may just be your ticket. In an October 4, 1988, article, the Boston Globe revealed that the school's dean, H. Joachim Maitre, had been dabbling in activities that he now calls "part of a CIA-inspired domestic propaganda campaign run out of the National Security Council." Specifically, the diligent dean involved himself and his college in a project to train Afghan resistance fighters as journalists (a program later discontinued and described as potentially unethical by journalists and journalism educators), and to produce a favorable documentary on the Nicaraguan contras. Maitre himself gave briefings to Congressional aides on Nicaragua while receiving money from the contra-support network. Maitre's work on behalf of the contras was funded by International Business Communications, a PR firm owned by Richard Miller and The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty. Says the now contrite academic: "I was enchanted by the possibility of doing something beyond the limited political environment in Boston at the time." -- Hannah Silver *** Like a lot of things, propaganda often starts innocently enough. In many cases, it's for a good cause, something everyone can agree with, so what's wrong with that? Case in point: the Harvard Alcohol Project, a public service activity of the Harvard School of Public Health, and its media campaign for "designated drivers"--people who will take responsibility for staying sober while out drinking and partying with friends. New York Times reporter Randall Rothenberg called the campaign a way that "the communications industry can use its considerable powers of persuasion for laudable goals." Any objections? Well, yes...or at least a few raised eyebrows...because this time the media campaign is not just the production of public service announcements but the "planting" of dialogue in the scripts of entertainment-oriented TV shows. Virtually everyone favors the designated driver concept. It's an idea that could save hundreds, maybe even thousands, of lives annually. And it's not the first time that entertainment programming has been consciously used to promote good causes. Last year, several prime-time series and daytime soaps incorporated plots dealing with the problem of adult illiteracy as a part of an overall public service campaign sponsored by ABC and PBS. Defending the designated driver campaign against the charge of "social engineering," former NBC chair Grant Tinker made the case quite clearly: "There's a tune-out thing that occurs when a public service spot appears. If a message is in the body of a program coming from the mouth of a character you like and pay attention to, it can really have a tangible result." True enough...but didn't we just have eight years of that? -- Frederic Stout *** This year's annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank brought 12,000 officials and 1600 journalists from all over the world to Berlin, West Germany. Ten thousand West German police officers were on hand to protect the visitors from potential attacks by protestors who claimed that the policies of the two institutions were responsible for the impoverishment and starvation of millions of people in Third World countries. Yet another valuable item also was to be protected: the image of Berlin as a hospitable, peaceful, and politically calm site for major conferences. On September 27, 1988, more than two dozen journalists, TV crews and press photographers attending an anti-IMF demonstration of some 40,000 people were encircled by police and prevented from reporting on the event; some were actually beaten and equipment was destroyed. Official protests were issued immediately by the affected journalists as well as the chief editors of three news agencies dpa, Reuters, and Associated Press. They all agreed that the event had not been a single incident but part of a general policy with "the apparent aim of preventing the reporting of actions by opponents of the IMF/World Bank policies." The declarations were directed not only to the West Berlin Senate but also to the governments of the USA, Great Britain, and France which, by way of the Allied Control Status of Berlin, have direct control and supervision of the West Berlin police. Backed by the chief of police, a West Berlin Senator for Interior Affairs finally resorted to an official complaint to the German Press Council about false reporting and massive hindrance of police by journalists. Their alleged offense: photographing and filming. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.5 **/ ** Written 6:13 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 4, "Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign" by Johan Carlisle "Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign" by Johan Carlisle. Johan Carlisle is a free-lance journalist based in San Francisco. *** The remote jungle shack full of journalists and guerillas exploded suddenly in a murderous flash. The blast from the metal camera case full of C-4 plastique which had been carefully set down in front of Eden Pastora devastated the small group. Seventeen journalists were wounded that evening, May 31, 1984, at La Penca, Nicaragua, and three eventually died. Pastora, the charismatic ex-Sandinista hero, and some of his contra rebels were slightly injured. The wounded journalists were forced to lie unattended in their own blood for hours before everyone was finally evacuated by canoe and jeep to the nearest hospital in nearby Costa Rica--an eight hour trip at best. In the confusion of the understaffed hospital emergency room the bomber slipped away unnoticed and while his cover identity is known, he has never been found. Over the next few days, American news reports of the bombing and the identity of the bomber varied widely. Most news agencies said the identity of the bomber was unknown and reported the details of the bombing with few speculations about the sponsor of the tragic event. ABC and PBS, in their evening news broadcasts on June 1, held forth with a startling announcement that the bombing was the work of ETA (1) Basque "terrorists" working for Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Here was another example of Reagan's infamous "terrorist internationale" in the news only a few months before the 1984 presidential election. The ETA story played for about a week until the French authorities said that the alleged Basque terrorist, Jos Miguel Lujua, had been under house arrest in southern France for a number of years. By that time the La Penca bombing had become old news and was forgotten until May of 1986 when the Christic Institute filed a lawsuit against 28 individuals, on behalf of Tony Avirgan, one of the injured journalists, and his journalist-wife, Martha Honey. In the course of investigating the so-called Secret Team (2), it became obvious from new evidence provided by government documents that the ETA story was a carefully planned US government disinformation campaign. The ETA cover story provides a rare opportunity to track the genesis of a covert propaganda operation. The US government profited greatly from the widespread belief that the Sandinistas were behind the assassination attempt of Eden Pastora at La Penca. Col. North had discussed on several occasions provoking the Costa Ricans into requesting direct US military intervention in the illegal war against Nicaragua. Linking the Nicaraguans with international terrorism played well at home and revived Reagan's wilting bouquet of trumped up rationales for continuing the contra war. Shifting the blame to the Sandinistas for a callous attack on the international journalist community to eliminate the troublesome Pastora (3) hit the Sandinistas coming and going. After the assassination attempt, Eden Pastora faded away as a major player in the Southern Front and members of Col. North's "off the shelf" covert supply network and "Somocista" contras moved in. The disinformation campaign began in a series of articles in the Costa Rican and Spanish newspapers in September of 1983 (nine months before the bombing) with the arrest of ETA member Gregorio Jimenez in San Jos, Costa Rica. He was charged with planning to assassinate Eden Pastora as part of an ETA commando group assignment. It was later shown that the news reports alleging ETA activities in Costa Rica aimed at the elimination of Pastora were generated by the intelligence community and were never substantiated. At the time, Costa Rican president, Luis Monge was in Spain, as was Nicaraguan Interior Minister, Toms Borg. Monge was trying to get European support for Costa Rican neutrality in the contra war, while Borg was attempting to get sorely-needed financial aid from the socialist government of Spain. As a result of the widely publicized arrest of Jimenez, a meeting between Monge, Borge and the president of Spain was cancelled and new tensions were created between Nicaragua and two potential Spanish-speaking allies. The fact that the stories started about nine months before the bombing and continued to appear sporadically with very few facts has fueled speculation that this was part of an orchestrated campaign. [See sidebar, Chronology of a Disinformation Campaign, for more details.] On March 15, 1984, a little over two months before the bombing, the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy (4) (OPD) contracted with a private consultant, Luis Miguel Torres, to produce a report on ETA terrorism in Central America. Torres, an associate of Frank Gomez who worked with the various Spitz Channell organizations (5), produced an interview with a man using the alias Alejandro Montenegro, a friend of Torres' and an alleged FMLN (Farabundo Marti Liberacion Nacional) defector. Allegations from this interview were leaked to the press immediately after the bombing. Montenegro claimed that ETA had tried numerous bombings in El Salvador, very similar to the one at La Penca. David MacMichael, a former Central American analyst for the CIA, says that these events never took place. The Montenegro interview, it turned out, was the only piece of evidence that OPD was able to provide in an internal memo/chronology of alleged ETA terrorist activities in Central America sent to the NSC right after the bombing. Furthermore, the urgency to complete the Torres report is odd. Otto Reich, the titular head of OPD, wrote three memos demanding that the report be finished by March 26, 1984--eleven days from contract issuance to completion. Several sources note that this is an extremely short time for production of a government report--particularly one of such an obscure nature (6)-- raising the possibility that it was to be used as a cover for the La Penca bombing. The report was apparently not completed until May 5, 1984, sixteen days before the La Penca bombing. On June 15, 1984, Otto Reich authored a 41-page memo entitlted "Press Reports on Attempt on Eden Pastora". The memo contains the text of the leaked Montenegro interview done by Torres, Department of State cables, Foreign Broadcast Information Service reports, and various press clippings (7). The last of these articles, written by Roger Fontaine (8) in the Washington Times on June 11, 1984, cites the Montenegro interview--which would not be distributed by the OPD for another 4 days--as his principal piece of evidence supporting the ETA story. Fontaine cites the French government assertion that the alleged Basque terrorist, Jos Miguel Lujua, was under house arrest in France at the time of the bombing, but concludes that, "US officials in Washington and San Jos remain confident, however, that Mr. Lujua or someone like him with similar terrorist connections was involved in the incident." [Emphasis added by author.] This is a classic intelligence community tactic--feeding disinformation to a journalist and then using his story as evidence which is then fed to other journalists through confidential briefings. End, "Anatomy...", (Part 1 of 3) Next, Response 5, "Anatomy...", (Part 2 of 3). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.6 **/ ** Written 6:15 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 5, "Anatomy...", (Part 2 of 3) *** ABC World News Tonight seems to have been the primary outlet for the ETA story. It remains a puzzle why the rest of the US news establishment declined to use the ETA story emanating from the US intelligence community and the OPD. A few journalists said they immediately became suspicious of the story and decided to wait and see. ABC Pentagon correspondent, John McWethy apparently harbored no such doubts. He boldly stated on ABC's evening news program that, "there is growing evidence the Sandinistas have hired international hit men from a Basque terrorist group known as ETA to have Pastora killed." He then mentioned the September, 1983, arrest of Gregorio Jimenez and the January, 1984, deportation of 6 ETA members from France to Panama. "They end up in Panama . . . later moving to Cuba, then to Nicaragua. Intelligence reports place a group of half a dozen Basques in Nicaragua's capitol. They stay at the Camino Real hotel, posing as journalists. The same hotel occasionally used by some of the journalists who attended the Pastora press conference 2 days ago." McWethy's story is so elaborate, complete with fancy maps showing the routes taken by the "terrorists" that it could be used in journalism school as a shining example of superhuman investigative reporting. Instead, hidden propagandists were feeding these lies to him and he was reporting them as truth. He concluded, "Analysts [...] say the type of explosive used [is] strikingly similar to many other assassination attempts in Central America. All of them linked to Basque hit men." An amazing bit of information considering that the June 15, 1984, OPD memo was unable to reveal any other ETA "hits." McWethy, when questioned about the sources of his information on the ETA connection reportedly said that a Department of Defense report, in addition to CIA information, pointed the finger at ETA. While there is no proof that the OPD briefed McWethy, it is interesting to note that one of the principal "official leakers" at the OPD was an Air Force intelligence officer on loan to OPD named Mark L. Richards, working under the actual head of the OPD, Walter Raymond, Jr., a CIA psychological warfare expert(9). MacNeil/Lehrer, the only other major US news organization to carry the ETA story, was not as dramatic or positive as ABC. The program featured an in-depth interview with Robert Leiken, a senior associate of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace and a neo-conservative who was secretly on the payroll of the covert Spitz Channell fundraising/propaganda operation at the time. Leiken was introduced as an expert on Central America without any mention of his recent conversion from liberalism or his involvement with Channell. Leiken said that he had heard that Pastora's followers were denying that the CIA was behind the bombing, and claimed that Basque terrorists connected with the ETA had instigated it. Actually, Pastora concluded fairly quickly that the assassination attempt was sponsored by the CIA and the FDN. Thus, two of the five major US TV networks used information from the Office of Public Diplomacy and other intelligence sources along with Costa Rican stories of dubious nature to quickly paint an elaborate scenario blaming the bombing on the Sandinistas and the Basque ETA. Richard Dyer, publisher of the Costa Rican English language newspaper, the Tico Times, said, "[The ETA story] didn't make too much sense, but on the other hand we had no other clues and so for the moment it was sort of accepted, maybe we were getting somewhere." Derry Dyer, co-publisher of the Tico Times , which had employed Linda Frazier, the only US citizen killed at La Penca, said, "It certainly looks like there was an active disinformation campaign. Certainly there were so many leads that when tracked down turned out to be completely false. And they served to get everybody off the trail in the days following the bombing." The disinformation had additional effects. First, it obscured the identity of the real killer and arguably contributed to his escape. Second, these stories inflicted further injury on Tony Avirgan. Following the bombing, ABC News flew a specially equipped Lear jet to San Jos to transport the severely-injured reporter, at the time working for ABC, to the US for medical treatment. Because of his reported links to Basque terrorists, Avirgan was detained for three days in Costa Rica, while the assassin slipped away. The horror stories associated with the contra war continue to unfold although there seems to be a general apathy on the part of mainstream American investigative journalists. Many analysts think that the purpose of the La Penca bombing could well have been to inflame the tensions between Nicaragua and Costa Rica and to provide an excuse to invade Nicaragua with American troops. Whatever its purpose, the ETA disinformation campaign is typical of CIA propaganda operations which have preceded successful coups d'etat. In Guatemala, in 1954, the CIA set the stage with clandestine radio stations and other types of covert propaganda operations. In Chile, in 1973, the CIA ran one of its most sophisticated propaganda campaigns against Allende. The ETA story raises serious questions about US intelligence operations. Should the intelligence community be prohibited from influencing the media and Congress? How can this be legislated and monitored, given the failures of the Congressional oversight committees, the reticence of the Iran-contra committees, and the ability of a charismatic president to blithely sidestep the Boland Amendment? Unfortunately, the ETA story is only one of thousands of such covert operations that has been discovered. Covert intelligence operations are rarely exposed and even when they are, they are seldom censured. The only hopeful development in all of this is the beginning of a new movement, partly generated by the Christic Institute's La Penca lawsuit, to aggressively challenge the National Security Act of 1947. Many feel that only by rewriting this original charter for American intelligence operations can the fundamental cancer creating havoc worldwide be excised. Research assistance by Sheila O'Donnell and Rick Emrich. Notes: (1) ETA (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna) translates roughly as Basque Homeland and Liberty. ETA has been waging a guerilla/terrorist war for independence from Spain and France for decades. (2) The Secret Team, named in the civil RICO indictment, includes Gen. Richard Secord, Gen. John Singlaub, Albert Hakim, Adolfo Calero, Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, and Chi Chi Quintero. The lawsuit was dismissed by the Chief Federal judge in Miami on June 24th, 1988, one working day before the historical trial was to begin. The Christic Institute and the plaintiffs, Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, are appealing in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. (3) Pastora had called the La Penca press conference, at the insistence of Costa Rican security officials, to announce an end to years of conflict with the Somocista contras in Honduras who, along with the CIA, had been pressuring him to join forces with them, and thus, present a unified image to Congress. Ironically, the front page of the New York Times, June 1, 1984, carried the bombing story prominently while underneath was a small story about Pastora cutting all ties with the FDN and denouncing the CIA. (4) The OPD was created to influence the public and Congress on the contra war and other Reagan administration covert wars around the world. OPD was found guilty of conducting "white propaganda" efforts by the Government Accounting Office in 1987, and quickly became the only casualty of the Iran-contra affair. For further information, see two articles by Peter Kornbluh: "Reagan's Propaganda Ministry", Propaganda Review #2, and the Washington Post, 9/4/88, p. C-1. (5) Carl R. ("Spitz") Channell raised money, legally and illegally, for the contras from 1985 until 1987 when he pled guilty to defrauding the IRS and the US Treasury. At one point, Channell controlled an elaborate network of non-profit organizations and consultants. (6) The "Ultimate Destination" for the 25 page report was The Official Coordinator for the U.N. Conference on Scientific and Technological Development. The director of this office denied ever commissioning or seeing the report. (7) The State Department refused to turn over the OPD memo in response to subpoena served in the Christic Institute lawsuit. In fact, State has released only one document under subpoena to the Christic attorneys, the cover sheet to a January 20, 1987 twenty-page report on the Christic lawsuit with a handwritten note at the top by a State Department official named Peter Olson. The note says, "Delib. CIA effort to throw people off track of real perpetrators." (8) Fontaine is a close associate of Gen. Singlaub and one of the principal WACL (World Anti-Communist League) creators of the contra war. He served as Special Assistant for Central American Affairs on the NSC in the early '80s and works for the Georgetown Institute for Strategic Studies in addition to writing for the Washington Times. (9) Virtually all of the specialized personnel at the OPD were officially "on loan" from other agencies. This helped to obscure the true nature of the OPD. Thus, while Otto Reich, a political appointee, was the titular head, Walter Raymond was the actual operational director. -30- End, "Anatomy...". (Part 2 of 3) Next, Response 6, "Anatomy...", (Part 3 of 3). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.7 **/ ** Written 6:16 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 6, Sidebar to "Anatomy...", (Part 3 of 3) *** SIDEBAR Chronology of a Disinformation Campaign 9/8/83 Gregorio Jimenez arrested in Costa Rica. A summary of Costa Rican press reports prepared by the OPD, in the June 15, 1984 memo referred to in the article, said, "Jimenez, a member of the Basque Homeland & Liberty (ETA), was apprehended by Costa Rican authorities. He had drawings of Eden Pastora's residence, and was found to be part of an ETA commando group assigned to assassinate Pastora and other ARDE (the Honduran-based contras) leaders." Jimenez signed a sworn affadavit, after his release from prison, that he had been tortured into signing a statement saying he was involved with an ETA assassination plot. 9/17/83 Articles (from State Department cables cited in the OPD memo), in Spain editorialize about Nicaraguan and Cuban support and training of "Etarras" (members of ETA). They cite Costa Rican intelligence, which worked closely with the CIA, as their source and blasted the socialist administration of Spain for aiding the Sandinistas. 1/17/84 La Republica, a conservative newspaper in Costa Rica reports that six "Etarras" arrived recently in Panama. 1/20/83 La Nacion, a right-wing newspaper in Costa Rica also carries the above story. 2/13/84 La Republica and La Nacion report that the six ETA members who arrived in Panama in mid-January left the country without their destiny being known although "all indications are that they must have travelled to Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, or Cuba." 2/17/84 La Nacion says the arrival in Costa Rica of members of an ETA commando group is being investigated by the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS). 3/12/84 OPD interview with Alejandro Montenegro: "Montenegro, a former Salvadoran guerilla leader who defected in 1983, stated that he knew that an attempt on Pastora's life was carried out by the ETA. In more detail he described an alleged ETA operation in 1981 planned against General Jos Guillermo Garcia, then El Salvador's Defense Minister. The terrorists posed as journalists from a European magazine requesting an interview with General Garcia. The plan entailed employing plastic explosives hidden in video-cassettes; however, the attempt failed." (According to David MacMichael, an ex-CIA analyst for Central America stationed in El Salvador at the time, the CIA was unaware of the alleged ETA actions. Interestingly, the Montenegro scenario contains many of the elements of the La Penca bombing.) 3/14/84 La Republica and La Nacion report that DIS ordered a general alert in the face of the possible arrival of nine Spanish ETA terrorist leaders. La Nacion doesn't include Lujua while La Republica does. 5/84 Wesley Smith, a propaganda film-maker, an employee of Spitz Channell, and an associate of John Hull (a CIA operative in Costa Rica and a defendant in the Christic Institute lawsuit) works as an intern at La Nacion Internacional , a right-wing Costa Rican newsmagazine associated with La Nacion, from May to July. 5/28/84 Cambio 16, a Spanish magazine, reported that Lujua was one of the ETA members sent to Panama in January. 5/30/84 The La Penca bombing. 5/31/84 MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour featured Robert Leiken saying that the Sandinistas, using ETA, was behind the bombing. 5/31/84 Rob Owen, aid to Col. North, was seen at the San Jos, Costa Rica, airport. He later revealed that he had been at John Hull's ranch at the time of the bombing. Owen and Hull are defendants in the Christic Institute lawsuit which claims that the "Secret Team" was behind the bombing. 6/1/84 ABC World News Tonight ran a long story by John McWethy, their Pentagon correspondent, saying that ETA and the Sandinistas, were behind the bombing. 6/3/84 The June 15, 1984 OPD memo cited the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) as saying: "Havana International Service reported that La Nacion reported that 'the CIA had taken possession of the remnants of the plastic explosive long before the Costa Rican authorities reported the discovery.'" 6/7/84 USA Today mentions that "Costa Rican police reportedly identified a man suspected of planting a bomb aimed at killing Nicaraguan rebel leader Eden Pastora as a member of Spain's Basque separatist guerilla group ... that has been linked to a previous attempt to assassinate Pastora." 6/11/84 World Anti-Communist League leader, Roger Fontaine, summarizes the elements of the disinformation story, using information from the OPD memo (6/15/84), in the Washington Times, a widely read (inside the Beltway) right-wing newspaper owned by WACL sympathizer Rev. Moon. 6/15/84 Office of Public Diplomacy memo entitled "Press Reports on Attempt on Eden Pastora's Life". -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, "Anatomy...", (Part 3 of 3) Next, Response 7, "The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1936-1942," (Part 1 of 3). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.8 **/ ** Written 6:17 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 7, "The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1936-1942," (Part 1 of 3) "An Influential Ghost: THE INSTITUTE FOR PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS 1936-1942," by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee Alfred McClung Lee was executive director of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis from 1940 to 1942. He and his wife, Elizabeth Briant Lee, are the authors of "The Fine Art of Propaganda," "Social Problems in America," and "Marriage and the Family." The Lees are currently visiting scholars at Drew University. *** The search for ways to understand what other people are trying to make us believe is a persistent human problem, especially in the age of media. As Thomas Jefferson said, well into his second term as president in 1807, "Nothing now can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." The first systematic and institutionalized response to the problem Jefferson posed was the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) of the 1930s. The daily newspaper circulation wars of the 1890s, led by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, helped usher in the Propaganda Century. The sensationalism of the press tycoons precipitated the Spanish-American War of 1898. That propaganda frenzy was followed in the first decade of the twentieth century by two important and opposing developments: a wave of incipient propaganda analysis by investigative reporters, then called muckrakers; and the growth of press-agentry and public relations management for corporate special interests. Beginning in 1914, the propaganda assaulting the American people became even more spectacular than the preceding deluge at the turn of the century. During the last two years of Woodrow Wilson's first administration, World War I in Europe turned the United States into a propaganda battleground. In 1915, Wilson declared, "The example of America must be an example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world, and strife is not." Then, after having been re-elected on the claim that he had kept us out of war, Wilson asked Congress on April 2, 1917, to declare war because the "world must be made safe for democracy." On April 6, Congress complied, and George Creel, director of the Committee on Public Information, the official wartime propaganda bureau, began selling "the war to end all wars." During World War I, American newspapers and magazines widely reviewed, digested and reprinted atrocity books, including those of the British historian Arnold Toynbee. In spite of his later preoccupation with a religious interpretation of history, Toynbee then served the purposes of the Allies by grinding out books with titles such as The German Terror in Belgium, The German Terror in France, and The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks. Excessive claims and atrocity stories--to the extent that they were one-sided and faked--were exposed shortly after the war, and this added emphasis to the cynical but increasingly popular refrain, "It's all propaganda anyway!" Immediately after the war, journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a scathing attack on the "intellectual prostitution" of writers and editors that has become a classic of media criticism and propaganda analysis, The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism. Sinclair's charges were part of a backlash of outrage among those who perceived that Americans had been manipulated both for domestic and imperialist goals. And in response to these criticisms, the use of media-influencing specialists by businesspeople grew rapidly. Many of the new media-managers had been trained in Creel's wartime propaganda agency. Growing tensions in Europe, the 1930s Depression and New Deal reforms renewed both political and journalistic unrest concerning the character and control of the media, especially of the daily press. Investigative reporter George Seldes provided leadership in this agitation beginning with his You Can't Print That in 1929 and Freedom of the Press in 1935. On the dust jacket of the latter book, William Allen White, noted editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, wrote: "Seldes has painted American journalism, warts and all, an honest, sturdy portrait." The stark experiences of the 1930s made many Americans think skeptically about propaganda, especially war propaganda. Exposs of the profits of the "merchants of death"--the munitions manufacturers--gave a comfortable feeling that we might be able to dissociate ourselves, without war, from the brutal dictatorships of Europe and from the expanding Japanese power in Asia. Many Americans convinced themselves that this country should isolate itself in order to preserve "man's last, best hope." Certain radicals, it is true, were anti-fascists. Concerned about the rise of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini, they urged a boycott of steel and gasoline for Japan's stockpile. And even after the start of the presumably anti-fascist World War II, these same people were labelled "premature anti-fascists" and thus alleged to be pro-communist! Contradictions between the largely conservative-controlled press and President Franklin Roosevelt's "fireside chats" on the radio, as well as the defiance of vested authority by the new industrial unions, and the occasional clashes between public opinion and editorial opinions all contributed to the belief that the "voice of the press" was not necessarily the "voice of the people." And so more and more people took up the refrain: "It's all propaganda anyway!" In 1936, the Boston merchant Edward A. Filene funded and helped to found the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. The coming of World War II killed the Institute in less than five years, but its contributions were so widespread and so accepted that they continue to be influential. Filene had decided to do something to offset the propagandist's exploitation of the rising social and political tensions and their influence upon and through the media. He concluded that the best response would be to help people understand more adequately the welter of contentions attacking their minds in the press and on the air waves. To Filene, the problem was: "How to make Americans think, not what to make Americans think." The distinguished board of directors brought together to manage the Institute gave its program immediate and widespread attention in the press, in educational circles, and in grassroots discussion groups. The first chair of the group was E. C. Lindeman of the New York School of Social Work. He was succeeded by Kirtley Mather of Harvard University. Clyde R. Miller, the Institute's secretary and staff person, was a professor at Teachers' College, Columbia University. While most of the board members were university professors, the program of the IPA was aimed especially at high schools and interested adult groups. The Institute published monthly Propaganda Analysis bulletins, annual volumes of those bulletins, The Group Leader's Guide to Propaganda Analysis and Decide for Yourself packets of contrasting materials. It also sponsored a series of books, the most popular of which was The Fine Art of Propaganda, written jointly by the co-authors of this article. This book is still in print after 49 years, now published in paperback by the International Society for General Semantics in San Francisco. The titles of some of the Institute's bulletins suggest the range of its concerns: "Newspaper Analysis," "The Movies and Propaganda," "Propaganda Techniques of German Fascism," "The Ford Sunday Evening Hour," "Propaganda in the Schools," "Britain Woos America," "Spain: A Case Study," "The Associated Farmers," "The War Comes," "Soldiers of the Lord," "The Fifth Column" and "Propaganda for Blitzkrieg." Clyde Beals, long-time investigative reporter and one of the Institute's editors, said that the program "caught on so readily because it provided a badly needed perspective for current affairs. The age of miracles through which America passed up to 1929 produced a large amount of gullibility. In the place of the healthy skepticism for which the Yankee was noted, . . . Americans had come to believe in a slow but sure progress toward the millenium. Journalistic muckraking was all but forgotten. H. L. Mencken poked bubbles for a few years in the American Mercury, and 'debunking' biographies appeared frequently, but the success stories of the American Magazine put the other literature in the shade. . . . By 1937 people were ready and waiting for a corrective, and propaganda analysis provided the needed scientific lens." It is difficult for us to imagine today that the January 1, 1939, Propaganda Analysis bulletin could report: "Today in the United States there are some 800 organizations that could be called pro-fascist or pro-Nazi. Some flaunt the word 'Fascist' in their name, or use the swastika as their insignia. Others--the great majority--talk blithely of democracy, or 'Constitutional Democracy,' but work hand in glove with the outspokenly fascist groups and distribute their literature." Specifically, the anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi radio campaign of the popular Father Coughlin was one of the reasons the Institute distributed The Fine Art of Propaganda. The book was published in September of 1939, just as war was breaking out in Europe. The popular press at first welcomed the Institute's activist program. The San Francisco News carried an editorial on October 7, 1937, that praised propaganda analysis as "one more weapon for democracy in the ceaseless battle against obfuscation and special interest." The Hartford Courant, on November 8, 1939, editorialized, "The less gullible the public becomes through understanding, the less danger there is of action, political, economic or social, being based on emotion." The editorial went on to say that the program of the Institute was "commendable and worthy of encouragement." The April 3, 1939, issue of Newsweek reported that propaganda analysis was "one of the newest and fastest growing ideas in American education" and gave the Institute credit for the movement. Paul H. Shields of the U. S. Office of Education told of the "extremely favorable reactions" he had received from the public regarding propaganda analysis. "I have found," he said, "one of the chief needs of forum and discussion groups to be for materials which will enable them to study and discuss current social trends more critically." He reported that the Institute publications met this need and found "heads of social science departments in high schools and colleges, superintendents of schools, and lay leaders enthusiastic in their appreciation." End, IPA, (Part 1 of 3) Next, Response 8, "IPA," (Part 2 of 3). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.9 **/ ** Written 6:18 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 8, "IPA," (Part 2 of 3) As American involvement in World War II deepened, the possibility of continuing--much less expanding--the work of the Institute raised questions both in the press and on the Institute board of directors itself. The front page of the New York Times on February 21, 1941, carried the headline: "Propaganda Study Instills Skepticism in 1,000,000 Pupils: Teachers in 3000 Schools in Nation Instructed in a 3-year Test by Analysis Institute." Even though the long story by Benjamin Fine was overwhelmingly favorable and accurate in interpreting the work of the Institute, the negative headline echoed and re-echoed in the media and elsewhere. One immediate consequence was another Times article, two days later, headed: "Dies Scrutinizes Propaganda Study: Inquiry into Institute for Analysis Follows Alleged Left-Wing Expressions." Dr. J. B. Matthews, chief investigator of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, then headed by congressman Martin Dies, was quoted as saying that a "study of the work of the Institute has been proceeding for nearly two years . . . to ascertain whether its aims are dangerous to about 1,000,000 school pupils. So far no conclusion has been reached, and some time might elapse before a report [is] made." As the Institute's executive director at the time, I (Alfred McClung Lee) made a statement to the Times decrying Matthews' use of innuendo. "We have nothing to conceal," I said, "and if they want to go ahead with an investigation it's all right with us." The Dies committee did not respond to the challenge. Innuendo was precisely their method of operation--a preview of the McCarthyism of the 1950s. Attacks on the teaching of propaganda analysis came even from within academia. For example, political scientist Bruce Lannes Smith, writing in a professional journal in 1941, reported: "I have myself attempted to teach propaganda analysis, and have talked with other teachers who have tried. Although we have not sampled the field statistically, we all seem to have felt that an extremely high, if not menacing, degree of cynicism develops, especially among adolescents, as a result of the methods in use at present." As the objectivity of the Institute became more and more controversial, it became impossible for the organization to maintain its financial independence. The nation's propagandists realized that Americans would soon be facing another bitter wartime struggle, with an accompanying barrage of propaganda, and they took it to be their patriotic duty to prepare the country for the coming challenge. The trustees of Filene's estate became increasingly reluctant to continue to implement his promise of continuing support. Members of the Institute's board of directors were themselves drifting into war-related government jobs, thus finding it necessary to resign from the board. The emotional pressures built by Martin Dies, Father Coughlin and others at home, and by the war and its leaders abroad, were diverting teachers and discussion group leaders to other subjects. Kirtley Mather, the Institute's president, stated in a press release of October 31, 1941: "At such a time, it is not practical to attempt dispassionate analyses of the steps being taken to impress the country with the seriousness of the crisis. Such analyses, however objectively carried out, would naturally be utilized by groups opposing the main trend of events, and would soon be involved in the welter of attack and counterattack that accompanies a period of national tension." The Institute then issued a final bulletin, dated January 9, 1942, and became inactive. As Clyde Miller, the Institute's secretary, put it: "The Institute did not have enough funds to continue its work. . . . I am reasonably sure we could have obtained money from interventionist sources but we would have had to weigh our analyses accordingly; it is possible, too, we could have gotten money from isolationist sources, but again our analyses would have had to be weighted. We could not solicit or accept such money and still maintain our integrity." Miller went on in a remarkably prophetic tone: "Much of our propaganda for democracy preaches democracy but the preachment does not coincide with the practice. It is the terrifying disparity between preachment and practice which brings frustration, bitterness and cynicism and thus destroys the morale which America and all democracies must have to grow stronger and to win." Perhaps the clearest indication of the Institute's impact is to be seen in the many excerpts from its materials still being reprinted in high school and college texts and in books and articles on communications, journalism, logic, social psychology, and related subjects. Many of these reprinted excerpts re-state the Institute's teachings regarding the seven key analytical devices of propaganda: name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, card-stacking, and band wagon [see sidebar, above]. There is, of course, much more to propaganda analysis than just those seven key techniques, but for the novice they are as good a place to start as any. In its final bulletin, the Institute recalled that it had defined propaganda as "the expression of opinion or action by individuals or groups with reference to predetermined ends." In commenting on the controversy aroused by this formulation, the bulletin noted: "Some students of the subject want the word to refer only to 'bad' propaganda, using words like 'education' to describe other kinds. The Institute holds that 'good' and 'bad' are relative terms; that what is good for one person is bad for another, depending on whose interest is served. The important question is whether the propagandist's interest coincides with ours. Other students want to have propaganda describe only hidden techniques, leaving the other parts to be called 'argumentation.' The Institute has held that the techniques are as endless as human ingenuity; that in modern society an element of propaganda is present in a large proportion of human affairs, and that people need to be able to recognize this element even when it is serving 'good' ends." End, "IPA," (Part 2 of 3). Next, Response 9, Sidebar to "IPA," (Part 3 of 3). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.10 **/ ** Written 6:20 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 9, Sidebar to "IPA," (Part 3 of 3). SIDEBAR Chronology of a Disinformation Campaign 9/8/83 Gregorio Jimenez arrested in Costa Rica. A summary of Costa Rican press reports prepared by the OPD, in the June 15, 1984 memo referred to in the article, said, "Jimenez, a member of the Basque Homeland & Liberty (ETA), was apprehended by Costa Rican authorities. He had drawings of Eden Pastora's residence, and was found to be part of an ETA commando group assigned to assassinate Pastora and other ARDE (the Honduran-based contras) leaders." Jimenez signed a sworn affadavit, after his release from prison, that he had been tortured into signing a statement saying he was involved with an ETA assassination plot. 9/17/83 Articles (from State Department cables cited in the OPD memo), in Spain editorialize about Nicaraguan and Cuban support and training of "Etarras" (members of ETA). They cite Costa Rican intelligence, which worked closely with the CIA, as their source and blasted the socialist administration of Spain for aiding the Sandinistas. 1/17/84 La Republica, a conservative newspaper in Costa Rica reports that six "Etarras" arrived recently in Panama. 1/20/83 La Nacion, a right-wing newspaper in Costa Rica also carries the above story. 2/13/84 La Republica and La Nacion report that the six ETA members who arrived in Panama in mid-January left the country without their destiny being known although "all indications are that they must have travelled to Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, or Cuba." 2/17/84 La Nacion says the arrival in Costa Rica of members of an ETA commando group is being investigated by the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS). 3/12/84 OPD interview with Alejandro Montenegro: "Montenegro, a former Salvadoran guerilla leader who defected in 1983, stated that he knew that an attempt on Pastora's life was carried out by the ETA. In more detail he described an alleged ETA operation in 1981 planned against General Jos Guillermo Garcia, then El Salvador's Defense Minister. The terrorists posed as journalists from a European magazine requesting an interview with General Garcia. The plan entailed employing plastic explosives hidden in video-cassettes; however, the attempt failed." (According to David MacMichael, an ex-CIA analyst for Central America stationed in El Salvador at the time, the CIA was unaware of the alleged ETA actions. Interestingly, the Montenegro scenario contains many of the elements of the La Penca bombing.) 3/14/84 La Republica and La Nacion report that DIS ordered a general alert in the face of the possible arrival of nine Spanish ETA terrorist leaders. La Nacion doesn't include Lujua while La Republica does. 5/84 Wesley Smith, a propaganda film-maker, an employee of Spitz Channell, and an associate of John Hull (a CIA operative in Costa Rica and a defendant in the Christic Institute lawsuit) works as an intern at La Nacion Internacional , a right-wing Costa Rican newsmagazine associated with La Nacion, from May to July. 5/28/84 Cambio 16, a Spanish magazine, reported that Lujua was one of the ETA members sent to Panama in January. 5/30/84 The La Penca bombing. 5/31/84 MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour featured Robert Leiken saying that the Sandinistas, using ETA, was behind the bombing. 5/31/84 Rob Owen, aid to Col. North, was seen at the San Jos, Costa Rica, airport. He later revealed that he had been at John Hull's ranch at the time of the bombing. Owen and Hull are defendants in the Christic Institute lawsuit which claims that the "Secret Team" was behind the bombing. 6/1/84 ABC World News Tonight ran a long story by John McWethy, their Pentagon correspondent, saying that ETA and the Sandinistas, were behind the bombing. 6/3/84 The June 15, 1984 OPD memo cited the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) as saying: "Havana International Service reported that La Nacion reported that 'the CIA had taken possession of the remnants of the plastic explosive long before the Costa Rican authorities reported the discovery.'" 6/7/84 USA Today mentions that "Costa Rican police reportedly identified a man suspected of planting a bomb aimed at killing Nicaraguan rebel leader Eden Pastora as a member of Spain's Basque separatist guerilla group ... that has been linked to a previous attempt to assassinate Pastora." 6/11/84 World Anti-Communist League leader, Roger Fontaine, summarizes the elements of the disinformation story, using information from the OPD memo (6/15/84), in the Washington Times, a widely read (inside the Beltway) right-wing newspaper owned by WACL sympathizer Rev. Moon. 6/15/84 Office of Public Diplomacy memo entitled "Press Reports on Attempt on Eden Pastora's Life". -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, "IPA," (Part 3 of 3). Next, Response 10, "Nuclear Culture," by Chellis Glendinning. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.11 **/ ** Written 6:22 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 10, "Nuclear Culture." "Nuclear Culture: It's All In Your Head!" by Chellis Glendinning Chellis Glendinning is a psychologist, the author of "Waking Up in the Nuclear Age "(Morrow), and on the Council of the Elmwood Institute. She wishes to thank Nancy Friedman for her help with this article. *** It wasn't just strontium-90 that drifted in the atmosphere after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's more to Chernobyl than spontaneous abortions and dead reindeer. We're talking about a different kind of fallout here -- the kind that seeps into the zeitgeist as well as the food chain, enters art, fashion, toys, and ritual, creating its own cultural forms. Radiation culture was born with the first big bang, suffered a few bleak decades of dormancy, and is cur-rently enjoying a revival of chain-reaction proportion. Like radiation itself, radiation culture is anything but stable: doomsday movies of the '50s giving way to today's holocaust board games; the old toy Geiger counter supplanted by "pet" fallout. The images--from the mushroom cloud and the cooling tower to the outer space laser shield--change with the decades, but radiation culture remains a permanent fixture of the Nuclear Age, conveying its messages in forms that seize the eye and linger, like some malignant trace element, in the imagination. I first detected it in 1979. I'd been as numb as any American citizen -- numb right straight through the Duck'n Cover drills of the '50s and the Be-Here-Now (Not-Tomorrow) Be-Ins of the '60s. Then one tentative eye pried itself open when that bomb of an event, Three Mile Island, detonated across the national nervous system. Overnight I went from contemplating matters that wreaked of maana to asking Big Questions. 1979-style Big Questions. Like, how the hell did this happen? And why is there such a gaping chasm between the state of the world and the billboards of our minds? Will the real Nuclear Age please stand up? At this very moment, with questions of grand import heavy on my brain, artifacts from an alien cosmos began to hurl themselves at me, artifacts like Glo-Cow paper sculpture, Three Mile Island place settings, and fashion statements heralding the advent of fallout shelter couture. A second eye bolted open. I picked these things up. I studied them. I bought them. I begged for them. I stole them. And in their starkness I saw an imagination writhing between the opposing demands of its own perception. On one side: the lure of tomorrow, fed by the ever-popular knack for denial, numbing, and rationalization. On the other: a desire to glimpse the real. Real plutonium dumped into real trenches leaking into real streams. Real silos housing real men poised to punch real computer codes. Real children dying of leukemia. We're talking about new kinds of cultural landmarks here. Some of them are artifacts that mention the bomb and then beseech us to set them on the dining room table alongside the other household items that quip: What? Me Worry? Others are artifacts that clamor for us to name the truths that define our lives. Still others are artifacts that manage to do both at the same time. We're talking about a new culture afoot across the land--a Radiation Culture--that by its varied contortions between the poles of perception in the Nuclear Age, never fails to reveal the complexities of the human mind. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, "Nuclear Culture." Next, Response 11, "Seeing is Believing...," (Part 1 of 2). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.12 **/ ** Written 6:23 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 11, "Seeing is Believing...," (Part 1 of 2). "Seeing Is Believing? The Strange Case of the Jackson-Arafat Photo," by Paul Rockwell. Paul Rockwell is an Oakland-based journalist whose work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. *** Remember that old photo of Jesse Jackson and Yasser Arafat that appeared throughout the media just prior to the 1988 New York primary? The full story of how the media distorted the content of that photo, manufactured an image of Black disloyalty and caricatured Jackson's 1979 Mideast peace mission has not been told [...] until now. During the Spring of 1988, the national media suffered a series of humiliations. Jackson's successive victories over Hart, Biden, Simon, Gephardt, Gore, and even Dukakis were also victories over the media, Jackson's most hostile adversary. While Jackson encouraged millions of new voters to participate in the primaries, when he spoke to rapt crowds of change and hope, the media pundits proclaimed Black "unelectibility" with the regularity of a church catechism. Jackson's historic victory on Super Tuesday when he won the overall popular vote from Dukakis and Gore (who outspent Jackson 200-to-1); Jackson's subsequent popularity in "white" states from Vermont to Alaska; his landslide triumph in Michigan -- all discredited an entire year of cynical media coverage. It was during this period of media frustration, some weeks before the crucial New York primary, that the media played along with reviving an old stand-by of classic propaganda: McCarthyism. Red-baiting and guilt by association went into full force in the Spring of 1988 with the media clamoring for "scrutiny" of the ascendant Jackson. What appeared in the headlines, on the talk shows and the op-ed pages was hardly scrutiny -- certainly not enlightenment about Jackson's record and views. It was caricature. Almost on cue, pictures of Jackson and Fidel Castro (minus photos of the 48 prisoners that Jackson brought back from Cuba) appeared throughout the press. And ABC's Barbara Walters opened her April 15th show with Jackson and Castro, then questioned Jackson's ties: "Your foreign policy advisers are radical, left. Sometimes we even hear communist, okay?" During the New York Primary, Mayor Ed Koch campaigned vigorously against Jackson and divisively proclaimed that Jews would have to be "crazy" to vote for the Black populist who had once referred to New York City as "Hymietown". And it was at this time that the propaganda effort against Jackson centered on the use of the Jackson-Arafat photo. By reprinting the photograph in 1988, the media made Jackson's nine-year-old Mideast tour into an election issue and at the same time deleted all the hard facts about what actually took place during Jackson's peace mission. In itself, of course, the photo made no statement about Jackson's aims, but the media used the image in a way that suggested that Jackson embraced terrorism, that he attacked Israel's right to survive and remain secure, thus betraying American interests abroad. Commenting on Jackson's 1979 tour, Time magazine resorted to an ugly metaphor: "Jackson has practiced diplomacy by wet kiss with some of the Third World's most controversial characters" (March 21, 1988). Newsweek criticized Jackson for "cozying up to the PLO leader" and then blasted "the candidate's support for negotiating with Yasser Arafat's PLO . . . which is synonymous, in the public's mind, with terrorism" (April 11, 1988). To be sure, the Spring of 1988 was not the first time that the media had caricatured Jackson's efforts in the Middle East. In February of 1988, the Boston Globe published a blatantly racist cartoon depicting Jackson with a monkey-faced grin, wearing an Arab headscarf and holding a giant moneybag. In Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Race, Tom Landess claimed that Jackson "traded his organization's history and prestige to aid an international terrorist . . . The photograph removes all doubts." And CBS's Bob Faw, who once derided Jackson's attempt to win the freedom of Lt. Robert Goodman, wrote in Thunder in America, "Nothing, not all the words used later . . . counted as much as that picture . . . With it, all the Jewish doubts are confirmed. The two men linked forever." The hypocrisy of the media regarding Jesse Jackson becomes obvious when one compares the 1988 accounts with the original version of Jackson's tour in 1979. The press told a completely different story in September and October of 1979. Here are three headlines from the New York Times: 9/9/79 -- "Jesse Jackson, in Nablus, Exhorts the Arabs and Criticizes Terrorism;" 9/29/79 -- "Jackson, in Beirut, Urges PLO to Halt Terrorism;" 10/3/79 -- "Jackson Meets Sadat Again and Flies to See Assad and Arafat." The October 3rd article included a photo of Jackson and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat smiling and shaking hands. What a difference from the 1988 Jackson-embraces-terrorism hype! In fact, the most newsworthy feature of Jackson's 1979 Mideast visit was precisely his relationship with Sadat, who was then being treated as a hero in the US media. According to the 1979 reports, it was Sadat who encouraged Jackson to visit Yasser Arafat. Time reported that Sadat sent Jackson on his own "presidential jet bearing a personal message to the PLO chief and Syrian president Hafez Assad . . . Jackson left immediately for Beirut where he briefed Arafat on Sadat's proposal: cessation of PLO hostilities against Israel in hope of winning Israeli recognition." The 1979 Facts On File, the standard reference work in US newsrooms, summed up the purpose of Jackson's tour: "On his arrival in Beirut . . . the Black activist urged the PLO to halt its attacks against Israel in order to organize an atmosphere conducive to peace." The New York Times wrote that Jackson tried "to obtain a statement from Arafat renouncing guerilla warfare against Israel in favor of diplomacy." In short, the entire scope and significance of Jackson's 1979 tour, including Sadat's role, was expunged from the 1988 electoral coverage. The press chose to reprint the photo of Jackson and Arafat to the exclusion of photos of Jackson meeting Sadat or of Jackson in Israel wearing a yarmulke. As for the Jackson-Arafat photo itself, even the claim that Jackson initiated the embrace contradicts the press accounts of 1979. The New York Times reported that "Arafat embraced Jackson," not vice versa. Facts On File wrote that "Arafat embraced Jackson" and noted that Jackson tried to convince Arafat to cease PLO guerilla warfare. Newsweek reported, "In Lebanon Jackson got a friendly hug from Arafat," not vice versa. Indeed, in 1979, Arafat's embrace of Jackson was reported only in passing. It was a typical diplomatic gesture and there was nothing controversial about it. The writers and editors in the US media are professionals in language and imagery, and they know about the power of emphasis and connotation. They also have a responsibility to check their own notes and past reports. But by turning Yasser Arafat's diplomatic gesture into a Jackson embrace of terrorism, the media participated in a process that shrewdly inserted connotations that were not present in historical fact. Full of political innuendo, the image became a vehicle for attacking Jackson, a quick way to smear him in the eve of the New York primary. The media fixation on a single physical gesture helped transform a peace mission into an act of disloyalty. Taken alone, without explanatory text, the photo was used to convey the false impression that Jackson opposed Israel's very existence. The election is over now, but the need to know the truth is never dated. How do Newsweek and Time explain the contradiction between their stop-Jackson coverage in 1988 and their own press reports of 1979? Why was Sadat's role deleted from the 1988 coverage? In a remarkable sleight-of-hand, the media castigated Jackson for meeting Arafat while protecting the saintly legend of Sadat, who actually supervised the Jackson negotiations! When the media history of the 1988 elections is finally written, the episode involving the Jackson-Arafat photo will emerge not as an exercise in professional journalistic scrutiny, but as a media disinformation campaign which failed miserably to serve the real interests of the American electorate. End, "Seeing...," (Part 1 of 2). Next, Response 12, "Seeing...," (Part 2 of 2). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.13 **/ ** Written 6:24 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Sidebar to "Seeing...," (Part 2 of 2). *** SIDEBAR: Media Assailed Dr. King the Same Way it Slandered Jackson Media attacks on Jackson were not matters of momentary personal bias. The US press has always treated foreign affairs as off-limits to progressive Black Americans. Every famous African-American who earned respect in the developing world -- leaders like Dubois, Robeson, King, Malcolm X, as well as Jesse Jackson -- were treated with hostility by the press. The media response to Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam war was so venomous that King's two recent biographers -- Stephen Oates and David Garrow -- devoted whole chapters to the media blitz against King's internationalism -- a blitz remarkably similar to the media's anti-Jackson campaign. After King's speech against the war (Riverside Church), the Washington Post called King's position "sheer inventions of unsupported fantasy", and branded King "irresponsible." Newsweek claimed -- as it later claimed against Jackson -- that King was "over his head," deriding King's "simplistic political judgement." In an editorial entitled "Dr. King's Error," the New York Times chastised King for going beyond his alotted domain -- domestic civil rights. Black leaders, the Times argued, should mind their own business and stay out of foreign policy matters. Life magazine called King's Riverside speech "demagogic slander," claiming that King consorted with US enemies. In response, King denounced the media's "ugly repressive sentiment to silence peace-seekers," and he later called media attacks "a lot of bitter and certainly vicious criticism by the press for taking a stand" -- words that could well apply to the media's electoral anti-Jackson coverage. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, "Seeing...," (Part 2 of 2). Next, Response 13, "Magical Mike: Falwell's Comic Book," by Frederick Stout. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.14 **/ ** Written 6:25 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 13, "Falwell Strikes Again!" Falwell Strikes Again ! A Comic Book (Of All Things) Sets the Tone for the '88 Presidential Campaign Commentary by Frederic Stout Fred Stout teaches at Stanford and San Francisco State Universities *** Propaganda today is fed to us through the high-power lines of the most up-to-date electronic communications media, but print--even in the form of the comic book--still lives! Consider "Magical Mike: The Real Story of Mike Dukakis" a 32-page, pulp-paper production of cartoonist Dick Hafer who calls himself "The Comics Commando." Originally published by AKA Incorporated of Garrisonville, Virginia, "Magical Mike" was subsequently bought, published and distributed by Jonathon Falwell, the 21-year-old son of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, for use during the recent presidential election campaign of 1988. The Falwell organization first surfaced with "Magical Mike" during the Republican National Convention in New Orleans where thousands of copies were distributed to delegates and members of the press. Speaking at a pre-convention meeting of the Family Forum, Jerry Falwell urged the activists of the religious right to distribute millions of copies of the comic book to voters throughout the country. True to type, the Falwell organization's comic book hit-piece struck every low blow imaginable: attacks on Dukakis' religion, his wife, and his positions (distorted with unmistakable overtones of racism and homophobia). John Buchanan, head of People for the American Way, called "Magical Mike" "chock full of enough intolerance to offend just about everyone except Jerry Falwell." What is remarkable about "Magical Mike" is how many of its themes were incorporated directly into George Bush's campaign. True, some of the most offensive below-the-belt stuff played no part in the official Republican effort. After all, associating Dukakis with witchcraft and calling him a baby killer (picturing him with a vacuum cleaner in a section on abortion) express concerns of a tiny, religious-oriented right-wing element of the electorate. But many other themes exploited by "Magical Mike" went right into the Bush campaign. The "law and order" issue is given a prominent place in the comic book, complete with a not-so-subtly racist image of Willie Horton, the furloughed Massachusetts murderer. In foreign affairs, Dukakis is shown as the pawn of radical peaceniks with Jesse Jackson portrayed as the probable secretary of state in a Dukakis administration. And, of course, the Pledge of Allegiance issue and Dukakis' ties to the ACLU are all accorded major treatment. We do not know exactly how many copies of "Magical Mike" were distributed during the campaign--the Falwell organization is a little vague on that point--but it seems clear that the religious right had a lot to do with framing the basic structure of George Bush's conservative strategy. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End,"Falwell..." Next, Response 14, "First Amendment: Friend or Foe?" by Peter Franck, (Part 1 of 2). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.15 **/ ** Written 6:26 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 14, "First Amendment, Friend or Foe?" (Part 1 of 2) "First Amendment, Friend or Foe?": Some Thoughts on the Mass Media, the New World Information Order, and the First Amendment by Peter Franck Peter Franck practices copyright and entertainment law in San Francisco. He is a former president of the Pacifica Foundation and currently chairs the National Lawyers' Guild Committee on Media Monopoly, Disinformation and the First Amendment. *** We all know how badly the mass media screens and distorts the information we receive. The trouble is, we know this the way a fish knows the water it swims in. We rarely get out of the tank and look at the water. The media is so all pervasive that, complain about its specific sins as we do, we rarely get far enough out of it to think about it as a serious social and political problem; one that should be on our agenda. Only in the last couple of years, when the dissonance between the world we see on the tube and the world we sense really exists has grown so extreme as to be unavoidable (particularly to the growing number of activists), have progressives started to take a look at the problem of the media in a serious way. What does this have to do with the First Amendment? Everything. Our traditional analysis of the First Amendment has become a major shield--both domestically and internationally-- used to blunt and deflect any attempt to deal with the question of the mass media and society. A story may illustrate the point. In 1978, when Pacifica Foundation (the licensee of the five oldest and largest listener sponsored FM radio stations in the country) was before the Supreme Court, appealing the action of the Federal Communications Commission in the Carlin case (in which the FCC was attempting to establish its right to ban "indecency" from the air waves), Pacifica was very pleased to get "friend of the court" briefs from the major networks, the New York Times, and the National Association of Broadcasters, among others. The broadcasting world seemed to be coming through for Pacifica's right to broadcast material it found to have merit, and against the FCC's attempt to set itself up as the arbiter of "indecency." What was really going on? When Ralph Engelman, the Chair of the Board of WBAI (Pacifica's New York station, which had broadcast the George Carlin monologue) arrived at the Supreme Court chambers for the hearing on the case, he found that the whole room was taken up with the dignitaries of the broadcasting establishment, and he, representing the principal party (he thought), was ushered in a side door, shown to a small seat in the press section of the chamber, and generally ignored by press and counsel. He said afterward that he felt as if he was Miranda (of the "Miranda warning"); it was as if he were an incidental party around whom a struggle with other stakes was being waged. And of course, he was right; the legitimate defense of Pacifica was being used by the organizations of the mass media to erect a wall against groups such as Action for Children's Television (ACT), and the Carter Administration's Federal Trade Commission (which was trying to put some limits on the worst advertising). If the Supreme Court could be persuaded that the Federal Communications Commission did not have the power to ban "indecency" it could be persuaded that the Federal Communications Commission and Congress did not have the power to regulate the amount of advertising on Saturday morning cartoons (let alone the amount of violence or sexism in them). Pacifica was a stalking horse for the use of the First Amendment as a shield against those trying to do something about the impact of mass media on our society. Ten years later, the City of Palo Alto required, as a condition of granting a cable franchise that the cable company must devote a channel to locally produced, public access programming. One would think that such a requirement would be a responsible way of implementing the principles of the First Amendment. But no, the Federal District Court upheld the cable companies' argument that requiring community access violates the First Amendment rights of the cable company! Throughout the country the cable industry has been successfully using its "First Amendment Rights" to get out of the community service obligations which Congress, heeding the requests of cities around the country, had included in the Cable Act of 1984. All of this requires us to take a hard look at the way we have been thinking about the First Amendment. On the world stage UNESCO has been the forum for the Third World's struggle for informational and cultural independence. Just as Action for Children's Television is concerned about the impact of television on children, much of the Third World is concerned and alarmed by the impact of western media on their societies and by the distortion of information flowing in and out of their countries. Both conditions arise from the fact that multi-national communications companies dominate the world's media and information structure (even to the point of having pre- empted almost all of the orbits which will ever be available for communication satellites). Virtually the whole world is dependent for its news on three western news agencies: AP, UPI, and Reuters. In response to this problem, Third World leaders have proposed a New International Information and Communications Order (NIICO). Their proposal focuses on the development of an independent communications and media infrastructure and on the responsibility of journalistic and media organizations for their impact on people and societies. The proposed NIICO has been vigorously opposed by First World countries and the western media as an attack on freedom of speech. End, "First Amendment...," ( Part 1 of 2). Next, Response 15, "First Amendment...,"(Part 2 of 2) ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.16 **/ ** Written 6:27 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, "First Amendment...", (Part 2 of 2) The advocates of a New International Information and Communications Order have stressed the right of the world's peoples to "a free and balanced flow of information with due regard to cultural integrity." The US has vigorously and aggressively fought this concept, arguing that any set of principles, which in any way limits the complete control of multinational media organizations over their output, violates the principle of freedom of speech. UNESCO's support for the NIICO is the main reason given by the Reagan administration for the US withdrawal from UNESCO. Thus the debate over the Third World's demand for a New International Information and Communication Order has shown the First Amendment used in the same way internationally as domestically. The issue of international cultural and informational hegemony which lies at the heart of the UNESCO fight is no less important to us than the domestic issue of the impact of the mass media on the United States. A number of major US scholars, including former California Supreme Court Justice Frank Newman, are actively advancing the principle that the international law of human rights--including those dealing with speech and press, such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the Mass Media Declaration of UNESCO, the United Nation's Charter itself, and the Genocide Convention--are far more powerful and far reaching in their protection of human rights than the U.S. Bill of Rights. They suggest that these principles, developed in the crucible of mid-twentieth century experience, couched as they are in terms of the affirmative obligations of states and structures of power, are more effective and relevant than the primarily negative formulations of that eighteenth century document, the Bill of Rights. With its consistent linking of human rights to the responsibility of society and social institutions, international law supports and is consistent with the principles of the New International Information and Communications Order. We in this country seem to have been paralyzed, when it comes to dealing with either problem, by current formulations of the ideology of the First Amendment. We know that NBC is wrong when it says that violence and commercialism on children's cartoons is none of our business, but the argument makes us uncomfortable. It slows or weakens our support for people trying to do something about it. The use of the First Amendment against us requires American progressives to analyze the question of the mass media from the point of view of power and social impact. It requires us to go back and take a look at the original intent and purpose of the First Amendment. The importance of discussing the New International Information and Communications Order is that it focuses attention on the rights of the receivers of information (as against the prevalent US focus on the rights of the senders of information), and it forces an examination of the impact of the mass media on society and an examination of the nature of the ownership and control of the international mass media. At the same time, little analysis and argument has come out of the NIICO debate, as it has been carried on in UNESCO and elsewhere, which is going to be satisfying to any but the most initially sympathetic American progressives, let alone to Michael Dukakis and his colleagues in the American Civil Liberties Union. We have a responsibility to come up with an analysis which says that the mandate of the First Amendment is quite different when the question is what Propaganda Review magazine does in its pages than it is when the question is what the three television networks are doing in prime time; an analysis which recognizes the fact that in the case of conglomerate-owned mass media we are talking about the social responsibility of enormous organizations, which may well be stronger and more powerful than the government, and that the same principle which placed the First Amendment in the Constitution (to place a limit on the power of the government structure to control and shape public debate and consciousness) requires a limit on the ability of the equally (and probably more) powerful major corporate structure to control and shape public debate and consciousness. We have a responsibility to come up with an analysis which takes into account the affirmative obligations toward human rights embodied in international law. A discussion along these lines can make an important contribution to support for NIICO and UNESCO, and advance us to a more modern, more sophisticated, analysis of the principles of the First Amendment, one which takes into account questions of class and power, one which deals with the fact that today "freedom of the press belongs to [the corporation which] owns one." -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, "First Amendment...," (Part 2 of 2) Next, Response 16, "A Propaganda Model," by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, (Part 1 of 2). ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.17 **/ ** Written 6:28 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Response 16, "A Propaganda Model," by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. (Part 1 of 2) "A Propaganda Model," by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman Edward S. Herman is professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books. Copyright ) 1988 by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. The materials excerpted here are from Chapter One, "A Propaganda Model," taken from "Manufacturing Consent -- The Political Economy of the Mass Media," Pantheon Books, NY, 1988, and represent some of the clearest thinking about propaganda and the media that Propaganda Review has seen to date. Each of the five "filters" noted here are treated in great detail in the original text. The chapter also has a section describing how the filters contribute to the mounting of propaganda campaigns when needed by the national establishment. Normally, we don't print previously published material, but, we think that this is required reading for propaganda analysts and wish it as wide a distribution as possible. Special thanks to Pantheon Books and Linda Pennell, as well as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, for making this reprint possible. *** In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance. A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anti-communism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns. In their analysis of the evolution of the media in Great Britain, James Curran and Jean Seaton describe how, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a radical press emerged that reached a national working-class audience. This alternative press was effective in reinforcing class consciousness: it unified the workers because it fostered an alternative value system and framework for looking at the world, and because it "promoted a greater collective confidence by repeatedly emphasizing the potential power of working people to effect social change through the force of 'combination' and organized action."[1] This was deemed a major threat by the ruling elites. One MP asserted that the working-class newspapers "inflame passions and awaken their selfishness, contrasting their current condition with what they contend to be their future condition--a condition incompatible with human nature, and those immutable laws which Providence has established for the regulation of civil society."[2] The result was an attempt to squelch the working-class media by libel laws and prosecutions, by requiring an expensive security bond as a condition for publication, and by imposing various taxes designed to drive out radical media by raising their costs. These coercive efforts were not effective, and by mid-century they had been abandoned in favor of the liberal view that the market would enforce responsibility. Curran and Seaton show that the market did successfully accomplish what state intervention failed to do. Following the repeal of the punitive taxes on newpapers between 1853 and 1869, a new daily local press came into existence, but not one new local working-class daily was established through the rest of the nineteenth century. Curran and Seaton note that Indeed, the eclipse of the national radical press was so total that when the Labour Party developed out of the working-class movement in the first decade of the twentieth century, it did not obtain the exclusive backing of a single national daily or Sunday paper.[3] One important reason for this was the rise in scale of newspaper enterprise and the associated increase in capital costs from the mid-nineteenth century onward, which was based on technological improvements along with the owners' increased stress on reaching large audiences. Thus the first filter--the limitation on ownership of media with any substantial outreach by the requisite large size of investment--was applicable a century or more ago, and it has become increasingly effective over time. In arguing for the benefits of the free market as a means of controlling dissident opinion in the mid-nineteenth century, the Liberal chancellor of the British exchequer, Sir George Lewis, noted that the market would promote those papers "enjoying the preference of the advertising public."[4] Advertising did, in fact, serve as a powerful mechanism weakening the working-class press. Curran and Seaton give the growth of advertising a status comparable with the increase in capital costs as a factor allowing the market to accomplish what state taxes and harassment failed to do, noting that these "advertisers thus acquired a de facto licensing authority since, without their support, newspapers ceased to be economically viable."[5] Before advertising became prominent, the price of a newspaper had to cover the costs of doing business. With the growth of advertising, papers that attracted ads could afford a copy price well below production costs. This put papers lacking in advertising at a serious disadvantage: their prices would tend to be higher, curtailing sales, and they would have less surplus to invest in improving the salability of the paper (features, attractive format, promotion, etc.). For this reason, an advertising-based system will tend to drive out of existence or into marginality the media companies and types that depend on revenue from sales alone. With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers' choices influence media prosperity and survival.. End, "Propaganda Model," (Part 1 of 2) Next, Response 17, "Propaganda Model," (Part 2 of 2) ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.18 **/ ** Written 6:29 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, "Propaganda Model," (Part 2 of 2) The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. The media need a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news. Economics dictates that they concentrate their resources where significant news often occurs, where important rumors and leaks abound, and where regular press conferences are held. The White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department, in Washington, D.C., are central nodes of such news activity. On a local basis, city hall and the police department are the subject of regular news "beats" for reporters. Business corporations and trade groups are also regular and credible purveyors of stories deemed newsworthy. These bureaucracies turn out a large volume of material that meets the demands of news organizations for reliable, scheduled flows. Mark Fishman calls this "the principle of bureaucratic affinity: only other bureaucracies can satisfy the input needs of a news bureaucracy."[6] Government and corporate sources also have the great merit of being recognizable and credible by their status and prestige. This is important to the mass media. As Fishman notes, "Newsworkers are predisposed to treat bureaucratic accounts as factual because news personnel participate in upholding a normative order of authorized knowers in the society. Reporters operate with the attitude that officals ought to know what it is their job to know. . . . In particular, a newsworker will recognize an official's claim to knowledge not merely as a claim, but as a credible, competent piece of knowledge. This amounts to a moral division of labor: officials have and give the facts; reporters merely get them."[7] Another reason for the heavy weight given to official sources is that the mass media claim to be "objective" dispensers of the news. Partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect themselves from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate. This is also partly a matter of cost: taking information from sources that may be presumed credible reduces investigative expense, whereas material from sources that are not prima facie credible, or that will elicit criticism and threats, requires careful checking and costly research. "Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program. It may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action. It may be organized centrally or locally, or it may consist of the entirely independent actions of individuals. If flak is produced on a large scale, or by individuals or groups with substantial resources, it can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media. Positions have to be defended within the organization and without, sometimes before legislatures and possibly even in courts. Advertisers may withdraw patronage. If certain kinds of fact, position, or program are thought likely to elicit flak, this prospect can be a deterrent. Freedom House, an example of a well-funded flak organization which dates back to the early 1940s, has had interlocks with AIM (Accuracy in Media), the World Anti Communist League, Resistance International, and U.S. government bodies such as Radio Free Europe and the CIA, and has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the government and international right wing. It has expended substantial resources in criticizing the media for insufficient sympathy with US foreign -policy ventures and excessively harsh criticism of US client states. Its most notable publication of this genre was Peter Braestrup's Big Story, which contended that the media's negative portrayal of the Tet offensive helped lose the war. The work is a travesty of scholarship, but more interesting is its premise: that the mass media not only should support any national venture abroad, but should do so with enthusiasm, such enterprises being by definition noble. A final filter is the ideology of anticommunism. Communism as the utlimate evil has always been the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and superior status. The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were traumas to Western elites, and the ongoing conflicts and the well-publicized abuses of Communist states have contributed to elevating opposition to communism to a first principle of Western ideology and politics. This ideology helps mobilize the populace against an enemy, and because the concept is fuzzy it can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten property interests or support accommodation with Communist states and radicalism. It therefore helps fragment the left and labor movements and serves as a political-control mechanism. If the triumph of communism is the worst imaginable result, the support of fascism abroad is justified as a lesser evil. Opposition to social democrats who are too soft on Communists and "play into their hands" is rationalized in similar terms. Liberals at home, often accused of being pro-Communist or insufficiently anti-Communist, are kept continuously on the defensive in a cultural milieu in which anticommunism is the dominant religion. If they allow communism, or something that can be labeled communism, to triumph in the provinces while they are in office, the political costs are heavy. Most of them have fully internalized the religion anyway, but they are all under great pressure to demonstrate their anti-Communist credentials. The five filters narrow the range of news that passes through the gates, and even more sharply limit what can become "big news," subject to sustained news campaigns. By definition, news from primary establishment sources meets one major filter requirement and is readily accomodated by the mass media. Messages from and about dissidents and weak, unorganized individuals and groups, domestic and foreign, are at an initial disadvantage in sourcing costs and credibility, and they often do not comport with the ideology or interests of the gatekeepers and other powerful parties that influence the filtering process. Notes: 1 James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, 2d ed. (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 24. 2 Ibid., p. 23. 3 Ibid, p. 34. 4 Ibid., p. 31. 5 Ibid., p. 41. 6 Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), p. 143. 7 Ibid., pp. 144-45. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, "A Propaganda Model," (Part 2 of 2) Next, Response 18, "Brave New World Revisited, Revisited," by Claude Steiner. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.19 **/ ** Written 6:31 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, "Brave New World Revisited, Revisited," by Claude Steiner "Brave New World Revisited, Revisited," by Claude Steiner Claude Steiner is a psychologist and is currently working on a book on American propaganda. *** The Third Reich was only a glimmer in Hitler's eye when Huxley wrote Brave New World. In 1958, well toward the end of his life, Huxley reconsidered his earlier work in light of Nazism's contribution to the art and technique of propaganda. In Brave New World Revisited, Huxley surveys post-war "freedom and its enemies" and asks whether humankind is able to govern itself or whether true to his earlier vision, we are destined to be the victims of "the. . . ultimate revolution . . . which lie[s] beyond politics and economics and which aim[s] at the total suppression of the individual's psychology and physiology." Hitler, Huxley points out, discovered that people are congenitally weak; they suffer from"herd poisoning" when in a mass, they tend to believe that might is right and they can be distracted by the most trivial of entertaining pursuits. Armed with those insights and using the most up-to-date technology--film, radio, posters and loud speakers--he subjugated 80 million people and led them to destruction. Yet, Hitler's control was imperfect; it required terror for success. It remained for others to discover the methods that produce compliance without the mailed fist. In the two propaganda chapters of Brave New World Revisited ("Propaganda in a Democracy" and "Propaganda under a Dictatorship"), Huxley surveys the post-Hitlerian scene and notes the progress made in the technology of velvet-glove manipulation. Today, as in the original Brave New World, people increasingly accept their fate without protest. We are not yet to the point where "people are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get," but it is increasingly true that coercion, torture and imprisonment are not needed. People are their own prison guards; they willingly obey government directives and seldom question authority. The herd poisoning that brings out, in Huxley's words, "moral imbecility and mindlessness" in the human mass no longer requires that we transport ourselves to the circus or stadium. It is as easily accessible as our TV in whose company, alone in the mass, we allow ourselves to be endlessly distracted by what Huxley describes as the "cunning appeals to our lowest passions." We are permitted to think and say whatever occurs to us, but the contents of our consciousness, and therefore our actions, are controlled by obedient self-censorship. Our perceptual makeup is not especially well designed for the recognition of truth, especially if someone is intent on fooling us. Our memory is easily tampered with; we want to believe, and are susceptible to other people's opinions. And once we commit ourselves to a certain point of view, we tend to deny information that contradicts it. We forget easily and selectively what pains us. Given several ways to interpret a fact, we tend to prefer and therefore believe the first or most familiar we hear, the simplest, or the one which represents the least loss or conscious conflict. I am not speaking here of dishonesty and venality, whereby we choose to believe that which will benefit us; that is another problem. I am talking about a phenomenon that has no moral valence, something that escapes our will. I am referring to our perceptual system's vulnerability to illusions, our facility for seeing and hearing what's not there and our tendency to collapse knowledge into simplified, visceral forms (abstractions, metaphors, sound bites and catch phrases), our susceptibility to the loss, it might be said, to see what's plainly going on, the faculty of common sense. All of this was known to Huxley, but even he did not foresee what was to come. Recently a wholly new set of persuasion tactics are being used which have to do with manipulation of images, primarily on television. These powerful image implanting techniques effectively replace four-dimensional reality and the written word with digitalized, two-dimensional images which constitute a wholly new grammar of persuasion, against which no verbal argument has any power. Bypassing and neutralizing people's intelligence by simple devices which Hitler and Goebbles intuited but which modern propagandists have distilled to a powerful and mindbending brew, these formulae are improved with every episode of a major political election and between elections by the awesome still that is the consumer market. At the same time, the baseline of our awareness, the background against which the latest propaganda program is projected, the propaganda environment, is steadily evolving in the direction of simplified primary dimensions: young-old, tall-short, fat-thin, winners-losers, happy-unhappy, coupled-single, rich-poor, drug addicted-clean, and so on. Due to TV's influence, attention spans are shortening and with them the amount of time allotted to describing history. Time given to news events on the screen has shortened to fourteen and a half seconds while that which simply entertains fills every available time slot and can go on for endless hours. The effect of the electronic media on the whole culture is of the utmost importance; as we learn about the world through the grammar of imagery rather than via the printed word or direct experience, the lessons learned are very different. For instance Ronald Reagan is loved by a majority of the American people. As this love flourishes in the abstract world of images, his popularity exists apart from his policies or ideas and need not translate into support for them. In the electronically generated, image-based world, contradictory concepts can coexist next to each other in logic-tight compartments even if they contradict each other. Tough on crime/soft on Noriega, a kind, gentle man/champion of the death sentence, George Bush was enthusiastically elected even though we have no idea what he is going to do for or against us. The process has nothing to do with rationality. In fact it bypasses logic since it taces place exclusively in the realm of images. This is not intended to become another hand wringing litany of doom. The danger is clear, what is not clear is what form the solution will take. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis in the thirties and early forties believed that the public could be taught the different devices used to propagandize people, and that once we understood these tactics we could more easily defend ourselves against them. Jacques Ellul believes that people have to personally teach others how propaganda works and that the process of overcoming the alienation that makes people so vulnerable requires the aid of great spiritual power. Others believe that advertising and TV have to be regulated, perhaps banned. The abolition of secrecy combined with criminalizing the conspiracy to influence the public for political purposes is another approach. A new reading of the First Amendment so as to protect the consumers of propaganda is yet another approach. How do we help people become aware of the propaganda environment in which we are immersed? What is the method to most effectively resist the conspiracies of the propagandists? Those are the questions. "Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long;" Huxley ends his post-war book, "it is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them." -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, "Brave New World Revisited,..." Next, Response 19, Book Review, "I'm Optimal, You're Optimal," by Loretta Graziano ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.20 **/ ** Written 6:32 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Review, "I'm Optimal, You're Optimal -- An Economist's Way of Knowledge," by Loretta Graziano "I'm Optimal, You're Optimal -- An Economist's Way of Knowledge," by Loretta Graziano. A review of "The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics," by Amitai Etzioni, New York, New York, Free Press, 1988. Loretta Graziano is Associate Professor of International Business at California State University, Hayward, and is working on a book called Information Overload Democracy. *** Social science may be at once the most pervasive and the most overlooked source of propaganda. It's pervasive because social scientists are the philosopher-kings of the modern world. They answer our questions about who we are as individuals and as a society. These answers are seen as empirical truths because they are generated by the scientific method. The subjectivity of information cloaked in the mantle of science is widely underestimated. Economics leads the social sciences in its power as propaganda. Economic theory underlies the national consensus on what humans want and how to get it. Economics tells us who our friends are, and who is worthy of nuclear annihilation. A new book by Amatai Etzioni has finally shed light on the power, and the flaws, of the economics paradigm. Etzioni shows how the economist's concept of man as a rational actor shapes our understanding of ourselves; and how the economist's concept of society as a collection of separate rational actors shapes our social thought. According to the neoclassical testament of the economics bible, all human behavior is the rational pursuit of self-interest. The paradigm assumes that self-interest is rationally calculated from the facts, and is always placed above group interests. Society is merely an aggregation of individuals pursuing their separate self-interest. Nevertheless, because we are rational actors, we help society just by going out and maximizing our own utility. Unfettered competition in the pursuit of self-interest thus becomes the only precondition for social welfare. This utilitarian view of human behavior is enormously powerful, Etzioni explains, because it has spread from ordained economists to the other social sciences. As a result, the utility-maximization framework now filters the research findings made by mainstream political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and their fellow travellers. Enough evidence to shatter this paradigm can be generated by a short walk around the block. People are always making choices that violate their self-interest. Many of our decisions elevate moral values above self-interested calculation. And even the most self-interested among us will confess that we do not always calculate! Etzioni marshalls an impressive stock of research support for the idea that human decisions are intuitive, emotional, and unconfined by formal logic. An even more serious challenge to the rationalist paradigm comes from the frequency of co-operation and altruism. Etzioni asserts that the pursuit of moral values must be viewed as a human motivator on a par with the pursuit of pleasure. Economists have sidestepped these issues by calling cooperation "enlighted self-interest", and calling altruism a form of pleasure. But Etzioni shows that the socio-moral dimension of human decision making is too pervasive to be viewed as an aberration. By reducing man to a utility-maximizing animal, laissez-faire economics strips him of this morality. The rationalist paradigm is dangerous because it inclines us to overlook important information about what makes society tick. Free market competition works not because it is unfettered, but because of the moral dimension we each bring to it. Without these internalized social bonds, efficient competition becomes destructive chaos. Social bonds also protect our freedom of choice in the marketplace. The social fabric helps individuals define what is in their self-interest. Without these social bonds, free choice is so overwhelming that individuals cannot resist external pressures, from advertising to xenophobia. If we allow outside forces to manipulate and define our concept of self-interest, we are not rational actors. There's more to a free society than keeping the government out of the marketplace. Finally, the rationalist paradigm overlooks differences in the power each actor wields in the marketplace. Representing society as a collection of individuals presumes that transactions take place between individuals of equal power. In reality members of large, well-organized groups hold more power in the marketplace than individual actors. Marketplace transactions tend to advance the interests of powerful groups more than they advance general prosperity and long run efficiency. The powerless individual doesn't get very far on rationality alone. Why do economists and other scholars base their "scientific" research on a model with such gaping holes? Etzioni examines two explanations. He traces modern laissez-faire economics to the Whig triumph over the Tories. The Tories saw man as a blank slate on which society writes its message, an empty cup for society to fill. The Whigs advanced the view that man is born free to invent himself, and society is nothing but what man makes it. Though the Enlightenment view is an improvement over the monarchist view, the debate left us with an unfortunate legacy of bi-polar thinking. In reality, we both influence and are influenced by society. It's nice to believe we each write our own song, but the belief can blind us to society's influence on the songs we "freely choose" to write. In order to monitor and restrain social controls, we must be aware of them. By believing we invent ourselves, we give society the power to invent us. Thus the Whig rebellion replaced one distasteful, simplistic, and counter-productive world view with another simplistic and ultimately counter-productive world view. A less-heralded event of 1776 was the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. The observations of this posthumous economist (the discipline was born after Adam Smith died; while alive he was an Oxford Professor of Moral Philosophy) are the theoretical framework for contemporary research. In other words, all the computer horsepower that money can buy is now harnessed to the search for evidence of behaviors characteristic of 18th-century Scotland. Economists, though careful to observe the rituals of scientific rigor, see only the parts of today's world that filter through this lens. The reason is simple: economists have the same mental equipment as the rest of us. The human mind interprets information in the context of prior knowledge and expectations. Even when the prior knowledge is a Ph.D., and the expectations are a Nobel-prize winning theory, objectivity is impossible. When Thomas Kuhn shined a light on the scientific method, even physicists weren't wearing any clothes. Kuhn described science's need for theoretical paradigms to know which facts to look for, and what the facts mean once they're found. The economist using neoclassical theory to look for data is like the drunk looking for his keys under the lamp post -- not because he dropped them there, but because that's were the light is. It's no surprise when economics "proves" that rational self-interest is what makes society tick. Building on Kuhn's insights, Etzioni says that you can't fight a theory with nothing. However flawed, the utility-maximization theory will prevail until something else comes along to replace it. Etzioni offers this book as the something else -- an alternative paradigm that recognizes our social-moral as well as our rational dimension. In his model, people are motivated by internalized social values and calculated self-interest. There's a constant tension between the pursuit of self-interest and of shared interests. His paradigm defines the complex middle ground between the bi-polar opposites of competition and cooperation. Is the world ready for complex middle ground? Can a complex theory replace a simplistic theory? The outlook for Etzioni's optimistic vision seems diminished by his own excellent chapters on the limits of rationality. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, Review, "I'm Optimal...," Next, Response 20, Review, "Mommy Made Me Do It!" by Hannah Silver ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.21 **/ ** Written 6:34 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Review, "Mommy Made Me Do It!" "Mommy Made Me Do It!" by Hannah Silver. A review of "Taken In--American Gullibility and the Reagan Mythos," by Stephen Ducat, Tacoma, Washington, Life Sciences Press, 1988. Hannah Silver is a San Francisco Bay Area bluestocking who has not owned a television since 1974. *** Stephen Ducat's Taken In resembles a dinner with two highly delectable but ill-matched courses. Escargot followed by crepe suzettes or a rum bombe preceded by caviar. A main course to provide logic and fullness to his theories about the apparently mesmerizing charm of the Great Communicator is no where to be found. In the first half of the book, the author goes over territory covered by Christopher Lasch and other '80s social critics, i.e., that the inner lives of many Americans, particularly prosperous ones, have become distorted by narcissistic childrearing practices and that they are unable to see beyond gratification of their own short-term needs. In the book's second half, Ducat serves a dessert of entertaining Reagan psycho-history. Into this by now prosaic stew, Ducat introduces a new ingredient: that narcissistic childrearing inhibits the ability to think critically in adult life. Lacking the capacity for critical thought, millions of Americans are prime targets for the propaganda and myth creation currently fashioned in the era of Reagan. Ducat elaborates his argument by cleverly interweaving certain aspects of contemporary psychoanalytic theory with fragments of the social landscape of the '80s. Children raised in a narcissistic environment, he believes, have difficulty separating themselves from a powerful maternal figure without fearing or experiencing devastating feelings of abandonment. In the lexicon of narcissistic child rearing, maternal love, rather than grounded in empathy for the child and mirroring of its infantile needs, becomes a metaphor for an engulfment so pervasive as to destroy the process of normal personal growth. Wavering between the poles of engulfment and abandonment, the individual is hard pressed to gain the tools needed for critical thinking. What develops, says Ducat, is a sense of false independence--of standing alone, not needing others. That false independence is an aid to propagandists is not hard to see when one recalls Reagan's talk in the early '80s of "America standing tall again." Sleepwalking or not, Reagan chose a perfect metaphor for all those Americans obsessed with personal autonomy but unable to achieve it. While Ducat introduces a number of intriguing ideas into the discourse on how we have gotten into the sorry pickle we are presently in, he fails to give the social and technological context of the last forty years its due in creating the current propaganda environment. In his eagerness to drive home the consequences of narcissistic childrearing patterns, he ignores the role of technology in general and television in particular in maintaining the propaganda environment. More important, he ignores American social and economic history of the past twenty years --the era of diminishing expectations. Taken In, in fact invites comparison with Christopher Lasch's book, The Culture of Narcissism.. Subtitled "American Life in an Era of Diminishing Expectations," Lasch's work, unlike Ducat's, gives the prevailing narcissism a context and a reason for flourishing. The American pie is limited, says Lasch, and self-centered behavior on a mass scale has been our country's poignant response to this subconscious knowledge. To rest one's case for the propaganda environment on the minutiae of the childrearing practices of only a segment of American public distorts the complexity and seriousness of what is happening. Just as important are the ways we receive information and the quality of the knowledge that is available. The role of television is only the most obvious of the enormous changes of the last forty years. Perhaps the best way to evaluate the role of narcissism in the propaganda environment is to say that it creates a special receptivity for myth creation. The tools for myth creation arise from long held cultural habits. While the discussion of the narcissistic personality with its emphasis on the failure to develop powers of critical thinking is persuasive, the follow-up psycho-history of Ronald Reagan is considerably more mundane and questionable. What is particularly distressing about Ducat's analysis is his use of the concept of introjection to link the Reagan psycho-history and the narcissistic personality theory--a main course that lacks the power to satisfy. Defined as the ways that humans absorb various aspects of their environment--ideas, values, and patterns of behavior-- and create a self, mature introjection implies the ability to discriminate. Uncritical introjection implies impaired critical thinking grounded in unresolved infantile needs and fears. In an eerie way, the theory of introjection as employed by Ducat harks back to an earlier phase of psychoanalytic theory when breast-feeding was a metaphor for unquestioning dependence and swallowing things, i.e., ideas whole. It may be gratifying to American intellectuals to latch on to Ducat's theory of introjection as an attractive explanation of the country's seemingly wholehearted embrace of the Reagan ethos, but a little reflection tells most of us that the evils of narcissistic child-rearing can't be the whole story. If big bad mommy and cultivation of the false self were supreme, wouldn't most Americans have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the Administration's policy's in Central America? Followed its lead to enact laws prohibiting the right to an abortion? That neither of these things have happened indicates that theories such as Ducat's can only be part of the story. Recent history shows us quite clearly that even the heaviest hand of repression and accompanying propaganda can be defeated by contrary traditions. New evidence indicates that Italians, during the height of Mussolini's power, continued to rescue Jews and help them escape death in concentration camps. Despite their willingness to accept fascism, many clung to older traditions-- one's duty to God and a willingness to subvert authority. In Ducat's lexicon, introjection was incomplete. In his reductionist approach, our suseptibility to propaganda is based on "taking it in" at our mother's breast. Perhaps the truer analysis is that the myths of any society are complex, long-lasting, and resilient. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, Review, "Mommy Made Me Do It!" Next, Response 21, "Ad Watch," by Mark Crispin Miller. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.22 **/ ** Written 6:35 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, "Ad Watch." Ad Watch "Death Grip," by Mark Crispin Miller Mark Crispin Miller teaches writing at the Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book is about television and American culture. *** One May morning in 1984, a very odd couple posed for the usual cameras in front of the White House: an ever-manly Ronald Reagan stood beside the aloof, glitteringly androgynous Michael Jackson, a fantastic sight in his shades and tunic and singular white glove. Ostensibly, the moment was meant to kick off the Advertising Council's new campaign against drunk driving: Jackson had agreed to let the Council's admakers use his hit song "Beat It" in their warning pitch to teen-aged drivers, and for this charitable act the President was now expressing public thanks. However, that joint appearance -- presented six months before election day -- had a far subtler purpose. First of all, the joint appearance helped to establish Ronald Reagan as very "caring", a kind Daddy eager to protect the kids from their own recklessness. Here Reagan was, typically, lauding voluntarism: the generosity of a young multimillionaire, the civic spirit of the big advertising agencies -- and the eventual self-discipline of America's adolescent drivers, who, once saturated by this new campaign, would no longer drink and drive. In thus extolling the individual will, that benign image conveniently blotted out the Administration's actual record, which had in fact made fatal car accidents much more likely. The Reagan team opposed the national 55-mph speed limit, revoked the auto safety standard requiring automatic belts and air bags in all cars, resisted any further restrictions on liquor advertising, and so on, displaying a warm concern not for the young victims of drunk driving but for the profit margins of the beer and auto industries. Thus the Reagan/Michael Jackson media event put across a certain ideological message, a deft stroke of propaganda that did not just rebut, but utterly suppressed the complex but damning case against the Reagan record with one false and simple visual moment. Through such suppression, propaganda aims not just to discredit all adversarial views, but to determine, once and for all, the only possible view of reality itself. In other words, propaganda goes well beyond the mere belittlement of dissident beliefs or policies, to the establishment of a vision that makes all dissidence inconceivable, a vision whole, perfect and impenetrable -- for "by its very nature," as Ellul points out, propaganda "excludes contradiction and discussion . . . . Extreme propaganda must win over the adversary and at least use him by integrating him into its own frame of reference." And this is also why it was important to have an androgynous Black rock star share a photo opportunity with Ronald Reagan. That image was further propagandistic through its suggestion that all menacing differences -- social, cultural, political, generational -- had finally been resolved by the powerful "Reagan magic." Here on the South Lawn of the White House, within the nimbus of that wrinkled smile, all opposition had suddenly melted into union: old and young, rich and poor, black and white, straight and freaky -- the many infamous tensions of the Sixties, now resolved before 500 screaming Jackson fans and a massive TV audience. "Isn't this a thriller?" the President asked coyly, at once plugging his guest's album, paying homage to commercial power, and advertising the absorption of what had once been called "the counterculture." Astonishingly, the entire event had nearly been ruined by an accidental bit of visual irony: a giant blow-up of the macabre, skeletal handshake reproduced above. Created by the ad agency Leber Katz Partners, that 24-sheet poster had been planned to form a somber backdrop to the Reagan/Jackson union. However, as Advertising Age reported (5/17/84), Michael Deaver "put a stop to the board's South Lawn appearance at the last minute", because he "considered the board 'too stark' for a presidential appearance." The problem with the backdrop, from the propagandist's point-of-view, was not just its gloomy tone, but its chilling relevance to the meeting that had almost taken place in front of it. If the virile Reagan shaking hands with the teenage idol was meant to symbolize the elimination of all difference, the backdrop would have undercut the whole cheery spectacle by emphasizing the most basic, the most shocking of all differences--the difference between life and death. Thus backed, the scene would have spoken, not the eternal, perfect "Yes!" of propaganda, but the direct and sobering sort of statement that brings everybody down to earth: "Look at this old man. Soon he'll be dead." And that visual slip would have been exhilirating and profoundly revealing --an unexpected moment of revenge for the Reaganite campaign against the body: for it is the body -- mortal, animal -- that has been, perhaps, the real object of the Reagan program. Through its relentless advancement of high technology, its puritanical "war on pornography", its promotion of childbirth as a punishment for sex, and so on, the Reagan movement has stepped up the long American effort to repress the body as the basis of human culture and social reality. Seen from this perspective, the image of Ronald Reagan/Michael Jackson appears not as a merger of opposites after all, but as the dual expression of one regressive impulse: the "boyish" Reagan, forever pointing backward to a mythic period of national innocence, has his double in the boyish/girlish Jackson, who, with his stuffed animals and comic books, remains fixed within his fantasy of eternal childhood. Just as both seem artificially preserved, each advertises a past state of blissful disembodiment, a time before the Fall. It is only as an image that a Reagan or a Jackson can successfully regress; and it is only as consumers of such imagery that we can seem to join them in their happy state--for in consuming immaterial images, we are as nothing, nowhere, confronting no one. The very media that transmit these images, then, place us where the images keep promising to take us. Thus that whole White House "event" was a dense flash of propaganda -- not just in its many planned nuances, but even through the conditions of its mass reception. Propaganda must cut us off from any orienting knowledge -- whether an intellectual awareness of the past, or the mere apprehensions that arise from personal unhappiness: the knowledge "in the bones", as Orwell puts it. To prevent such empowerment, propaganda variously works to hide the body and its cannily intuitive common sense -- which is why Michael Deaver was so quick to act, once he saw the accidental truth in that dark backdrop. Only when nature thus reasserts itself through further accidents -- some comic, others not -- will the objects of propaganda finally perceive its death-grip, and begin, perhaps, to break it. -30- RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End,"Ad Watch." Next, Response 22, Masthead ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.23 **/ ** Written 6:52 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Masthead, Propaganda Review 3 *** Propaganda Review 3 MASTHEAD Editor: Frederic Stout Contributing Editors: Johan Carlisle, Marcy Darnovsky, Nina Eliasoph, Loretta Graziano, Barbara Haber, Michael Miley, Sheila OUDonnell, Hannah Silver, Claude Steiner. Design and Layout: Johan Carlisle, Jennifer Carole, Kerstin ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev ** /** propaganda.rev: 9.24 **/ ** Written 6:55 pm Nov 10, 1991 by ppaull in cdp:propaganda.rev ** Start, Resources *** RESOURCES * Strategies for Media Literacy (SML) First it was Johnny can't read. More recently we've learned that American school kids, even college students, have only the most rudimentary knowledge of geography and science. The deeper problem is that increasingly youth in the United States don't know how to think critically about the myriad messages they receive daily from radio, television, books, newspapers, billboards and all the rest of our ever-more mediated culture. Responding to this deeply rooted problem is Strategies for Media Literacy (SML), a new San Francisco-based organization that has received start-up funding from the L.J. and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation. According to executive director Kathleen Tyner, the goal of SML is "to help people cut through the information glut in order to use the information they need to be successful in a complex world. SML hopes to enhance awareness of the way that printed and electronic media work with traditional literary forms to educate and inform large numbers of people. " Tyner sees the schools as the place to start the campaign for widespread media literacy, and she and co-researcher Donna Lloyd-Kolkin have recently completed a Media Literacy Education Needs Survey for the elementary schools in California. SML also publishes an excellent newsletter. For more information, contact Strategies for Media Literacy, 946 Noe Street, San Francisco, CA 94114. * Fund for Open Information and Accountability, Inc. (FOIA, Inc. ') For decades the Fund for Open Information and Accountability, Inc. (FOIA, Inc. ') has been leading the fight against all forms of government censorship. The FBI and the CIA can hardly make a move --particularly when it comes to resisting requests made under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act --without FOIA, Inc. 's lawyers jumping all over them. FOIA, Inc. publishes Our Right To Know; a recent issue focused attention on the FBI campaign to recruit librarians as spies. As a result of FOIA, Inc. 's work, the government has recently backed down on what has to be one of the worst ideas of all time. A subscription to Our Right To Know is $10 per year (tax-deductible). Contact FOIA, Inc., 145 West 4th Street, NY, NY 10012. * Global Options (GO) is a nonprofit organization that conducts research and advocacy on world affairs and publishes Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order, a quarterly that has proven to be one of the best possible sources for clear thinking on the contemporary world situation. Global Options works "for the development of a new, cooperative world order. " Among its goals are "non-military solutions to international conflicts, the mutual co-existence of social systems and an equitable distribution of global resources. " GO 's "Contra Watch " project is a well respected clearinghouse for information on contra activities throughout the US and Central America. Its "Right Wing Project " recently published Rollback (South End Press, 1988), a study of the influence of ultra-conservative groups on US foreign policy. And the Summer 1988 issue of Social Justice is devoted to one of the most tragically difficult issues of the past three decades: US relations with Cuba. The special issue contains the Institute for Policy Studies report on the Cuban prison system and superb analyses of "Media Images of Cuba " and "Press Coverage of Cuba. " A one-year subscription to Social Justice is $25. For more information, contact Global Options, P.O. Box 40601, San Francisco, CA 94140. * Association for Responsible Dissent (ARDIS) If you want to know about American propaganda, go to the source. Unfortunately, of course, most sources won 't talk. But there is one source that will: the Association for Responsible Dissent (ARDIS), a unique organization of former members of the US intelligence community and other concerned citizens. ARDIS acts as a kind of halfway house for agents who want to come in out of the cold and go public with secret information and/or generalized concerns about the practice of covert agencies in a democracy. ARDIS is currently planning to begin publication of an organizational bulletin, a nationally syndicated newspaper column and a weekly television program. They are already active on the lecture circuit and have been featured on "60 Minutes " and two ABC specials. A quick glance at the staff, membership, and advisory board list shows that ARDIS will undoubtedly pack a wallop. Beginning with former executive director John Stockwell (author of In Search of Enemies), you see names like Philip Agee, former general Tom Gervasi, Peter Dale Scott, Ed Asner, Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Jeff Cohen, Studs Terkel, Haskel Wexler, Professor Howard Zinn . . . well, you get the picture. Write ARDIS at 4489 Murietta Ave, #11, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423. Or call (from a secure line, of course) (818) 995-6522. RESTRICTIONS: Copyright 1991 by Propaganda Review. All rights reserved under the International Copyright Union, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the PanAmerican Convention. Unauthorized republication is prohibited but reprinting (or reposting in other conferences or networks) of all Propaganda Review articles is encouraged. Please contact Johan Carlisle (jcarlisle), Managing Editor, for permission. Copies of Propaganda Review magazine (with illustrated articles) are available for $6. [Note: issues #1 and #5 are out of print.] For more information, to order back issues, or to subscribe to PR ($20/4 issues; $40-libraries & foreign) contact jcarlisle (via e-mail on PeaceNet), call (415) 332-8369, or write to: PROPAGANDA REVIEW PO Box 1469 Sausalito, CA 94966 End, Propaganda Review 3 Next, Propaganda Review 4. ** End of text from cdp:propaganda.rev **