Talk:Propaganda in the United States/Archive 1

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Archive 1

???

It would be interresting to go into US anti-drug propaganda campaigns. I think these are marvelous examples of propaganda. Very little information- heavy on negative imagry.

Perhaps one of the most effective means of propaganda in the US is the perception of unbiased media which always tells the whole story. What the media reports on is one thing but what they don't report on is almost more powerfull. Katrina for example... US media gave next to no coverage to offers from other nations of assistance, or at best heavily downplayed them. Canada, Cuba, etc.. which responed immediatly but were told "no thanks" by the administration. Instead of investigating why these offers were refused focus was put on the "blame game" issue. I don't know what exactly I'm trying to say here lol. Perhaps this sort of thing is outside the context of propaganda...70.176.240.53 13:23, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


This page really should give references for many of its statements. In particular, I'd like to see references for the following statements:

  • "...the government has always enforced various forms of censorship." (This is possible, but highly unlikely. You'd need to show that, from its founding in 1787 through today, the government has enforced censorship continually.)
  • "Recent legislation has allowed government to censor any information which could be imagined as assisting "terrorists"." Name the legislation, please.
  • "The censorship has been strengthened with government actively issuing statements about good journalism..." You should give a link to the government statements.
  • "...jailing journalists for refusing to reveal sources..." Name the journalists that have been jailed, please. (One was Judith Miller. Name others.)
  • "...threatening with charges for 'inappropriate' journalism." Again, please give a source.
  • "United States Department of Defense is an active operator of propaganda." Please give sources. (Yes, this is true -- but you should point to, say, Office of Strategic Influence.

Thanks. Chip Unicorn 06:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with this article

Despite the recent "rewrite" there is still so much wrong with this article.

  • Most propaganda in the United States is advertising by private companies to promote awareness of their products and services. - This is not covered by the normal definition of propaganda.
  • The News media section - Whatever the editorial slant of media, again that is not covered by the normal definition of propaganda. It is pushing your point of view, certainly, most media do that, it is not propaganda.
  • The bit about cointelpro needs citations
  • The Movies section - Come on, no one can expect the army to support a movie that is highly critical of the army especially if and when the storyline is totally fictional. That is not propaganda, that is common sense thinking.
  • The Common rhetoric section - This section is so silly I'm not even going into details on that one.

The only part that would make this article worthy of keeping in its present form is the History section up to ".. under J. Edgar Hoover."--Kalsermar 19:41, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

While some people might not consider private advertising propaganda, most political and government propaganda goes through the same channels, so those channels and their main use bear mentioning. I've rewritten the first section to steer clear of identifying advertising as propaganda. I also added two sources from well-known media watchdogs that claim the news media engage in propaganda. Gazpacho 07:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Claims that ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN propagandize for the right

  • First, it does not matter whether the people who say so are communists.
  • Second, a citation appears earlier in the paragraph. So please stop removing it, Ajdz.

I'm curious what POV you think this article expresses. It's not my fault that for 50-odd years the government directed propaganda against the political left. There was a Cold War on. Gazpacho 18:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Please provide a quote. I have read both sources and haven't found it. And if they apply to later sentences, the citations themselves should be later. And who is talking about communists? --Ajdz 19:03, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

"06:30, 23 April 2006 Ajdz (→News media - whose accounts? communists?)"

From the source: "The dominance of right-wing think tanks and policy analysts in the media is a quantifiable fact . . ." And from the preceding issue that it refers to: "In the survey of 1997, conservative or right-leaning think tanks received 53 percent of all citations, 32 percent of citations went to centrist think tanks, and only 16 percent of the citations went to progressive or left-leaning think tanks." Gazpacho 19:25, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

That's think tanks, not actual media networks. (And I have often heard that there are more right-wing think tanks than left.) There's nothing there that says ABC is right wing. There's nothing there that says NBC is right wing. There's nothing there that says CBS is right wing. There's nothing there that says CNN is right wing. And if it's communists making the allegations, it becomes non-notable because everyone is to the right of communists. --Ajdz 19:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Read carefully. Those are not the percentages of political orientations among the think tanks. They're percentages of orientations cited by the news media. I think the statistic asks the wrong question myself, but there it is. Gazpacho 01:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware that CNN or NBC or ABC is frequently accused of biasing their coverage toward leftwing views. I think you could say that about CBS because of criticism of Dan Rather's debacle with fake Bush National Guard memo debacle. The criticism I've heard of CNN frequently is that it tilts right. The American flags they put on screen while playing dramatic music and displaying this big "Showdown with Saddam" logo did seem like a propaganda technique to me, but it wasn't in support of any leftwing view. I think there are some worthwhile points to be made on the subject of television news broadcasting propaganda. So although some specific text there needs changing, I do think a section on propaganda in the television news media is appropriate. DanielM 21:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Such accusations come all the time from (of course) the right, and from researchers who don't appear to have gone in with an axe to grind. See Media bias in the United States. That article may address Ajdz's concerns as well. Gazpacho 01:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
The link to the media bias article does help provide some context (thanks for adding that!), but I'm still not finding anything directly accusing the specifically named networks of being right-wing. There are a couple examples of CBS and ABC caving to pressure in very specific single instances. I think that a better source is still needed, along with some careful wording because claims of liberal bias are much more frequent. In fact, the "objective" UCLA study cited by the article "concluded that of the major 20 news outlets studied "18 scored left of [the average U.S. voter]." The only two on the right were Fox News and the Washington Times. --Ajdz 03:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

WTF?

Italy likely to become a Soviet satellite? get the &*%# out Bigkev 03:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Italian general election, 1948 --Ajdz 03:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
the ever democratic USA at work again Bigkev 04:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Military support of Hollywood Blockbusters

This documentary[1] claims that the US military support any movies that portray them positively. If true, this should definately be in this article. The guy from the Pentagon they interview says that they do not hide such support so hopefully it will be easy to source. Anyone interested in propaganda to support the invasion of Iraq should watch this[2]. Kernow 23:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

the US military support any movies that portray them positively imho falls into the category "Duh!" Why would any organization support an endeavor that portrays them negatively? Now, if the Military promotes, funds or commissions the making of a highly positive film or documentary for the purpose of recruiting and/or demoralizing the enemy in wartime or promoting morale of the people in wartime, then it would fall under propaganda.--Kalsermar 20:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I concur. This bit should not be in the article. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-12 21:31 (UTC)
By support, I mean that they provide military equipment and advice for free. This is effectively funding. If you watch the documentary then I think you will agree that it is a form of propaganda. Kernow 19:46, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The hell?

Is this suppose to be serious? --KingZog 18:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a strong case to be made that the American government controls the media and broad swaths of the economy either directly or indirectly. From an outside perspective, it has always (Even before 9/11) been apparent to me that the public over there is grossly misinformed. It just puzzles me that, all too often, things like 9/11 are covered up so badly. See "Loose Change" for more on that particular botch-job: Loose Change - Cathal

That's nice. Gazpacho 07:41, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

http://www.ccdominoes.com/lc/LooseChangeGuide.html Loose Change is probably a disinformation movie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_%28video%29#Factual_inaccuracies (Read down from there.) 68.49.72.210 01:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Operation names

The choice of operation names like "just cause", "iraqi freedom", and "enduring freedom" is a use of propaganda not yet described. Añoranza 01:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Such clever use of internal linking there. As for the comment, how is that propaganda? As I see it they are military code names pure and simple.--Kalsermar 02:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Military code used as a means of propaganda. Cf. Propaganda#Techniques of propaganda generation: all of them - Slogans, Virtue words, Just cause - Appeal to authority, Enduring Freedom - Bandwagon effect. Añoranza 02:36, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Operation names are codenames, this user felt Phantom Fury was propaganda and when asked about their protest to the names Golden Pheasant and Desert Storm they stating "referring to the powers of nature and one of the most expensive metals is euphemist when actually labelling a military attack" I hope this gives people some idea of the extents of this users categorization of propaganda that needs to be removed from Wikipedia. Operation Overlord would be worse then any of the three I mentioned, however this user has not attempted to remove that. --zero faults |sockpuppets| 12:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Military code is just that, military code for use by the military more than anything and certainly not propaganda.--Kalsermar 17:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I read recently (I think it was in the new book Overthrow) that the name "Just Cause" was chosen manually because officials didn't think the randomly generated names sounded good. Gazpacho 01:52, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Evangelical Christian propaganda

Since in the introduction of this article, propaganda was defined to could have been from both government and private entities, I think we should put a small mention regarding Evangelical Christian propaganda? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Children of the dragon (talk • contribs) 00:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you know something that I don't, but I don't think proselytizing is propaganda. Yunfeng (talk) 19:22, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. Look at the example of teaching intelligent design issues in the United States. Evangelical Christian propaganda is quite prevalent in the US (and Canada as well). If non-neutral propaganda is considered to be "brainwashing", then proselytization is just such "brainwashing". Children of the dragon (talk • contribs) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.80.236.14 (talk) 10:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Content forking reverted

Apparently, someone tried to fork this article in 2011 into two subjects without sources. I have now reverted that poor decision. This topic is only about one subject and it does not meet any known requirements for having two separate articles. I've also removed the unsourced original research that has been here since 2006. Viriditas (talk) 21:45, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

And... look at all the information you have removed. Note that traditionally in the U.S., most propaganda is non-governmental, or at least "private" (but possibly government funded). Hence my (I believe it was me) reason for forking.
Add it back or I will add it back--by reverting you. You, in effect, have reverted all (good) edits since it was forked, and that's not OK. You may have a difficult time synchronizing the government propaganda information you merged with the previous non-government propaganda information. I definitely won't have a hard time reverting your removal of the information. I'm not against merging/de-forking, but I am against removing such large amounts of information to do it. Int21h (talk) 07:46, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but did you discuss this very odd rationale for forking this single topic and creating two topics that are primarily about the same thing? That is extremely discouraged on Wikipedia. So, perhaps you will now discuss it first before doing the same thing again. I looked at both versions of the article and can see absolutely no reason for the forking. This article, this topic, and the sources themselves are primarily about government propaganda, nothing else. In the above comment you claim that I have "removed" information, but that information was unsourced original research that attempted to make the case that most propaganda in the U.S. is non-governmental. However, the burden of proof here is on you. Unless you have very good sources making that claim, I'm afraid we will have to stick with the primary topic. Now, do you have sources supporting your rationale for a split? Because I can't see any. Now, if you are referring to sourced material that I have inadvertently removed, feel free to add it back into this article. Frankly, this is a very strange state of affairs. I can see no other "Propaganda in the X" topic that has forked out information in this way, nor is there any other propaganda article that has taken this approach. It is precisely because of this strange editing behavior that I have merged the forked article back into its parent topic. Viriditas (talk) 08:26, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
They are not about the same thing, as your removal of content makes clear. Government propaganda is very visible in the US, but only because it is rare. Most domestic propaganda is and has been by private entities, but for the few listed exceptions. There is much more propaganda in the US than the pithy material listed here. This article and its sources were not primarily about government propaganda until you removed all the non-government propaganda material. wikt:propaganda is not specific to government.
And of course there is no similar article! This is the US! Most countries propaganda is dominated by government propaganda, but not so here in the US. No country besides the US gives such broad access to the inner workings of their government (its based on the UK system, but lacks criminal and/or civil copyright statutes covering government works, as in the UK, for example), an active political ideology that frowns upon propaganda (related to the relatively strong freedom of speech protections, as compared to Europe, because its not to say they were mainstream), and pretty much universal (bipartisan) distrust of government (although this is debatable, but I argue the political culture is still less trustful of the federal government than most, as seen by the federal system, the "local control"/"home rule" movement, and "small government" pushes of the Publicans and "civil rights" background of the Domocrats, for example. Not a foolproof assessment, but neither are really comparable to "Liberal" and "Conservative" parties in the EU and Russia on the subject.) As a result, the government has traditionally just pressured private industry to do it (Most WW2 propaganda was actually private, which is why all that WW2 propaganda is copyright, with the very few exceptions like "Why We Fight".) They've usually done this by funding enticements, and as of now most domestic propaganda is still by the likes of the Ad Council and Partnership for a Drug-Free America. (A government-made poster on the War on Drugs was ridiculously difficult to find, because most of the propaganda is not government made. DARE for example is not a government program.) But that's OK if you don't agree.
On second glance, you are right that much of it was unsourced. However, a bit of it was, including the "America at mid-century" reference on the effectiveness, the "A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States" reference, and the see also links. I guess I just can re-add the material, but in reality I would like you to add it back, because you removed it. On that, the burden is on you. The simple fact of the matter is that you removed perfectly valid, sourced material, and that is enough to revert.
If we're going to remove unsourced material, most of this article is going to be removed. Is that what you are suggesting? Remove most of this article as unsourced? Int21h (talk) 17:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Actually, the burden on Wikipedia is on the editor adding content. Anyway, please remember to keep your comments brief and to the point. We appear to be in agreement on several points. Would you like me to go through the old version of this article to see what can be salvaged and bring it to your attention on this page? I'm not entirely sure what you want right now, so if you could make that clear with a brief reply I would be happy to comply provided it is reasonable. I would like to add that I disagree with your statement, "This article and its sources were not primarily about government propaganda", as it can be disproved by looking at the previous version. This topic is and always has been primarily about government propaganda, so perhaps you are misreading the content. If there is anything "unsourced" in the current article, that may be due to summary style of daughter articles, not because of any OR. Again, can you provide a single good source supporting your claim that propaganda in the U.S. is different from other countries? Because frankly, this claim appears to be unusual. Viriditas (talk) 23:12, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
You should add back all referenced material you removed. Yes, "salvage".
Its actually detrimental to your argument to do so, I must point out. I don't think it was in any way related to government propaganda, but only related to the broader concept of propaganda (in the United States). Int21h (talk) 21:57, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
I am not aware of any referenced material I removed that was' connected to non-government propaganda. That content was unsourced. Again, can you be more specific? What is your current objection? Unsourced material may be removed at any time. Viriditas (talk) 23:25, 17 July 2013 (UTC)


Current American Propaganda in the Ukraine conflict

What about the Propaganda of the USA in the Ukraine conflict?--95.113.230.216 (talk) 15:55, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Very outdated, no mention of the repeal of propaganda ban in 2012 or anything recent

This article is pitiful (huh I wonder why? who benefits from this page being so uninteresting?), there are some decent sources on the NDAA 2013 page that could added to this one. --Omgtotallyradical (talk) 04:08, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

US Propaganda sponsored by foreign nations

This article pays no mention to propaganda spread domestically in the USA by foreign nations. E.g. USSR propaganda that delayed the USA's entry into WW II, post-WW II ideological subversion, etc.Meccatron (talk) 00:03, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

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This Article is a Piece of Wimpy Crap

There is SO MUCH MORE to say about US government propaganda colluding with the US mainstream corporate media, not to mention NPR used military psyops personel to sell the Iraq war to the unknowing US public. It is common knowledge to any who take the time to research online how the CIA has a HUGE number of paid writers and editors in the USA corporate media: at TV news outlets, at the NY Times, WA Post, etc. It is amazing that none of this is discussed in this terrible, shitty Wiki entry. There are many excellent books you can buy about this topic which are far superior than this rubbish. Here is but one link to a Zerohedge article detailing documented factual instances of CIA bribing major news outlets to promote their agenda- https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-28/newly-declassified-documents-show-senior-cia-agent-and-deputy-director-directorate-i — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.49.14.172 (talk) 16:16, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

While previous talk entries point the finger at CIA and MSM and makes claims questionable for a Wikipedia article, I do agree that this article is suspiciously short compared to the article for propaganda in the soviet union. Perhaps there was more in the soviet union, but the length on this article is comparatively so incredibly small! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.151.150.1 (talk) 04:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
I've been watching this article for years. I think the problem is that nobody cares about this topic. Or perhaps nobody can find this page, as it is poorly linked to. KarlFrei (talk) 07:48, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
The idea is that in the Soviet Union propaganda was a state monopoly, and every activist had to toe the line. So that's much easier to analyze. In the US propaganda is not a state monopoly, but it is privatized, diverse and basically free (as in freedom, not as in beer). I.e. marketing is a form of propaganda, I heard that Samsung used 10 billion dollars for marketing in 2016 [3]. American popular patriotism isn't due to the government; I would rather say that it is despite the government. On the other hand, Apple's fan base is the result of very effective propaganda. So, yes, the idea that only governments or political parties could do propaganda is quite rudimentary. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:08, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Israel

The article is conspicuous by its complete absence of any mention of Israeli Hasbara activities in the US particularly. Considering the sophistication and pervasiveness of these efforts (extending even to "product placement" style weasel wording in primetime TV programming) this absence seems rather questionable. ¬¬¬¬ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2407:7000:8402:B200:551:A0A0:9C28:21F (talk) 11:00, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia Is Propaganda

With all of the propaganda and legitimization of lies on Wikipedia, this website deserves a mention in this article on domestic propaganda. Wikipedia legitimizes propaganda and indoctrinates millions of children with government lies while censoring our edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.238.155.73 (talk) 00:19, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, I'm reading your edit and wondering why, if what you say is true, I'm still able to read it 8 years on? Aside from that, and aside from the overall content of this article, I must say this is really poorly written. Portions of it read like Google translations from another language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.242.88.177 (talk) 07:10, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
This is not a friendly website for the superstitious, illogical, unreasonable and WP:FRINGE. Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:26, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

References, varied date formats

Just noticed the dates in references on this page are a real mix of YYYY-MM-DD (International/ISO 8601 style), MM-DD-YYYY (US style), and DD-MM-YYYY (English style) date formats. I can't tell which dominates, but a US type should probably be settled on. Maybe someone has, or can suggest a tool to help do this? 220 of ßorg 01:50, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

"they hate us for our freedoms." -- Bush classic example of propaganda.

A classic clear example of propaganda was Bush's "they hate us for our freedoms." rather than the actual which was the terrorists hate the U.S. global policies which they're fighting about not the U.S.' freedoms which have nothing to do with them. For example financially supporting Israel who drops bombs on Palestine is one for example. CaribDigita (talk) 22:09, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Edit

@Faarlvatar Veldtamid: Your edit is full of inline links, which are not allowed. See WP:MOS. tgeorgescu (talk) 12:13, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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