An old Japanese (or Chinese?) proverb informs us that the fish is never aware of the water its swimming through.

Every day we're inundated with propaganda from our politicians in DC and at the State level.  Think of our military missions, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" "Shock and Awe" and so forth.  Anyone who thinks Democrats and Socialists and the Brady Bunch are the only ones who use propaganda is being pretty naive.  Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Pro-Choice people, Pro-Life people, Rush Limbaugh, Phil Dorkahue...it's hard to get the straight story anywhere.

To what extent do you think your beliefs are influenced by political propagana?  When you listen to Rush Limbaugh, do you think he's really telling the "truth," or do you think he's saying whatever will win him the most (conservative) listeners?  Is he just tickling your ears with rhetoric and preying on your prejudices?  (I do not use the word "prejudice" in the racial sense)  Or is he really telling it like it is?

Here's an interesting story [url]http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/stossel_gmab_gaffes030124.html[/url]

So what do you think?  How have your opinions been shaped by baseless propaganda and emotionalism?  Or are you one of the rare specimens that finds yourself immune to it?

-Nick Viejo.

Most propoganda is not baseless...if it were, it wouldn't be effective.
Everyone uses propoganda---everyone spins the facts to support what their political philosophy.  There is no political group that does not.
What we have to do is make sure there are more facts than spin in the things we take to heart.

... We do wade through a lot of shit to get good info. Scientific outlets are often good sources for facts, the problem is they generally don't cover political issues.

... I believe the FCC relaxing rules limiting media ownership this week, allowing for larger corporations like Viacom monopolizing news outlets, will make matters even worse.

... And then on the seventh day God created AR15.com

Propaganda, marketing, leadership... many names for a similar concept.

It's not always a bad thing.
Salesmen use propaganda to highlight the strengths of a new widget that you might otherwise miss.

Coaches use propaganda to motivate their players to  achieve greater goals than they otherwise would.

Thomas Paine's [i]"Common Sense"[/i] was propaganda. So was Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. These were great works of propaganda that were done for noble ends.

So "propaganda" in and of itself is not bad. It's just a tool. It's what it's used for that's really important.

Propoganda is nessecccary.  For that matter, Sheep are also nesseccary.

That's why there is one chief but many warriors.

Sgtar15

Rare specimen, here. [:E]

I try not to base my opinions of something or someone on heresay. Rather, I try to research and understand both sides of an issue/argument using firsthand quotes from authoritative sources involved firsthand in the issue, as well as the obvious (and sometimes not-so-obvious) spin and distortion coming from many sides (read: the corporate/liberal media), add in my own values and beliefs, and then I make a "final" decision on an issue. (With the caveat that it is a "final decision" that I believe 100% until more information (that stands up to scrutiny) is provided that contradicts my original decision/understanding of the issue.)

Interesting that you bring up the subject of "propaganda" as I was just reading something about it [url=http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chomoct97.htm]here[/url].

Well, there's another thing.  We all believe that the media has a liberal bias.  Is that true, or is that "liberal media" a lie cooked up by the right-wing propaganda machine?

I think in [b]general[/b] the media does indeed have a liberal bias, but then how do you explain this?

The wave of war protests swept many major cities in this country, and yet coverage in the mainstream media consistently [b]under[/b] reported attendance at the rallies, sometimes by a factor of 10!  I know this because out of curiosity, I attended a rally in NYC to see for myself what it was all about (I wasn't really protesting the war, so don't get on my shit.  I just wanted to see for myself what it was like and the types of people there).  My guess is that there were 300,000 people at the rally.  "Official" media reports put the numbers around 100,000.

The rally in DC a month beforehand was similarly underreported.  I think the media estimates were around 30,000 (or maybe 13,000?) protesters, but just from looking at the photos you could tell the crowd counters probably failed accounting school.

So why would the media lie to make it appear that there was [b]less[/b] opposition to the war than there really was?  If they are so liberal, where were all the anti-war stories?  Instead they twisted the facts and inserted reporters which I saw more as cheerleaders for the military than unbiased reporters.

Personally, I think the media sucks up to the president and the ruling party so the big-name reporters keep getting invited back to the Whitehouse dinners and shit.

The first images to come back from the war were people beating their shoes on posters of Saddam Hussein.  The American people really thought that the Iraqis were grateful for being "liberated."

Anyways, the point I'm making here is that we can call the media liberal.  And it is, but it's not a cut & dried issue.  The media coverage I saw was almost exclusively pro-war.

And I started this thread not to debate the war or the coverage of it, but to get people to look at themselves and look at their beliefs and how the media (all media outlets, from the NY Times to conservative talk radio) influences those beliefs.  Do we really realize the extent to how we're being "worked" by special interests?

Remember, in the days leading up to the war, some polls said that over 50% of Americans thought Iraq was responsible for 9/11, and I have seen many people on here use the 3000 dead from the WTC bombing as justification for attacking Iraq.  Where do these ideas and beliefs come from, when almost all the hijackers were Saudi Arabian?

I am just bringing up points here.  I'm not trying to debate middle eastern foreign policy, but trying to get people to examine all the different groups that are tugging at us for our support.  How much of what we "know" is really the truth, and how much of it is fabricated from thin air (like Iraqis being the hijackers?)?

-Nick Viejo.

You can't really do any better than that.

I'd add that if one assumes that there is such a thing as "the absolute truth", or believe that it is possible for there to be a "complete absence of bias", then you're missing something that is fundamental to understanding human communication.

All ideas of any complexity (and probably many that are exquisitely simple) are permutable.

IMO. [:p]

To save time, I've edited to add:

And yes, that includes those outlined in the Constitution, those in the Bible (all of them [:D]), and in every other work of religious beliefs or philosophy.

(It would be good to have definitions of what 'conservative' and 'liberal' mean to begin with, but I'll just jump right in.) [:)]

Who *owns* the media (i.e., TV, Cable, newspapers, magazines, radio, internet, movies, etc..)? Usually, corporations do. You will therefore have corporate/gov interests as the underlying motivation for almost all content. Take Rupert Murdoch's [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/]News Corporation[/url] (which owns FOXNews, among others) for example; Foxnews is considered 'conservative' while Fox entertainment is considered smutty and spreads 'liberal' values. Is there a contradiction here, or are we seeing exactly how the media hits us from both directions, while we're too busy pointing fingers at each other calling each other names like 'conservative' or  'liberal'? It makes sense if you look at the media as a tool of people who want us to think and act in a certain way. They are preying on Americans' general conservatism and are telling us to 'obey' the gov/corporate policies, and at the same time we are being fed (liberal?) trash that erodes our morals and standards which would otherwise compel us to stand against unjust and destructive policies.

This is a good article on 'propaganda' on what some would consider a 'liberal' website, but am I gonna be close minded and not read it just because someone attached a (negative?) label to it? I would hope not: [url]http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chomoct97.htm[/url]

Someone once told me, "You can have logical plausible knowledge of something, but you can never have total knowledge of anything."

Propaganda is an unavoidable product of human societies, all societies, and for multiple reasons. It's not just to demonise other groups, it's also to indoctrinate social cohesion within whichever group we are a part of. How many times have you recited the Oath of Allegience? That's a form of propaganda. Singing the national anthem at major public events? Propaganda. National holidays? Propaganda. How much of your education is/was an exercise in social indoctrination?

Sometimes it's hard to seperate propaganda from bullshit.  That's also an old saying. [8D]