Propaganda techniques

Propagandists use a variety of propaganda techniques to influence opinions and to avoid the
truth. Often these techniques rely on some element of censorship or manipulation, either
omitting significant information or distorting it. They are indistinguishable except in degree
from the persuasion techniques employed in social, religious and commercial affairs.
Recently persuasion technology has come into common use, in all styles from digital image
alteration to persuasive presentation and persistent telemarketing based on repetition, making
these techniques impossible to avoid.

Table of contents [hide]

1 Rhetorical techniques
2 Other techniques/terms
3 Logical Fallacies
3.1 References on Logical Fallacies
4 Persuasion technology arms races
5 Recommended Books
6 External links

Rhetorical techniques
During the period between World Wars I and II, the now-defunct Institute for Propaganda
Analysis (IPA) developed a list of common rhetorical techniques used for propaganda
purposes. Their list included the following:

• bandwagon

Bandwagon
"You're either with us, or against us" appeals to an audience to join a ground swell of public
opinion and activity because everybody else is joining. The "bandwagon" technique appeals
to feelings of loyalty and nationalism, as well as the desire to be on the winning side. The
technique tends to obscure the ethics of the activity at the expense of victory: better to belong
to the winning side than be too concerned with the rightness of the means to achieve it.

The "4 out of 5 doctors recommend..." slogan uses both the bandwagon technique and the
argument to authority to promote an action. (The two techniques are commonly found linked.)
In psychographics terminology, the bandwagon technique appeals most strongly to the group
called belongers, those who make decisions because that's what everyone else is doing.

In the post-9/11 world, public figures in the U.S. find it difficult to express even mild
criticism of the Bush administration's foreign policies -- so powerful is the bandwagon
mentality that seeks to assert that everyone must unite in the fight against terrorism, the axis
of evil, the makers of weapons of mass destruction, and those against freedom.

Obscured in this powerful propaganda technique are the facts that, for example, the U.S. has
more weapons of mass destruction than any other nation, and is the world's largest arms
dealer.

As the "world's most powerful nation," the U.S. has tremendous bandwagon appeal. Lurking
behind the bandwagon technique is the fear of losing, and the threat of reprisals.

• euphemisms

Euphemisms
Euphemisms are used to make something not sound as bad as it is.

Examples
• passed away: died
• went to heaven: died (often used with children, as in "Grandma
went to heaven.")
• fatal injury: death
• fatality: dead/killed person
• casualties: deaths and injuries
• collateral damage: damage, death, injury to non-combatants and
their property

See also doublespeak.

• fear

Fear
Fear is one of the most primordial human emotions and therefore lends itself to effective use
by propagandists. Human beings can do great and terrible things when motivated by fear. Fear
is essentially the survival instinct kicking in: "I'd better watch out because you can harm me."
Fear being fundamentally irrational, it is one of the most widely used techniques used by
propagandists.

"When a propagandist warns members of [his/her] audience that disaster will result if [it does]
not follow a particular course of action, [he/she] is using the fear appeal," observes the
Propaganda Critic. "By playing on the audience's deep-seated fears, practitioners of this
technique hope to redirect attention away from the merits of a particular proposal and toward
steps that can be taken to reduce the fear."

Specific types of fears include xenophobia (fear of foreigners), fear of terrorism, crime,
economic hardship, ecological disaster, disease, overpopulation, invasion of privacy, or
discrimination. With such a broad spectrum of fear, the propagandizer can pick relevant
phobias and incorporate them into his/her messages. The power of this propaganda technique
can be multiplied when it is exploited in conjunction with uncertainty and doubt, that is, when
information at hand is not sufficient enough to completely rule out the cause of the fear. In
order to instill fear, uncertainty and doubt, propagandists exploit general ignorance. Pushed to
its extremes, this combination can lead to conspiracy theories.

An example of this technique is the use of the as yet unsubstantiated claim that Iraq posesses
weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the US lead invasion of Iraq.

"One facet of emotional control focuses on the excessive use of fear. Fear of the outside world
(flying, opening mail, large crowds and tall buildings) and fear of enemies (evil-doers). We
are asked to stay on full alert, while carrying on with life as usual. While knowledge is power,
the withholding of information exacerbates this fear, as we walk through our days in a general
sense of impending doom and distrust of those who look different or dress different from us.
Total paranoia."[1]

• "This is an administration that will not talk about how we gather

intelligence, how we know what we're going to do, nor what our
plans are. When we move, we will communicate with you in an
appropriate manner. We're at war. There has been an act of war
declared upon America by terrorists, and we will respond
accordingly. And I appreciate very much the American people
understanding that. As we plan, as we put our strategy into action,
we will let you know when we think it's appropriate - not only to
protect the lives of our servicemen and women, but to make sure
our coalition has had proper time to be noticed, as well. But we're
going to act." --President George W. Bush, 15 September 2001.

• "President George W. Bush said Sunday he is confident the nation

will rebound from this week's terrorist attacks, and he urged
Americans to go back to work on Monday knowing their
government is determined to 'rid the world of evil-doers.'" --CNN,
16 September 2001.

"I think America needs to know that we in government are on alert; that we recognize
life around the White House or around the Congress is not normal, or is not the way it
used to be, because we're very aware that people have conducted an act of war on our
 country; and that all of us urge our fellow Americans to go back to work and to work
hard, but we must be on alert." --President George W. Bush, 19 September 2001.

• "In the months ahead, our patience will be one of our strengths --
patience with the long waits that will result from tighter security;
patience and understanding that it will take time to achieve our
goals; patience in all the sacrifices that may come." --President
George W. Bush, 7 October 2001.

• "We must be steadfast. We must be resolved. We must not let the

terrorists cause our nation to stop traveling, to stop buying, to stop
living ordinary lives. We can be alert and we will be alert, but we
must show them that they cannot terrorize the greatest nation on
the face of the Earth. And we won't. We will not be terrorized, we
will not be cowed." -- President George W. Bush, 17 October
2001.

"The Bush administration has made no apology for the need for information control, which
includes both withholding and distorting information to make it acceptable, and limiting
access to other (non-cult) sources of information."[2]

• "The point to the networks -- and let me just say that I think the
networks have been very responsible in the way that they have
dealt with this -- my message to them was that it's not to me to
judge news value of something like this, but it is to say that there's
a national security concern about an unedited, 15 or 20-minute
spew of anti-American hatred that ends in a call to go out and kill
Americans. And I think that that was fully understood. We are still
concerned about whether there might be some signaling in here,
but I don't have anything more for you on that yet." -- Condoleezza
Rice, October 15, 2001, on her request to the television networks to
not broadcast al Qaeda/Osama bin Laden messages.

"Another more destructive form of deception today is the selling of fear. Fear is the most
debilitating of all human emotions. A fearful person will do anything, say anything, accept
anything, reject anything, if it makes him feel more secure for his own, his family's or his
country's security and safety, whether it actually accomplishes it or not....

"It works like a charm. A fearful people are the easiest to govern. Their freedom and liberty
can be taken away, and they can be convinced to believe that it was done for their own good -
to give them security. They can be convinced to give up their liberty - voluntarily." --Gene E.
Franchini, retired Chief Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, 12 September 2003.[3]

Franchini goes on to use USA PATRIOT ACT as an example.

When confronted with persuasive messages that capitalize on our fear, the Propaganda Critic
advises asking ourselves the following questions:
 • Is the speaker exaggerating the fear or threat in order to obtain my
support?
• How legitimate is the fear that the speaker is provoking?
• Will performing the recommended action actually reduce the
supposed threat?
• When viewed dispassionately, what are the merits of the speaker's
proposal?

A good example of fearmongering is the red alerts that occurred frequently in the U.S. after 9-
11. A red alert was (and is) a signal of a supposed need for heightened security because of a
possible terrorist attack, but in reality would have done very little to thwart a real attack. Only
vague reasons were given for the alerts. This Orwellian tactic created an atmosphere of fear
rather than a feeling of protection and was used to justify any number of assaults on various
freedoms in the name of anti-terrorism.

In The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America, Eric Alterman and Mark Green
describe in detail the Bush administration’s use of fear after 9-11 to terrify Americans for
political reasons:

“With alarming consistency administration figures terrified Americans with near-

certain, but curiously vague, warnings about upcoming attacks. Vice President Cheney
explained that such an attack was ‘almost a certainty’ and ‘not a matter of if, but
when.’ A day later, FBI director Robert Mueller promised, ‘There will be another
terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it.’ On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld added, ‘We do face additional terrorist threats. And the issue is not if but
when and where and how.’ Rumsfeld also added that terrorists will ‘inevitably’ obtain
weapons of mass destruction. Director Mueller announced that more suicide bombings
were ‘inevitable.’ US authorities issued separate warnings that al Qaeda might be
planning to target apartment buildings nationwide, banks, rail and transit systems, the
Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge. As a Time writer noted of the
fearmongering: ‘Though uncorroborated and vague the terror alerts were a political
godsend for an administration trying to fend off a bruising bipartisan inquiry into its
handling of the terrorist chatter last summer. After the wave of warnings, the
Democratic clamor for investigation into the government’s mistakes subsided.’”
“Indeed, the national security historian John Prados found ‘ample reason to suspect
that some of these recent warnings of terrorist threats have been made for political
purposes.’ In the case of alleged ‘dirty bomber’ Abdullah al Muhajir – a former
Chicago gang member who was born Jose Padilla – Prados notes that the suspect was
apprehended on May 8. ‘A desire to allay public fears should have led to an immediate
announcement of the arrest. Instead the act was kept secret, allowing Donald
Rumsfeld to have his cake and eat it too: The administration could raise the specter of
al Qaeda nuclear attacks while not revealing that the man who constituted the threat
was already in custody. Thus the arrest was only revealed when it offered maximum
opportunity for turning attention away from inquiries into what went wrong before 9 –
11.’ The actual announcement of his arrest was another scene in what would be a
comedy of errors were the consequences not so serious. Attorney General John
Ashcroft revealed al Muhajir’s arrest through a television hookup while he was on a
visit to Moscow. In fact, al Mujahir had no nuclear materials when arrested or any
 immediate prospect of obtaining any, and the nuclear ‘plot’ was actually just accounts
of conversations between the suspect and another US prisoner, Abu Zubaydeh.’”
“Yet another indication that the warnings were largely politically motivated was the
fact that just as his administration was issuing them, Bush was telling the country not
to take them too seriously. At one point, the president flew to Chicago and urged
Americans to ‘get on board’ airplanes and enjoy life ‘the way we want it to be
enjoyed.’ Yet only three days later Ashcroft warned of ‘a very serious threat’ of
additional terrorist activity, particularly if the United States launched a military
retaliation.”

• glittering generalities

Glittering generalities
"Freedom" and "Democracy" are notable examples of glittering generalities: vague terms
with high moral connotations intended to arouse faith and respect in listeners or readers. The
exact meanings of these glittering terms are impossible to define, hence vague generalities.
"We the people" could mean prudent, wise, fair rule; it could also mean repression. It all
depends on who the 'people' who rule actually are. Saddam Hussein, for instance, was
democratically elected, so was Abe Lincoln. Furthermore, one person's idea of freedom could
very well be another's idea of slavery. Glittering generalities sound sincere but they really
mean nothing. As such they are a logical fallacy. Used by people who sincerely mean well,
and also by people that seek to muzzle freedoms and democratic government, whatever these
terms may mean.

• name-calling

Name-calling
Name-calling is a form of ad hominem attack that draws a vague equivalence between a
concept and a person, group or idea. By linking the person or idea being attacked to a
negative symbol, the propagandist hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on
the basis of the symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, one of the first organizations to systematically study
propaganda in the early 20th century, included name-calling in its list of common rhetorical
techniques. "Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world
and in our own individual development," they stated. "They have ruined reputations, stirred
men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men
mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to
other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections
of the country, nations, and races." [1]

Examples of name calling include:

• commie
• fascist
• pig
• yuppie
• bum
• queer
• terrorist

According to the IPA, we should ask ourselves the following questions when we spot an
example of name-calling:

• What does the name mean?

• Does the idea in question have a legitimate connection with the
real meaning of the name?
• Is an idea that serves my best interests being dismissed through
giving it a name I don't like?
• Leaving the name out of consideration, what are the merits of the
idea itself?

See also
• smear

• plain folks

Plain folks
By using plain folks rhetoric, speakers attempt to convince their audience that they, and their
ideas, are "of the people." The device is used by advertisers and politicans alike.

America's recent presidents have all been millionaires, but they have gone to great lengths to
present themselves as ordinary citizens. We are all familiar with candidates who campaign as
political outsiders or who challenge a mythical "cultural elite," presumably aligning
themselves with "ordinary Americans."

In all of these examples, the plain-folks device is at work.

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis has argued that, when confronted with this device, we
should ask ourselves the following questions:

• What are the propagandist's ideas worth when divorced from his or
her personality?
• What could he or she be trying to cover up with the plain-folks
approach?
• What are the facts?

• testimonial

Testimonial
The use of personal experience to convince. By describing the successes or failures of ones
own experience lends credability to the pitch. " I tried doing that exactly the way you did, but
it didnt work because..." or " I followed this path and got this result..."

Use of the testimonial is common in Evangelical Christianity, commercial advertising,

advocacy advertising.

• transfer

Transfer (propaganda technique)

"Transfer is a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and
prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept,"
explained the now-defunct Institute for Propaganda Analysis in its 1938 analysis of this
common rhetorical technique. "For example, most of us respect and revere our church and our
nation. If the propagandist succeeds in getting church or nation to approve a campaign in
behalf of some program, he thereby transfers its authority, sanction, and prestige to that
program. Thus, we may accept something which otherwise we might reject.

"In the Transfer device, symbols are constantly used. The cross represents the Christian
Church. The flag represents the nation. Cartoons like Uncle Sam represent a consensus of
public opinion. Those symbols stir emotions . At their very sight, with the speed of thought, is
aroused the whole complex of feelings we have with respect to church or nation. A cartoonist,
by having Uncle Sam disapprove a budget for unemployment relief, would have us feel that
the whole United States disapproves relief costs. By drawing an Uncle Sam who approves the
same budget, the cartoonist would have us feel that the American people approve it. Thus, the
Transfer device is used both for and against causes and ideas."

Other techniques/terms

• ad hominem

Ad hominem
An ad hominem argument, or argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally "argument against the
man [or person]"), is a fallacy that involves replying to an argument or assertion by
attempting to discredit the person offering the argument or assertion. Ad hominem rebuttals
are one of the best-known of propagandist tactics.

Simply, it is a refutation of a proposition, based solely upon some unrelated fact about the
person presenting the proposition. Such refutation is said to be "against the person" (ad
hominem) and not their proposition. Properly, it consists of saying that an argument is wrong
because of something about the individual or organization is in error rather than about the
argument itself. Moreover, it is not necessary to insult the individual or organization whose
argument is attacked in order to commit the ad hominem attack. Rather, it must be clear that
the purpose of the characterization is to discredit the person offering the argument, and,
specifically, to invite others to discount his arguments.

Three traditionally identified varieties include:

• Ad hominem abusive
o Involves merely (and often unfairly) insulting the opponent.
o Involve pointing out factual but damning character flaws or
actions.
o Insults and damaging facts simply do not undermine what
logical support there might be for one's opponent's
arguments or assertions.

• Ad hominem circumstantial
o Involves pointing out that someone is in circumstances such
that he or she is disposed to take a particular position.
o Constitutes an attack on the bias of a person.
o Does not make one's opponent's arguments, from a logical
point of view, any less credible to point out that one's
opponent is disposed to argue that way.
 • Ad hominem tu quoque (literally, "at the person, you too")
o Also called the "hypocrisy" argument.
o Occurs when a claim is dismissed either because it is
inconsistent with other claims which the claimant is making
or because it is inconsistent with the claimant's actions.

As technique of propaganda, despite its usual lack of subtlety, it is powerful and frequently
used (and, sometimes, excessively). Anyone involved in political discourse, and public
discourse in general, would do well to become acquainted with it.

See also: fundamental attribution error

• adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives and adverbs, while serving as descriptive language components that can better
define an idea, can also be used to pass along an opinion and can be used to convey a
propagandist's message. The description might simply be wrong, or it might serve as an
element of other propaganda techniques.

Adjectives are used to describe a person, place or thing. Adverbs describe an action. A
propagandist usually expresses an attribute of something in a way that will bring the desired
opinion of the person, or place, or thing. Adjectives or adverbs can be used to subjectively
describe circumstances in terms a propagandist desires.

If a speech maker declared "It will be a dark, dreary day if my opponent gets his way,"
adjectives would be used to construct an alliteration, to infer a negative connotation and to
appeal to fear.

Adjectives and adverbs can be checked for propaganda value by asking whether the
descriptive term lends any additional meaning to its noun or verb. If the description is
redundant, chances are it is employed as part of propaganda tactics.

• agent provocateur

Agent provocateur
An agent provocateur is a person assigned to provoke unrest, violence, debate or argument
by or within a group while acting as a member of the group but covertly representing the
interests of another. In general, agents provacateur seek to secretly disrupt a group's activities
from within the group.

Agents provocatuer are employed to disrupt or discredit a group by performing acts for which
the group will be falsely accused, by leading the group into activities that they would not
otherwise pursue or by creating discord between group members. Provacateurs may
encourage illegal acts, recomend belligerant tactics a group might otherwise reject, spread
false rumors intended to provoke hasty action by a group, spread malicious rumors within a
group about a group member or employ other tactics intended to provoke improper action by
a group or to divert a group from its chosen purpose. An agent provocateur might attempt to
implicate as an accomplice an innocent target who the agent unwittingly involves in a crime
or criminal conspiracy.

Agents provocateur sometimes try to disrupt a group by creating discord between group
members. They may argue for unity, while themselves playing consensus thug. They may
argue against factionalism, while consistently advancing the positions or actions of one
faction in the group. Disruptive group members might not be agents provocateur if they do
not represent an outside interest; the term "agent" usually implies representation of or
employment by another interest.

See also: create tension between two or more target groups, demagogue, intelligence agent,
outing, operative, propaganda techniques, secret agent

• alliteration

Alliteration
Alliteration is a technique (or "device") in which successive words (more strictly, stressed
syllables) begin with the same consonant sound. Alliteration is a frequent tool of propaganda
and common in prose, particularly short phrases. Manifestos are developed by this device.
Usually the author employs some general technique as a framework for the works. Alliterative
verse in one form or another is shared by all of the older Germanic languages.

Examples
"Nattering nabombs of negativity" -- Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, attributed to
speechwriter William L. Safire

See also
• Adjectives and adverbs
 • Cliché
• Propaganda techniques

Portions of this article were adapted from Wikipedia's article.

• anger

Anger
Anger is an emotional reaction to increase the impact of propaganda, usually regarding an act
or idea of another person or organisation. Propagandists exploit anger for various purposes.
By provoking this feeling from an audience by a message, it becomes a propaganda tool.
Anger involves a sense of wrongedness, outrage, frustration, irritation, or violent conflict.
Framing statements so as to achieve anger in the audience is a common propaganda
technique. Anger is sometimes used to instigate violence.

See also: propaganda techniques

• association

Association (propaganda technique)

Association, as a propaganda technique, is the activity of creating a bias about an unknown
individual or organization by associating the unknown individual or organization with
something familiar. The associated bias of the familiar individual or organization can be
created in favor of, or, in opposition to, the individual or organization under discussion.

This technique of association is very similar to the technique of transfer in that the victim
makes a transfer of, or association with, the familiar to the unfamiliar.

By way of example, a recent Disinfopedia contributor offered,

"Extreme critics, the most 'mainstream' being perennial extreme-left Presidential

Candidate Lyndon LaRouche and an article in The Nation"

with the effect of having readers take a familiar negative association of "extreme", amplifying
it by association with the "perennial extreme" LaRouche, and applying it unfairly and
unnecessarily to both The Nation and the outfit which it reasonably and rightly criticized.
Note also the inference that critics regard LaRouche as "mainstream".

• astroturf

Astroturf
Senator Lloyd Bentsen, himself a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider, is credited
with coining the term "astroturf lobbying" to describe the synthetic grassroots movements that
now can be manufactured for a fee by companies like Beckel Cowan, Bivings Group, Bonner
& Associates, Burson-Marsteller, Davies Communications, DCI Group, Direct Impact, Hill &
Knowlton, Issue Dynamics Inc., National Grassroots & Communications, or Optima Direct.

Campaigns & Elections magazine defines astroturf as a "grassroots program that involves the
instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed
activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them." Journalist William
Greider has coined his own term to describe corporate grassroots organizing. He calls it
"democracy for hire."

Unlike genuine grassroots activism which tends to be money-poor but people-rich, astroturf
campaigns are typically people-poor but cash-rich. Funded heavily by corporate largesse, they
use sophisticated computer databases, telephone banks and hired organizers to rope less-
informed activists into sending letters to their elected officials or engaging in other actions
that create the appearance of grassroots support for their client's cause.

William Greider's 1992 book, Who Will Tell the People, described an astroturf campaign run
by Bonner & Associates as a "boiler room" operation with "300 phone lines and a
sophisticated computer system, resembling the phone banks employed in election campaigns.
Articulate young people sit in little booths every day, dialing around America on a variety of
public issues, searching for 'white hat' citizens who can be persuaded to endorse the political
objectives of Mobil Oil, Dow Chemical, Citicorp, Ohio Bell, Miller Brewing, US Tobacco,
the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association and
dozens of other clients. This kind of political recruiting is expensive but not difficult. ...
Imagine Bonner's technique multiplied and elaborated in different ways across hundreds of
public issues and you may begin to envision the girth of this industry. ... This is democracy
and it costs a fortune."

Astroturf techniques have been used to:

• block the transfer of federal licenses that WorldCom uses for its
long distance and Internet services by Issue Dynamics Inc. using
non-profit groups like the United Church of Christ
• defeat the Clinton administration's proposed health care reform,
through a front group called "Rx Partners" created by the Beckel
 Cowan PR firm, and the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices,
created by public relations consultant Blair Childs
• harass environmentalists through the Wise Use movement
• loosen automobile fuel efficience standards
• support clear-cutting American forests, through a front group
called Citizens to Protect the Pacific Northwest and Northern
California Economy
• oppose restrictions on smoking in public places, through a front
group called National Smokers Alliance, which was created by
Burson-Marsteller
• generate a dossier of newsclips orchestrated by Edelman to assist
Microsoft lobbyists persuade U.S. state attorney generals not to
join a class action against the company.

Sometimes genuine grassroots organizations are recruited into corporate-funded campaigns.

In June 2003, for example, the Gray Panthers participated in protests against WorldCom that
were funded largely by the telecommunications company's competitors such as Verizon.
According to the Gray Panthers, this reflected a policy decision that the organization made
prior to and independently of its funding. However, an article in the Washington Post raised
questions about failures to publicly disclose the corporate funding which paid for full-page
advertisements that the Gray Panthers took out in several major newspapers that called on the
federal government to stop doing business with WorldCom. The ads said they were paid for
the Gray Panthers but did not mention that Issue Dynamics Inc. (IDI), a PR firm that
specializes in "grassroots PR," had provided most of the $200,000 it cost to place the ads.
Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe has declined to say how much the company is paying IDI, and
Gray Panthers Executive Director Timothy Fuller has declined to say how much of the
funding for its "Corporate Accountability" project comes from IDI. Notwithstanding the
egregious nature of WorldCom's corporate crimes, the lack of transparency in these funding
arrangements by WorldCom's corporate competitors raises the question of whether the Gray
Panthers campaign should be considered genuine grassroots or astroturf.

Case studies
• Grassroots PR Activists Swap War Stories

External links
• John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For
You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Monroe,
ME: Common Courage Press, 1995).
• "Gray Panther Ads Targeting WorldCom Funded by IDI,"
Corporate Crime Reporter, June 2, 2003.
• Christopher Stern, "WorldCom Opponents In Sync," Washington
Post, June 19, 2003.
• "United Church of Christ Stooge for the Baby Bells?,"
UCCTruths.com
• "Fight Back Against Killer Astroturf" provides a list of identifical
"letters to the editor" generated by a Republican website that were
published in newspapers around the United States.
 • attack ads

Attack ad
(Redirected from Attack ads)

An attack ad is a short, 15-60 second piece of political advertising almost always aired
during an electoral campaign - but maybe as a third party ad. It is the key feature of negative
campaigning and is often used to discredit a key political figure.

Common features of such an ad include

• Memorable sound bites that are intended to be repeated by the

public on the street and in discussions about how to vote, e.g. "not
up to the job", employed by the Ontario Tories against Dalton
McGuinty in 2003.

• Memorable conceptual metaphors that can serve to smear

opponents, e.g. the revolving door used to smear Michael Dukakis
in 1988 by implying that he was "soft on crime" in Massachusetts.

• To avoid libel claims, relying on deliberate ambiguity and

fatuously extreme assertions beyond legal liability

• Humor, especially in combination with the above.

If it fails, an attack ad campaign can be "spun" into "good fun" by simply extending the
conceptual metaphors or extreme assertions to humorous lengths. Evil reptilian kitten eater
from another planet details one such case - maybe. Ambiguity exists on this level too, as it is
easy to reinforce a campaign of attack ads with generally negative or humorous comments.
Only an expert or direct opponent would note the tendency of conceptual metaphors to keep
reinforcing each other - the soul of propaganda techniques and ideology itself.

Attack ads utilize a variety of propaganda techniques to influence opinions. Propagandists

sometimes find attack ads to be more cost effective than other tactics. Attack ads may be
presented through a variety of broadcast or print sources but usually are intended to deliver a
specific message to a select audience. Rather than support a position held by the advertiser,
attack messages target an opponent's platform, track record, background or character.

Though the propaganda technique often is devoid of subtlety or diplomacy, attack advertising
offers a powerful approach that is much used and abused. In the United States, both the
Republican and Democratic parties have exploited attack ads. While allegations in attack ads
frequently are blunt or even exaggerated, accusations at other times are phrased subtly or
vaguely so the targeted individual or organization cannot seek legal action against the
advertiser.

Table of contents [hide]

1 Elements
2 Ad hominem
3 Suggestions
4 The future
5 Real attacks

Elements
Elements of attack ads can include:

• ad hominem arguments
• arbitrary topics
• assertions
• bias
• broad generalizations
• character flaws
• disinformation
• false characterizations
• hypocrisies
• insults
• irrelevant information
• loose associations
• oxymoronic language
• partial information
• smears
• suggestion
• specific allegations
• rumors
• vague allegations

For an attack ad to be effective, the message probably needs to be believable. Repulsive

imagery conveyed in attack ads might reinforce allegations or mask outright character attacks.
The ads often rely on resonance of the message to attract the attention of audience members to
a message most other listeners or viewers will ignore.

Ad hominem
Attack ads tend to promote ambivalence toward the attacked individual's ideas and toward
those holding similar views. Attack ads may reference a supposed flaw or weakness in
personality, beliefs, lifestyle, convictions or principles of an individual or organization. These
attack ads are used to refute a particular proposition based solely upon some unrelated fact
about the person presenting the proposition. Such refutation is said to be "against the person"
(ad hominem) and not their proposition.
Abusive attack ads sometimes employ mere insults, sometimes with no basis in fact, but can
also involve pointing out factual but damning character flaws or actions. Attack ads
sometimes point out "hypocrisy" of an individual or organization. Attack ads at other times
attack the bias of a person. Attack ads attempt to expose inconsistencies in an opponent’s
rhetoric or to show that an opponent's rhetoric is inconsistent with their actions. Attack ads
sometimes include false implications masked by otherwise truthful statements. Circumstantial
attack ads point to circumstances that could imply a person would be predisposed to take a
particular position, such as exposing sources of an opponent's campaign funding.

Suggestions
By manipulating salient tidbits of information, attack ads can suggest the totality of
information points toward the propagandist's preferred conclusion. Attack ads can take the
form of repeated, unapologetic, systematic distortion of facts, or otherwise implying (or
asserting) that opponents "are" bad, evil, stupid, untrustworthy, guilty of reprehensible acts or
part of some undesirable category.

Attack ads often appeal to emotion and discourage reasonable discussion. Ad hominem
suggestions in attack ads promote doubt about whether the target is reliable or believable,
encouraging ambivalence toward the target and toward the target's platform. The propagandist
can then exploit the arising ambivalence by suggesting an alternative to the attack target's
proposals.

The future
Some attack ads predict with certainty future events based on a few select circumstances.
Attack ad propagandists sometimes make unwarranted extrapolations to predict dire
circumstances from vague risks. Thus, these attack ads exploit fear or anger to encourage
compliance with suggestions the listener might otherwise reject.

Real attacks
Advertisements that attack real flaws and that expose inconsistencies in an opponent's rhetoric
are a vital part of the public political process. Public officials, politicians, media
representatives, and advocates tend to disagree at times about the propriety or relevance of
attack ads.

For reasons sometimes unbeknownst even to advertisers, attack ads don't always work.
Rhetorical attacks can sometimes backfire. Attack tactics attempt to seize rhetorical high
ground, either by aggressive reasoning or by irrational suggestion. But a target can sometimes
defend against attack advertising by claiming to be above "mud slinging" or "dirty politics,"
citing the attack ad as an example of its sponsor's unfit character, unreasonable behavior, lack
of diplomacy or poor public manners.

Anyone involved in political discourse would do well to become acquainted with attack ads.

See also: rumor

 • augmentation

Augmentation
Augmentation is the act of increasing a statement or information (especially in size or
amount or degree) by addition.

By using this tactic, the propagandist tries to extend, or enlarge, the original statement. The
information rides on the exposure of some arbitrary topic (Coca Cola, Earthquakes, the
economy, the war, etc.) and, subtly, augments the original message to carry the propagandist's
own message along with it. When applied with skill, the recipient will not notice the added
part, but only the original message. The augmented message will be accepted uncritically as a
basic premise.

• bad science

Bad science
"Bad Science" usually refers to information presented as a scientific finding that is not based
on research using recognized scientific methods. In conversation, speeches or texts, "bad
science" may refer to flawed science that does not necessarily reflect a particular bias. "Bad
science" can refer to poor research, biased research or to faulty information that might not
even be based in scientific research.

Propagandists can exploit flawed science to suggest conclusions not supported by research.
Propagandists sometimes filter the otherwise unimpeachable work of unbiased scientists,
presenting only findings favorable to the propagandist's goals. Misrepresented by a
propagandist, "good science" might become bad science.

Money, opportunities for recognition and other interests can interfere with the work of
scientists. Agendas, affiliations and preconceptions can bias the work of professional
researchers. Propagandists can more easily exploit the work of biased scientists. At the
extreme, scientists can become propagandists, primarily producing research to support an
employer's interests.

See also: Junk science

External links and references

 • Wikipedia's Bad Science
• A teacher's view of "bad science":
Alistair B. Fraser's Bad Science page

• bait and switch

Bait and switch

Bait and switch is a technique most often associated with the retail industry but is also a
favorite of manipulative politicians. In advertising this involves using a lure, such as a low-
priced item, as bait to get a person into the store, then trying to sell the person a higher priced
item because the other item is either “out-of-stock” or “of inferior quality.” The key is that
there was never any intention to sell the lower-priced item; it was only used as bait to sell
more expensive items. While the technique is illegal in retail in the U.S, it still occurs fairly
frequently.

In politics there are no laws specifically forbidding the use of bait and switch techniques and
they are used often in a variety of ways. This includes selling bills at much lower costs than
realistically possible and falsely positioning candidates so that they appear to be acceptable to
groups that would not otherwise endorse them.

Bait and switch is one of the many propaganda tactics used very effectively by the G.W Bush
administration. The examples seem to be endless but here are a few of the more notable: the
“No Child Left Behind” Act, touted as a means of improving schools and education was then
given insufficient funds to carry out its mandate; Alan Greenspan initially claimed that the tax
cuts that most benefited the wealthiest Americans would not affect Social Security, yet now
that the bill has been has been passed, the economist who clearly knew better is saying that
Social Security benefits will have to be cut[1]; and the Medicare Prescription Drug Program
was passed by Congress at an estimated cost of $400 billion, when it was already known by
the Bush administration that the cost would more likely be around $550 billion – a sum much
less likely to be acceptable to Congress.

Bait and switch is a type of fraud or deception.

External links
• Wikipedia entry on bait and switch
• Molly Ivins, “Bait-switch tactics seem to work for Bush, ” Arizona
Daily Star, February 26, 2004.
• Paul Krugman, “Greenspan dabbles in bait-switch,” Arizona Daily
Star OpEd, March 3, 2004.
• Bob Herbert, “Bait and Switch,” CommonDreams.org, January 30,
2003. (Reprinted from a New York Times OpEd on G. W.Bush’s
2004 State of the Union address).
 • Tony Pugh, "Medicare Analyst Confirms Muzzling,” Philadelphia
Inquirer, March 13, 2004.

• befriend critics

• big lie

Big lie
Frequently attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the oft-cited big lie theory appears instead to have
been Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's explanation for how people came to believe that Germany
lost World War I in the field -- a "big lie" that Hitler attributed to Jewish influence on the
press.

Hitler writes in Mein Kampf (James Murphy translation, page 134):

"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie
there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are
always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than
consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they
more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often
tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale
falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and
they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so
infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to
their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may
be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it,
even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this
world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too
well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
"From time immemorial. however, the Jews have known better than any others how
falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one
great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a
race? And what a race! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has
branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true.
Schopenhauer called the Jew "The Great Master of Lies." Those who do not realize
 the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a
hand in helping Truth to prevail."

These statements are typical of the hatred of Jews that permeate Hitler's writings and public
statements and which served as the ideological basis for his deliberate genocide against Jews
and other races he deemed inferior. (And notice how even Hitler fell subject to the trait of
projection!)

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, is alleged to have stated that if a lie is
repeated enough times it would become widely accepted as truth. However, it is not clear
when he actually made this statement.

Portions of this article were adapted from Wikipedia's article.

• BIMBO comment

BIMBO comment
"a BIMBO comment is where the speaker repeats and denies a negative, causing the listener
to believe the opposite of what the speaker is trying to say." [1]

"a BIMBO comment is a negative phrase that causes the listener to believe exactly the
opposite. ... particularly when another party ... has determined the negative words." [2]

This does not look like a case where the speaker intends to deceive the listener; rather more
like a case where the speaker fails to persuade the listener.

Examples:

Re: G. W. Bush "No, he's not a moron at all, he's a friend of mine." - Jean Chretien
responding to reporters questioning him about the widely-reported comment by his
director of communications re Bush: 'what a moron'.
"I don't see myself as an ideological zealot." (Senator John Ashcroft)
"I am not a crook" -- Richard Nixon

• buzz
 • buzzwords

Buzzword
Buzzword, as Merriam-Webster provides the definition, is "an important-sounding usually
technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen".

The use of buzzwords in modern literature, especially in the fields of advertising, computing
and information technology, has become de rigeur.

Conventional computing technologies and methodologies such as Java, XML, Object-

Oriented Programming (OOP) and more have become buzzwords, used as a form of pro-
technology propaganda to act as bait for technically-unsophisticated managers who are
responsible for purchasing decisions. Buzzwords in this sense are a commercialized variant of
Newspeak, used to reinforce a particular mindset, but one that is economic in nature, rather
than political ("We'll cut 20% off our TCO by switching to UDDI and SOAP").

Very often the use of buzzwords extends far beyond any defensible use, such as an
exhortation by a manager that a project be "37% Object-Oriented", or that a given project use
Java and XML, whether or not these two technologies are the ideal solutions to the problem at
hand. The final evolution of this trend is the "buzzword-compliant" software package, a
program that makes use of popular or fashionable technologies for no other sake than to
inherit their gloss. The Java language is considered by many to be an example of such
software, but there are many other, perhaps more apt, examples.

Nor is the phenomenon of "buzzword compliance" limited to software. Deloitte Consulting

discovered enough of a correlation between poor performance and the heavy use of business-
related buzzwords in a company's public statements that they wrote software to "score"
documents based on their "jargon" content.

That buzzwords are not yet universally taken as seriously as their users wish is illustrated by
example. At some presentations by PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, attendees have been
known to give out "Buzzword Bingo" cards, and prizes for anyone who yells out "Bingo!" at
the point in the talk when a line of five expected buzzwords (out of a total of 25 on the card)
have all popped up in the talk or questions afterwards.

External Links
• Wikipedia's Buzzwords
• BuzzWhack, the Buzzword Compliant Dictionary
 • censorship

Censorship
Censorship is the use of state power or public body or individual to control freedom of
expression. Censorship 'criminalizes' some actions or the communication (and suggested
communications) of actions. In a modern sense censorship consists of any attempt to suppress
information, points of view, or method of expression such as art, or profanity. The purpose of
censorship is to maintain the status quo, to control the development of a society, or to stifle
dissent among a subject people.

See also: Media censorship, Raising standard of evidence, UNESCO and the Press

External links
• Wikipedia's Censorship

• confusopoly

Confusopoly
Scott Adams, creator of the satirical comic strip Dilbert, coined the word confusopoly in his
1997 book The Dilbert Future.

Adams defines a confusopoly as "a group of companies with similar products who
intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price".

Examples of industries in which confusopolies exist (according to Adams) include telephone

service, insurance, mortgage loans, banking, and financial services.

Reference
• Scott Adams, The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Business Stupidity
in the 21st Century (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 1997, pp.
159-163).

External Link
• http://www.dilbert.com
 • contextualization

• contrivance

Contrivance
Generally, a contrivance is an act of inventing something or any new thing that emerges from
within a society. As a propaganda technique, contrivance is a scheme invented to deceive or
evade. Propagandists use contrivances as a stratagem to throw the audience of a message off
the real intent of the Propagandist's messages. Individuals set up the artificial arrangement of
details to extend the message of propaganda. Some propagandists are skillful at contriving
schemes to problems, which may or may not work. Propagandists sometimes improvise these
schemes for temporary use.

• controlling the noise

Controlling the noise

1. This word means something akin to censorship, but basicaly is used not for profanity or
"objectionable" content, but anything which might make a group look bad. Often used along
with bandwagon, it is censoring by fear.

2. Can also mean using an agent provocateur at high levels in another group to change the
direction of said group towards an opposing groups viewpoint.
 • create tension between target groups

Create tension between two or more target

groups
The phrase create tension between two or more target groups comes from a 1993 book by
Paul H. Nitze: Tension Between Opposites: Reflections on the Practices and Theory of
Politics. Alleged to be connected with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Paul H. Nitze
School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University is said to be a
spy school.[1]

Creating tension between two or more target groups, perhaps originally a technique more
commonly employed for political and military purposes, is often employed as a propaganda
tactic. Typical forms this tactic takes include:

• Creating a dummy or shell group that has no purpose except to

advocate a view bystanders will see as compatible with that of
another target group and which is also opposed to the view of the
manipulating group; Then legitimate groups can be drawn into turf
wars, be discredited by visible engagement in unappealing
confrontations with the new rival, and ultimately discredit their
"shared" view - which is of course the opposite of the
manipulator's view.

• Finding legitimate but incompetent or purist advocates of a view

roughly compatible with that of another target group, and funding
the incompetents or purists or extremists to become the dominant
voice on the issue. Not dealing with the issue is thus easy to
excuse, as the dominant view is more extreme than the public's
own.

• Dealing directly with moderates and requiring concessions that will

be found unacceptable by purists, thus co-opting the middle and
alienating purists. If purists can be simultaneously drawn into
dummy, shell, incompetent or extreme groups, preferably many of
these, then an entire movement can be splintered.

See also: agent provocateur

• crowd dynamics
 • defining the center

• delay

• demonizing the opposition

Demonizing the opposition

Paul Krugman, in his November 25, 2003 Op-Ed "The Uncivil War" for the New York Times,
addresses the political technique of demonizing the opposition. Krugman writes "the Bush
administration — which likes to portray itself as the inheritor of Reagan-like optimism —
actually has a Nixonian habit of demonizing its opponents."

"The campaign against 'political hate speech' originates with the Republican National
Committee. But last week the committee unveiled its first ad for the 2004 campaign, and it's
as hateful as they come. 'Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists,' it
declares. ... Again, there's that weasel word 'some.' No doubt someone doesn't believe that we
should attack terrorists. But the serious criticism of the president, as the committee knows
very well, is the reverse: that after an initial victory in Afghanistan he shifted his attention —
and crucial resources — from fighting terrorism to other projects."[1]

"All this fuss about civility, then, is an attempt to bully critics into unilaterally disarming —
into being demure and respectful of the president, even while his campaign chairman declares
that the 2004 election will be a choice 'between victory in Iraq and insecurity in America.'"[2]

"The 'politics of personal destruction'--a phrase popularized by Bill Clinton during his
impeachment--has been in vogue since long before Monica Lewinsky captured the attention
of Clinton's indiscriminate libido. Although the tactic of demonizing the opposition has been
practiced with varying intensity throughout the history of politics, this current round of hyper-
partisan warfare can be traced back to 1987, when President Ronald Reagan nominated
Robert H. Bork for the Supreme Court."[3]
"Blocking Supreme Court nominees for partisan reasons is nothing new; Republicans did it in
1968 to hold a seat open for Richard M. Nixon to fill. Nor is the practice of distorting an
appointee's record and demonizing the opposition - there's even a name for it, Borking,
resulting from the 1987 rejection of Robert Bork."[4]

"To mobilize the base, candidates in both parties take more extreme positions. Campaign
rhetoric becomes more strident as campaigns try to excite supporters by demonizing the
opposition. Issues become weapons to use to goad people into voting - or discourage an
opponent's base from voting. For example, Republicans attack abortion and gay rights to turn
out evangelical voters. Democrats practice what approaches class war as they attack wealth
and corporations in order to inspire blue-collar workers to turn out.

"As a result, many people in the center become turned off by it all and no longer bother to
vote. Political dialogue becomes a series of epithets and bombast hurled at opponents over the
airwaves in attack ads or on talk shows. It even becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since
centrist voters find little to like in either party, they quit voting. That just prompts both parties
to try even harder to mobilize base voters to win increasingly low-turnout elections. Fewer
centrist politicians run for office or work in politics. Instead, the humorless zealots and true
believers rise to the top."[5]

"Some partisans in any cause maintain that the crisis of the moment is so urgent and
compelling that we cannot wait to win over the majority of the public with facts. We must
rally support through circulating horror stories, inflating statistics, and demonizing the
opposition.

"Such tactics may succeed in raising a rabble and generating momentum toward achieving a
specific short-term objective: storming the Bastille, sinking the Bismarck, or lynching the first
strangers who ride into Ox Bow after ill-founded rumor has it that someone was murdered.
Propaganda tactics are even more effective in generating donations to support cause-oriented
groups, since donors typically respond to appeals on impulse, and since the consequences of
making an ill-chosen donation rarely return to haunt the donor.

"But propaganda in the long run is self-defeating. It works on the psyche much like
pornography, in that as the viewer becomes more familiar with the material, it becomes ever
less titilating. Propagandists, like pornographers, must constantly seek out new depths of
abuse and degradation to shock and excite potential donors and activists, who meanwhile may
become so depressed by the barrage of horror as to quit opening the mail or even drop out of
the cause entirely to avoid further emotional stress.

"Worse still, propaganda displays contempt for the recipient. It says, in effect, 'You're too
stupid and insensitive to respond to facts.' People who find out they've been taken for fools
often respond with a backlash rejection of anything and everything the propagandists
promoted sometimes including worthwhile ideas.

"Finally, propaganda devalues and debases the legitimate arguments on behalf of the cause it
purportedly serves. When propagandists act on their belief that the truth alone isn't strong
enough to win people over, they demonstrate a distinct lack of faith in their factual
support."[6]
Other Related Disinfopedia Resources
• Commission on Presidential Debates
• MoveOn
• open debates
• Open Debates
• pre-emptive campaign strategy
• propaganda techniques
• public polling industry
• U.S. presidential election, 2004

External Links
• Campaigning in Wartime, New York Times Op-Ed, November 23,
2003.

• disinformation

Disinformation
Disinformation is deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a
government, intelligence agency, corporation or other entity for the purpose of influencing
opinions or perceptions.

Unlike misinformation, which is also a form of wrong information, disinformation is

produced by people who intend to deceive their audience.

A group might plant disinformation in reports, in press releases, in public statements or in

practically any other routine, occasional or unusual communique. Disinformation can also be
leaked, or covertly released to a source who can be trusted to repeat the false information.

A common disinformation tactic is to mix truth, half-truths, and lies. Disinformants

sometimes seek to gain the confidence of their audience through emotional appeals or by
using semi-neutral language interlaced with threads of disinformation.

"Disinformation is a fact of life in politics. Those who practice politics for a living call it
“spin.” Honest people call it lying through your teeth." Says Doug Thompson [1]

External links
• French ambassador to US complains about disinformation
 • distraction

Distraction
Techniques of distraction are used to suppress information or points of view by crowding
them out of the media, or by inducing other people or groups of people to stop listening to
certain arguments, or simply by drawing their attention elsewhere.

In a general age of information overload, it is far easier and more cost-effective to simply not
discuss an issue, than to spend money on propaganda and spin. Many governments may be
discovering that dealing with the public is best achieved through Weapons of Mass
Distraction.

There is no doubt that all countries have priorities in news reporting that constitutes a bias,
and that many times the bias will favor the administration currently in power. It is
controversial, and may be just another conspiracy theory, to say that the government or large
corporations are deliberately manipulating the media to distract the populace. But the media
does have that effect, and the population is distracted. The only question left is whether it's
deliberate or not.

Distracting the media is relatively easy, using some time-tested techniques--Some of the
following recent examples helped keep U.S. public sentiment in favor of an Iraq invasion:

Table of contents [hide]

1 Distraction by nationalism
2 Straw man
3 Distraction by scapegoat
4 Distraction by phenomenon
5 Marginalization
6 Demonisation of the opposition
7 Googlewashing
8 A few older examples

Distraction by nationalism
A variant on the traditional ad hominem and bandwagon fallacies applied to entire countries.
The method is to discredit arguments coming from other countries by appealing to
nationalistic pride or memory of past accomplishments, or appealing to fear or dislike of a
specific country, or of foreigners in general. It can be very powerful as it discredits foreign
journalists (the ones that are least easily manipulated by domestic political or corporate
interests).
 Example: "You want to know what I really think of the Europeans?" asked the senior
United States State Department official. "I think they have been wrong on just about
every major international issue for the past 20 years." [1]

Straw man
(see Straw man fallacy): Lumping a strong opposition argument together with one or many
weak ones, to create a simplistic weak argument that can easily be refuted.
Example: Grouping all opposed to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq as "pacifists", so they can
be refuted by arguments for war in general.

Distraction by scapegoat
A combination of straw man and ad hominem, in which your weakest opponent (or easiest to
discredit) is considered as your only important opponent.
Example: If many countries are opposed to our actions, but one of them (say, France)
is obviously acting out of self-interest, mention mostly France. Bash the French. Talk
about Freedom Fries. Complain about ingratitude from World War II. Forget about the
90% of all other countries who feel the same way.

Distraction by phenomenon
A risky but effective strategy summarized by David Mamet's movie Wag the Dog, in which
the public can be distracted, for long periods of time, from an important issue, by one which
occupies more news time. When the strategy works, you have a war or other media event
taking attention away from misbehaving or crooked leaders. When the strategy does not work,
the leader's misbehavior remains in the press, and the war is derided as an attempted
distraction.
Example:The fact that Bush Iraq War gets over 2 million hits on Google, while U.S.
Economy Bush gets only 1.3 million may be an example of an effective use of "Wag
the Dog".

Marginalization
(See Appeal to authority and Bandwagon within the article propaganda): This one is
widespread and subtle: Simply giving credence only to "mainstream" sources of information,
which are also the easiest to manipulate by corporate or political interests, since they can be
owned or sponsored by them. Information, arguments, and objections that come from other
sources are simply considered "fringe" and ignored, or their proponents permanently
discredited.
Example: "I think there are a lot of people out there who feel the way I do, but haven't
wanted to come forward because they're afraid of being identified with a fringe
group..." Langley said. "I don't believe in all the things that all the (anti-war) groups
stand for, but we all do share one thing in common: I do believe that this war is
wrong."[2]

Demonisation of the opposition

(See 'Obtain disapproval' within the article propaganda): A more general case of distraction
by nationalism. Opposing views are ascribed to an out-group and thus dismissed out of hand.
This approach, carried to extremes, becomes a form of suppression, as in McCarthyism,
where anyone disapproving of the government was considered "un-american" and
"Communist" and was likely to be denounced.
Example: Recent demonization of any public figure who dared to criticize the Bush
administration's motives, including Michael Moore, the Dixie Chicks, etc.

Googlewashing
A newly coined word by Andrew Orlowski of The Register [3] in April of 2003 to describe
the alleged practice of changing the meaning of a meme (in this example, w:Second
Superpower) by web-publishing a well-linked article using the term in an inoffensive manner,
stripped of its political significance.

A few older examples

(again recall that distraction need not be deliberate):

• Example:

In 1995 in Poland the tobacco control bill was debated in the parliament. News were
spread to media that smoking while driving will be prohibited and punishable, because
it impairs driver's ability to concentrate.
There were no such provision proposed, but news turned away public attention from
incredible loopholes, which Philip Morris admits to plant in the bill (in the secret
documents in American lawsuits). Incredibly, no jounalist bothered to check the draft
first hand. At the time, Burson Marsteller handled PR for Philip Morris in Poland.

• distort risk

Risk
Framing risk poorly or falsely so as to achieve fear is perhaps the single most common of the
propaganda techniques. Propagandists often fail to differentiate a risk from threat or more
likely, deliberately and selectively confuse the two concepts.

Conversely, another popular propaganda technique is to criticise concerns that might give rise
to regulation (about the environment, or GM food, for example) as part of our "risk-averse"
culture. This is a favoured technique of the UK LM group, which attacks the Precautionary
principle as regressive. In the US, the Harvard Centre for Risk Analysis follows similar lines,
as does risk pundit Michael Gough.
Risk management is a PR specialism which aims to help corporations strategically plan to
avoid negative publicity, as well as to deal with it on an ad-hoc basis. PR agencies
specialising in risk management include Regester Larkin and Kroll, Inc..

Disinfopedia resources
• new normal
• bioterror
• biosecurity
• Chemical threat
• war propaganda
• public health crisis
• environmental scares
• dangerous technology
• public relations crisis
• pro-technology propaganda
• weapons of mass destruction

Correctible resources
• w:risk e.g. Meta-Wikipedia list of m:worst cases to Wikipedia
• w:threat e.g. Meta-Wikipedia list of m:threats to Wikipedia
• w:regret
• w:biosecurity
• w:moral panic
• w:cognitive bias
• w:behavioral finance

Published resources
(stub: need anything on public manipulation after 9/11 with risk claims)

• divide and conquer

Divide and conquer

Divide and conquer refers to the common strategy of seeking to cultivate neutrality or
support from those considered 'moderates' as a way of undermining and marginilising those
deemed the 'radicals'.

Case studies
 • Building Bridges and Splitting Greens

• doublespeak

Doublespeak
Doublespeak is language deliberately constructed to disguise its actual meaning, such as
euphemisms.

The word doublespeak was coined in the early 1950s. It is often incorrectly attributed to
George Orwell and his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The word actually never
appears in that novel; Orwell did, however, coin Newspeak, Oldspeak, duckspeak (speaking
from the throat without thinking 'like a duck') and doublethink (holding "...simultaneously
two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of
them..."), and his novel made fashionable composite nouns with speak as the second element,
which were previously unknown in English. It was therefore just a matter of time before
someone came up with doublespeak. Doublespeak may be considered, in Orwell's
lexicography, as the B vocabulary of Newspeak, words "deliberately constructed for political
purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but
were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them."

Whereas in the early days of the practice it was considered wrong to construct words to
disguise meaning, this is now an accepted and established practice. There is a thriving
industry in constructing words without explicit meaning but with particular connotations for
new products or companies.

William Lutz, a professor at Rutgers University, has written several books about doublespeak
and is the former editor of the Doublespeak Quarterly Review, which examines ways that
jargon has polluted the public mindspace with phrases designed to obscure the meaning of
plain English.

Examples
• aerial ordnance (military): bombs and missiles.
• agenda: as in the Liberal Agenda or the Homosexual Agenda; used
to discredit laws or programs sought after by the left by adding the
feel of conspiracy and ill will to the venture.
• ally: vassal state; colony.
• asset (CIA term): foreign spy
• associate: a low-level employee. Being "associated" sounds more
dignified than being "employed" (or "used"), but also connotes
being more loosely affiliated, i.e. having less job security.
• asymmetric warfare: suicide bombing attacks, local violent
unrest, almost anything that one does not wish to call war or
 terrorism. Military scientists define asymmetry in warfare as
circumstances in which one side continues to fight regardless the
disproportionate military capacity of an opponent.
• axis of evil: countries to be attacked; Bush administration hitlist
(currently includes Iran, North Korea, and possibly now Syria -
threatening moves against Cuba and Venezuela also made by this
regime).
• balanced scientists: biased scientists.
• bill of rights: a list of promises consisting of many glittering
generalities but few enforceable specifics.
• biosolids: sewage.
• blowback: the threat of American-made weapons being turned
against American troops. [1]
• boomerang effect: see blowback.
• Bush bashing: Personal attacks based on partisan criticism of
current and past decisions made by President George W. Bush
• capital punishment: death penalty, state execution.
• casualty: person killed or maimed in warfare.
• classified: secret
In World War II, secret information was distinguished into classes
corresponding to increasing levels of security clearances, and came
to be called classified information (as in "classified for a particular
clearance"). Classified was also the second lowest grade of
information in the UK - restricted ->classified ->secret, etc.
• coalition of the willing: coalition of the coerced, paid, and afraid -
also coalition of those billing referring to massive foreign aid
bribes or coercive economic threats made against these states by
Bush administration.
• collateral damage: bystander casualties, ecological destruction
and environmental contamination with potential to keep causing
both for long term.
• competitive(ness) - profitable (-ility).
• communication: propaganda.
• communist: during the Cold War, any person, government or
media that challenged American economic hegemony in the world
• counseling: in business, often a euphemism for reprimanding
and/or warning an employee.
• criminal extremist organization: subjective phrase for anyone or
any group that poses a perceived threat.
• crusade: war.
• debunk: present an alternative explanation for the truth.
• decapitation strike: turn of phrase recently used to describe the
bombing of structures where military or political leaders are
assumed to be.
• defense: war
As in Department of Defense, formed by the merging of the
Department of War and Department of the Navy.
• defence budget: military (and 'imperial' foreign control) budget.
• dehousing: (WWII) allied bombing of German civilian homes.
• deregulation: reapportioning profiteering opportunities for
corporate America by reducing or removing democratically
controlled regulatory oversight.
• detainee: prisoner of war (e.g. on terrorism.)
• digital rights management: software/hardware which restricts
people from excercising their rights (of fair use especially.)
• disarmament: unilateral process whereby one side to a conflict
hands over its arms to the other side; also refers to mutual
agreements to reduce numbers of weapons.
• doublespeak: professional jargon used by members of a disliked
profession.
• downsize, rightsize, RIF (reduction in force): fire employees.
"Downsize" at first applied to products, meaning to supply less
product for the same price, e.g. 14 oz. instead of a full pound of
coffee.
• eco: implies "ecology", which is the study of community
population dynamics. Sometimes added as a prefix to other terms
to mislead the public.
• economic growth: raw increase in Gross National Product - see
economic growth, uneconomic growth, productivism,
consumerism, militarism, accounting reform for issues with this
equivalence.
• embedded: used by US military authorites in 2003 to describe new
policy of inviting journalists to war. Reporters are absorbed into
advancing military units, and may even dress like soldiers. Critics
say embedded reporters are psychologically inclined to see
themselves as part of the military operation (see: Ted Koppel).
• enemy combatant: legal wording to get around the Geneva
Conventions ' protective rights for those captured in combat
• environmental security: securing the environment for corporate
exploitation.
• ethnic cleansing: genocide.
• expired: died.
• freedom fighter: A terrorist we agree with.
• free speech zone: an area set aside for protesters in which law
enforcement supposedly will not interfere with them if they stay
within it, but may assail or arrest them if they venture out of it.
Often at a remove from which the protesters won't be seen or heard
by those participating in the event being protested.
• food police: pejorative term used by the food industry to attack
advocates of better nutrition.
• forced disarmament: war.
• fourth-generation warfare: Government-managed terrorism. The
idea that warfare passes through "generations" is meant to imply
that progress or evolution toward some desirable goal is being
made.
• fractional reserve banking: monopolistic or oligarchic private
cartel controlling central banking, facilitating economic parasitism
by the rich; see this scientific economics paper.
• general trade: criminal smuggling organized by tobacco
companies itself.
• globalization: expanded profiteering opportunities on global scale.
• homicide bomber: suicide bomber.
• human intelligence; also HUMINT: spies.
• improvised explosive device (IED): Bombs used in roadside
ambushes on vehicles. Perhaps called "improvised" to disparage
those who make and use them.
• illegal combatants: prisoners of war who are deprived of basic
human rights and of any legal rights under existing international
conventions regarding treatment of prisoners.
• illegals: refugees seeking asylum - perfectly legally - in Australia;
term used by the Australian Government under Prime Minister
John Howard.
• infinite justice: revenge, as in "Operation Infinite Justice," the
original code name for the U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2001.
• infomercial: a broadcast advertisement filling an entire program
slot, often repeating the same body of content several times.
Usually referred to in program listings as "paid programming".
• insurgents: those resisting military occupation.
• intelligence; also INTEL: spies or secrets.
• intelligent design: pseudoscience version of creationism used to
attack theory of evolution.
• interrogation techniques/methods - tortures applied by U.S.
military(e.g. in liberated Iraq)
• irregulars: Pentagon-speak for "everybody else".
• irregularities: corporate accounting fraud.
• job flexibility : lack of job security (where job security means an
actual or implied promise of continued employment).
• liberate: invade.
• martyr: suicide bomber, 'kamikaze'.
• martyrdom operation: suicidal terrorist attack.
• manifest destiny: imperialism.
• material support: food, water, shelter.
• nation building: imposing or influencing a new domestic polity.
• negative patient care outcome: death.
• neutralize: to kill or to render politically ineffective by
imprisonment, damage to reputation, ideological seduction or
distraction.
• new and improved: smaller, more expensive and less useful.
• New World Order: globalization; imperialization.
• non-core promise: a promise not kept, in most cases a lie from the
start; invented by Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
• non-duty, non-pay status: fired.
• person of interest: suspect in a crime.
• piracy: unauthorized copying of information.
• pre-dawn vertical insertion: invasion of Grenada; Early morning
paradrop of troops/equipment.
• pre-emptive strike: in war it means to attack an enemy before an
enemy attacks; in advertising or propaganda it means to offer an
excuse or cover story before the truth is exposed.
• pre-hostility: Build up of war making apparatus before hostilites
are initiated.
• pre-owned: used, second-hand.
• privatization: profit opportunities for corporate America; usually
refers to transfer of former public sector services to management
by private firms.
• pro-growth tax policies: Laws or policies designed to stimulate
economic growth. Usually based upon academic theories
implemented by current administration that involve reducing taxes
for the wealthy while cutting services that primarily benefit the
poor.
• promotion: propaganda.
• propaganda: information coming from an opposing or
independent source.
• relocation: forcible abduction (often in reference to members of
indigenous communities).
• regime change: a forceful change of government by a foreign
power; Pax Americana.
• remains: As used by the Department of Defense in reference to
unidentitified missing soldiers, the word "remains" refers not to the
actual physical remains, but to an abstract concept deduced from
circumstances. [2]
• rendition: the deportation of prisoners by one country to another
not burdened by following international laws, for the purpose of
torture.
• revenue enhancement: tax increase.
• revolution in military affairs (RMA): Pentagon term for combat
using high-tech, precision-guided munitions; see military-industrial
complex and Revolution in military affairs.
• rogue nation: enemy; usually one that is not aligned with a group
of other nations in agreements regarding conduct of warfare. Also
see United States as a rogue nation.
• security contractors: mercenary troops, or agencies that provide
them
• servicing the target: killing the enemy, destroying targeted
facilities.
• shaping the battlefield: Killing some people or destroying
facilities in order to make it easier to kill or capture others, usually
by preliminary bombardment or shelling.
• shock and awe: massive bombing, effects-based operation.
• signal intelligence; also SIGINT: wiretaps.
• smart bomb: usually air-launched explosives configured with
guidance system.
• softening: the elimination of any barrier to a full-scale attack.
• sound science: pro-corporate, anti-environmental science.
• spin: often refers to outright lies, but generally implies an effort to
portray events in a light favorable to the one doing the spin.
• subsidy: wellfare for constitiuents
• surgical strike: military attack; this phrase evokes a medical
metaphor to suggest that warfare is a form of healing, as if an
regime was a "cancer" or "tumour," while the warrior-leaders are
painted as trustworthy surgeons.
• sustainable population: population control.
• take down: kill someone (military language).
• take out: assassinate an individual or destroy a target.
• target of opportunity: human beings to be assassinated; target or
prey fortuitously encountered or discovered.
• taxpayer: citizen
The word taxpayer means someone who pays taxes, and when used
in a discussion of government revenues is not doublespeak.
However, using the term interchangeably with citizen - the military
is there to protect the taxpayers - implies that the primary role of a
citizen is to pay taxes, or more generally, that the social contract
(again, a term with a particular bias) between citizen and state is
primarily economic. This usage has become popular in certain
conservative and libertarian groups in the United States: c.f.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, National Taxpayers Union.
• terminate with extreme prejudice: kill. A dead person can never
be rehired.
• terrorist: armed political rebel (negative term).
Note however, that in scholarly contexts, "terrorist" is usually
defined in a way consistent with the biases of the politics of the
region where the scholastic institution is located. See also freedom
fighter.
• transfer: mass deportation.
• transfer tubes: body bags.
• trickle-down: refers to the oft-refuted theory that wealth
accumulated by the upper strata of a society will benefit members
of lower economic classes, where it is known as "dribble-on".
• unbiased: Used to imply correctness or truth. Lack of significant
pre-judgement or conflict of interest is substantially different from
reaching truth.
• unclassified: not secret.
Once "classified" became a euphemism for "secret," information
that wasn't secret was then called unclassified, which carries the
implication that the natural state of information is to be classified,
in other words, to be made secret.
• unmanned aerial vehicles: As in "Iraq has a growing fleet of
manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to
disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas."
Two balsa wood radio-controlled aircraft with duct-taped struts and
a range of about five miles were discovered. Assuming these
drones were prototypes not for surveillance but dispersing
chemicals, Bush did not explain how these miniscule and fragile
aircraft models might fare over a 5,500 mile journey to U.S.
mainland or why they would not be shot down as soon as they
crossed Iraq's "No Fly" zone.
 • vertically deployed anti-personnel devices: bombs.
• viral: Opponents of the GNU GPL license sometimes describe one
of its properties as being "viral".
• wet work: assassination.

NOTE: This article is adapted from a Wikipedia article by the same name but includes
much more loaded terms, and definitions that include doublespeak in them as well.

External links
• William Lutz, Doublespeak (New York, NY: HarperPerennial,
1990), ISBN 0-06-016134-5.
• William Lutz, The New Doublespeak (New York, NY:
HarperCollins, 1996), ISBN 0-06-017134-0.
• From the Free Software Foundation: Words to avoid.

• echo chamber

Echo chamber
Echo chamber is a colloquial term used to describe a group of media outlets that tend to
parrot each other's uncritical reports on the views of a single source, or that otherwise relies
on unquestioning repetition of official sources.

In the United States, the Republican Party uses a network of conservative foundations,
coordinated by the Philanthropy Roundtable, and described in an extensive report (March
2004) by Jerry M. Landay for Mediatransparency.org, support an echo chamber of think
tanks, industry-friendly experts and subsidized conservative media that systematically spread
its messages throughout the political and media establishment. Typically, the message starts
when conservative voices begin making an allegation (e.g., Democratic candidates are
engaged in "hate-mongering" with regard to Bush). Columns start getting written on this
theme, which spreads beyond the subsidized conservative media, eventually begins appearing
in places like the New York Times, and becomes a talking point and "accepted fact"
throughout the media.

Maureen Dowd, in a column for the New York Times on 15 February 2004, described the
deceptive condition as one where "the bogus stories ... ricocheted through an echo chamber of
government and media, making it sound as if multiple, reliable sources were corroborating the
same story."

To influence the media, conservatives have also set up several organizations that serve as
recruiting, training and career advancement programs for budding journalists. On university
campuses, conservative foundations support several networks of conservative professors,
including the National Association of Scholars and the Collegiate Network of the
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which links and provides funds to more than 70 conservative
student papers. The student papers in turn serve as conduits to the mainstream media, through
organizations such as the National Journalism Center that provides training, ideological
indoctrination and a job bank that helps conservative student journalists begin their careers
with internships and permanent job placements at publications including the New York
Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, Fox News, Time, Newsweek, and
the Associated Press.

Opinion pollsters and image makers such as Frank Luntz, Michael Deaver, Ed Rollins,
Wirthlin Worldwide and Zogby International help develop the messages that echo in the echo
chamber, by identifying hot-button “cultural” issues such as guns, abortion, family values and
the flag that have enabled the party of privilege to position itself as the party with which
lower-middle and middle-class voters identify.

Relatedly, see incestuous amplification

Part of the "echo chamber" effect relies not only on repeating a given stance through as many
separate channels as possible, but on casting alternative sources of information and opinion as
doing the same thing in the opposite direction. Long-standing accusations of the "liberal-
dominated media", suggesting that the bulk of mass media today forms some sort of liberal
echo chamber, denies the idea that the reverse may in fact be the case.

Also, it's notable that the cultural body of music is not experiencing the fresh joy of great new
songs about peace and love and anti-war which was so remarkable during the quagmire of the
60's. "It's a hammer of justice; it's a bell of freedom; it's a song about love between the
brothers and the sisters, all over this land." Much more diverse and uplifting than "Batttle
Hymn of the Republic".

This lack of new music isn't because the musicians are overseas in uniform. It's because at the
slightest peep of anti-war lyric, the radio stations blacklist the artists. The reason for this
stems from a reduction in the diversity of radio-station and media ownership. Whether
motivated by individual politics or by a desire to stay on good terms with the administration
that empowered them, media moguls like Clearchannel and Rupert Murdoch are widely
believed to place restrictions on the ideas expressed through the media outlets they control.

Examples
• David Brock, a conservative journalist for the American Spectator,
received $11,000 in funding from the John M. Olin Foundation and
the Bradley Foundation to support attacks on University of Oregon
law professor Anita Hill, after Hill testified before Congress that
she had been sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee
Clarence Thomas. Brock wrote an article attacking Hill and later a
book, titled The Real Anita Hill. He later regretted writing the book
and wrote a mea culpa titled Blinded by the Right, in which he
admitted that his writers were "a witches' brew of fact, allegation,
hearsay, speculation, opinion, and invective. ... I didn't know what
good reporting is. Like a kid playing with a loaded gun, I didn't
 appreciate the difference between a substantiated charge and an
unsubstantiated one.” In fact, Brock stated, "Every source I relied
on either thought Thomas walked on water or had a virulent
animus toward Hill. I had no access to Hill’s supporters, and
therefore no understanding of their motivations, no responses to
any of their charges, and no knowledge of whatever incriminating
evidence they might have gathered against Thomas that was not
introduced in the hearing. ... The conspiracy theory I invented
about the Thomas-Hill case could not possibly have been true,
because I had absolutely no access to any of the supposed liberal
conspirators. ... All of my impressions of the characters I was
writing about were filtered through their conservative antagonists,
all of whom I believed without question."
• Brock also says that the "Troopergate" allegations against Bill
Clinton were instigated by Peter Smith, a conservative financier
and top contributor to Newt Gingrich's political action committee,
GOPAC. Brock says he received $5,000 initially from Smith to
investigate allegations (later proven baseless) that Clinton had
fathered a child with an African-American prostitute in Arkansas.
"I was programmed to spring to action like a trained seal," Brock
recalls in his book. "Peter offered me $5,000 for my trouble, not
through the Spectator but paid directly to me by check; getting by
on my Anita Hill book advance, I was a whore for the cash.
Although accepting a payment like this was most unusual and
unethical for a journalist, in my mind it was no different from
taking money from politically interested parties like the Olin and
Bradley foundations."
• During the 2000 elections, the media echo chamber claimed falsely
that Democratic Party presidential candidate Al Gore had
pretended he invented the Internet, claimed he and his wife were
the role model for characters in Love Story, and repeated a number
of other false stories about Gore that painted him as someone with
a bad habit of telling lies.
• In the buildup to war in Iraq, the echo chamber repeated and the
Bush administration's claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction, was tied to Al Queda, and that the people of Iraq
would welcome a U.S. invasion as "liberation."
• "News outlets ideologically allied with Bush have been happy to
assist in confusing the public" "That half or more Americans think
Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack -- perhaps the most media-
covered event in our history -- stands as a horrific indictment of
U.S. media today. Such levels of ignorance can't be found in
other countries." [1]
• Newsweek Magazine and NBC television partnered for a week of
unbalanced promotion of corporate interests. [2]
• talk radio
• Major New Study on Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass
Destruction concludes[3], [4]:
o Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent
administration's perspectives on WMD, giving too little
 critical examination of the way officials framed the events,
issues, threats and policy options.
o Too few stories offered alternative perspectives to the
"official line" on WMD surrounding the Iraq conflict
o most journalists accepted the Bush administration linking
the "war on terror" inextricably to the issue of WMD
o most media outlets represented WMD as a "monolithic
menace" without distinguishing between types of weapons
and between possible weapons programs and the existence
of actual weapons
• Knight Ridder (March 15, 2004) reported that "...A June 26, 2002,
letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate
Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles [in major English-
language news outlets worldwide] based on information provided
by the INC [ Iraqi National Congress ]'s Information Collection
Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq. The
assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that
Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with
Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding
biological and chemical weapons. Feeding the information to the
news media, as well as to selected administration officials and
members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were
multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs
and links to bin Laden." [Italics added.]

Disinfopedia Resources
• Iraqi National Congress
• media censorship
• media reform
• The U Network

External links
• National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy(NCRP) "has
issued a new report on the grantmaking of politically conservative
foundations, revisiting the analysis and conclusions reached in
NCRP’s seminal report on conservative philanthropy in 1997. The
new report greatly expands on the 1997 research, looking at 79
conservative foundations and their grants to 350 archconservative
policy nonprofit organizations between 1999 and 2001."
o The Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and
Civic Renewal wonder if they "got it, well, Right".
• "Buying a Movement: Right-Wing Foundations and American
Politics," (Washington, DC: People for the American Way, 1996).
Or download a PDF version of the full report.

• Dan Morgan, "Think Tanks: Corporations' Quiet Weapon,"

Washington Post, January 29, 2000, p. A1.
 • Jeff Gerth and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Drug Industry Has Ties to
Groups With Many Different Voices", New York Times, October
5, 2000.
• Robert Kuttner, "Philanthropy and Movements," The American
Prospect, July 2, 2002.
• Curtis Moore, "Rethinking the Think Tanks," Sierra Magazine,
July/August 2002.
• Robert W. Hahn, "The False Promise of 'Full Disclosure'," Policy
Review, Hoover Institution, October 2002.
• Media Transparency provides descriptive summaries of many
groups and individuals associated with the right, plus a database of
conservative grants and foundations.
• David Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-
Conservative (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2002).
• Jeff Chester, "A Present for Murdoch", The Nation, December
2003: "From 1999 to 2002, his company spent almost $10 million
on its lobbying operations. It has already poured $200,000 in
contributions into the 2004 election, having donated nearly $1.8
million during the 2000 and 2002 campaigns."
• Jim Lobe for Asia Times: "the structure's most remarkable
characteristics are how few people it includes and how adept they
have been in creating new institutions and front groups that act as a
vast echo chamber for one another and for the media"
• Valdis Krebs, "Divided We Stand," Political Echo Chambers
• Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells, "Iraqi exile group fed false
information to news media", Knight Ridder, March 15, 2004.

• empty rhetoric

Empty rhetoric
Empty rhetoric consists essentially of hollow promises–words uttered without any attempt to
take the action necessary to back them up. These promises and commitments are made and
then ignored or forgotten.

This technique is used to falsely assuage anxieties and still dissent.

Empty rhetoric shows the necessity of distinguishing between word and deed, and the need to
pay attention to what a person actually does rather than what they say they are going to do.

Below are a few uses of the phrase culled from online publications:

“Trading in empty rhetoric . . .,” Chicago Tribune, August 15, 2003

 Word and deed are always at war when it comes to trade talks. So when two
traditional rivals talk peace on the eve of a big trade parley, we should watch what
they do, not what they say.[1]
“Bush's empty rhetoric on AmeriCorps,” Salon.com, 6/20/2003
The president says he wants the program to expand. But his silence about GOP efforts
to cut its funding speaks volumes. [2]
“UN Conference on Racism - Empty Rhetoric, no Action,” By JEFF MACKLER,
Socialist Action / September 2001 [3]
“Mars plan may be only empty rhetoric,” Bill Mego, Published in Sun Publications
01/16/04
… Clearly, one objection to Bush's proposal goes to the matter of his administration's
credibility. Is this just another distraction, a clever way to walk away from the
International Space Station that has repeatedly been downsized (to the point of being
unusable) and which the administration does not know how to fix? As usual, the pain
and heavy lifting is left to some future administration, which will already be burdened
with deficits and multiple countries to run.
So, it is likely that the plan is rhetoric, as empty as space itself, and we will probably
not return to the moon, or build an observatory on its far side. But there will always be
that yearning to try, to venture past the edge, and to experience the vastness of the
creation it is our destiny to inhabit.[4]

• environmental scares

Environmental scares
One explanation for Propaganda Techniques Related to Enviromental Scares comes from
Paul R. Lees-Haley, Ph.D. The following article was copied from the Quackwatch web site:

Psychologists have studied several perceptual factors that help explain how reasonable people
can conclude that they have suffered toxic exposures and injuries when they have not. These
include social proof, repeated affirmations, appeals to authority, vividness, confusion of
inverse probabilities, confusion techniques, and distraction techniques.

Social proof is the tendency to believe what most people believe. If an advocate creates the
impression that "everyone knows" that someone is lying and covering up facts, there is a
subtle implication that those who disagree are somehow flawed and lacking in credibility.
Identifying a few people who believe a proposition, and encouraging them to go public
(especially repeatedly) creates the impression that lots of people are experiencing something
real. Repeated affirmations create the impression that the assertion is true.

Appeals to authority add weight to these persuasions. If one or more of the people affirming
a belief is perceived as authoritative, e.g., a physician or a political leader, more people will
be persuaded. It may matter little that the expert is the only one in the universe with that
opinion, if he or she is the only one whose opinions we hear. Sometimes politicians are
persuaded to join in unfounded but politically advantageous rhetoric. If we like the source of
an opinion, we are more likely to believe. So if a popular actor, media figure, politician, or
local hero joins the process, more people will endorse the perceived reality.

Vivid examples -- especially dramatic case histories -- often influence judgments more than
dull but more accurate quantitative examples. For example, inviting the single child with a
birth defect to the town hall meeting may overwhelm the fact that there are fewer birth defects
in the neighborhood than in most similar residential areas.

Confusion techniques can create perceptions of toxicity, injury, or disease. For example,
illogical but eloquent rhetoric delivered with an air of certainty can create such perceptions if
a few clear alarming phrases are woven into the message. If the release of something harmless
to humans is announced along with discussions of studies indicating cancer, birth defects, or
brain damage in animals, concern or alarm may ensue. A classic technique is to pose an
alarming question as the headline of a speech, article, or broadcast, e.g., "Are your children in
danger?" We commonly hear announcements that "bad chemicals" or "known carcinogens"
are out there, without objective data to clarify whether the type, amount, and location of the
substance could actually hurt anyone. When someone questions the plausibility of the alleged
toxic exposures, advocates may self- righteously respond that reasonable people have a right
to worry, -- as though people who try to alleviate unnecessary worry are violating the rights of
others.

Manipulators dramatically announce that people in the community have cancer, birth defects,
immune disorders, and other disturbing health problems, as if this were a discovery, or
something unusual. Facts about the normal prevalence of these problems are seldom
disseminated or compared with the numbers contained in these sensational announcements.
Have you ever seen a headline, "Cancer rate and birth defects rates exactly normal in
Ourtown, USA"?

Ignoring coincidence and drawing attention to a few sick people can be highly misleading. In
any large population, for example, it is simple to find a few people who have various severe
diseases, including some relatively rare ones. When confronted with the facts about an alleged
environmental toxin, for example, manipulative advocates may respond with confusion
techniques such as: "One sick child is too many, and we resent your implying that it's OK to
poison our children" or "How many body bags will it take to convince you people?" In other
cases they skip over probability and go directly to the impossible -- in the words of a
concerned parent at a town hall meeting, "How are you going to guarantee that my children
won't have cancer in twenty years?"

Confusion, distraction, and other propaganda techniques may be used to make spurious
accusations that inspire outrage against opposing parties. In response to recent criticisms of
junk science, antiscience arguments are on the rise. Advocates tell us, "We can't wait on
science. We have to act now!" and "The scientists want us to do nothing! How many people
have to die before XYZ does what is right?" One such critic ironically declared, "We can't
wait on science, we have to act on the evidence!" Certainly we make most of our decisions in
life without conducting a scientific study first. However, the allegation that some
environmental toxin caused brain damage in a specific group of people is a factual question
that can be answered only by looking at the data, not by emotional reactions to speculation,
sensationalism, and innuendo.
Manipulators strive to divorce us from the facts. Rather than encouraging us to examine the
evidence and reasoning of people who appear to disagree with us, they block communications
and openly or indirectly try to persuade us that people who disagree with their views are
dishonest, not trustworthy, incompetent, biased, racist, only concerned with money, insulting
our intelligence, corrupt, betrayers of the American dream, and so on. The subtext is: "Do not
consider alternative points of view. Do what we tell you, without realizing that we are
controlling you." Like cult leaders, manipulators encourage us to close ranks and form an in-
group suspicious of those who question the party line.

Manipulators often try to control beliefs and actions by exploiting people's feelings.
Inflammatory emotional rhetoric hardens attitudes against the opponent, and subtly justifies
bending the rules to fight against the evil doer. Rhetoric that characterizes the opponent as a
powerful bully (for example, that the AMA is persecuting "alternative" pracitioners) elicits a
desire to root for the underdog, and provides emotional justification for bending ethical rules.

Confusion of inverse probabilities is another classic form of invalid interpretation of facts

that arouses unnecessary alarm. For example, suppose an announcement of a release of a toxic
chemical is accompanied by news that the chemical can cause upper respiratory symptoms,
aches and pains, or other common symptoms. Some people with these symptoms will
conclude that the chemical was responsible. And this could be true. However, it may also be
true that only 10% of persons exposed develop such symptoms, and only 1% of the
population was exposed, so that the probability that a particular person has been poisoned is
one in a thousand. These important details can be overlooked in the hue and cry following a
dramatic toxic spill.

People tend to assume that sensational terms represent reality. Multiple chemical sensitivity
and Gulf War syndrome are prime examples. The existence of a name does not necessarily
mean that there is a corresponding real event. However, spurious allegations may appear
plausible if associated with common symptoms. of human existence, especially if depicted by
an expert.

Another misleading technique is the use of categorical terms that lead away from a more
reassuring (and more reasonable) quantitative reality. For example, an expert witness in a
court case may discourse at length on the effects of severe toxic brain injury when testifying
about a mild injury. Or instead of stating that a plaintiff has a subtle cognitive impairment that
probably will not affect his life very much, the expert decribes the plaintiff as "brain
damaged." And instead of saying that a plaintiff has less than 1/10 of 1 percent greater
likelihood of contracting cancer than the base rate, the expert opines that the plaintiff has
"increased risk of developing cancer" due to some exposure. Both statements are technically
correct but not presented equally. Interruptions, objections, topic changes and ad
hominem arguments may also be used to divert attention from science-based facts.

____________________

Dr. Lees-Haley is a psychologist with offices in the Los Angeles area. Researchers
conducting studies on related issues can contact him at 21331 Costanso Street, Woodland
Hills, CA 91364.Telephone: 818-887-2874 ||| Fax: 818-887-9034 ||| Email
plh@ix.netcom.com
This article was adapted from Lee-Haley PR. Manipulation of perception in mass tort
litigation. Natural Resources & Environment 12:64-68, 1997.

• extreme metaphor

Extreme metaphor
When metaphor is augmented with extreme ideas, including suggestions of violence,
propagandists exploit the boundaries of free expression. Metaphor can be used in the extreme
when tolerance for free expression allows artistic criticism by satire. Extreme metaphor is
sometimes used to incite a reaction by authorities in power against unwitting sympathizers.
Extreme metaphor can become a thinly veiled cover for outright incitement of violence.

Examples:

• Television-based religous propagandist Pat Robertson's remarks in

June and October 2003 interviews with author Joel Mowbray
encouraging a nuclear attack against the U.S. Department of State.
Robertson's role as a supporter of Pres. George Bush II has been to
coalesce the religuous-right and expand the center of right-wing
ideology, especially including attitudes toward religuously
motivated warfare.

• front group

Front groups
(Redirected from Front group)

A front group is an organization that purports to represent one agenda while in reality it
serves some other party or interest whose sponsorship is hidden or rarely mentioned. The
front group is perhaps the most easily recognized use of the third party technique. For
example, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) claims that its mission is to defend the
rights of consumers to choose to eat, drink and smoke as they please. In reality, CCF is a front
group for the tobacco, restaurant and alcoholic beverage industries, which provide all or most
of its funding.
Of course, not all organizations engaged in manipulative efforts to shape public opinion can
be classified as "front groups." For example, the now-defunct Tobacco Institute was highly
deceptive, but it didn't hide the fact that it represented the tobacco industry. There are also
degrees of concealment. The Global Climate Coalition, for example, didn't hide the fact that
its funding came from oil and coal companies, but nevertheless its name alone is sufficiently
misleading that it can reasonably be considered a front group.

The shadowy way front groups operate makes it difficult to know whether a seemingly
independent grassroots is actually representing some other entity. Thus, citizen smokers'
rights groups and organizations of bartenders or restaurant workers working against smoking
bans are sometimes characterized as front groups for the tobacco industry, but it is possible
that some of these groups are self-initiated (although the tobacco industry has been known to
use restaurant groups as fronts for its own interests).

Table of contents [hide]

1 History
2 Examples
3 See also
3.1 External links

History
Edward Bernays, who is generally regarded as the "father of public relations," liked to tell
people, "What I do is propaganda, and I just hope it's not impropaganda." In his later years, he
became a vocal critic of some of the deceptive techniques used within the PR industry. And
yet it is Bernays himself who invented the quintessential tool of deceptive propaganda -- the
"front group."

Bernays stumbled on this strategy almost by accident. In 1913, while working as editor of the
Medical Review of Reviews, a monthly magazine owned by a college acquaintance, he
discovered that the then-famous actor Richard Bennett was interested in producing a play
titled "Damaged Goods," which Bernays described as "a propaganda play that fought for sex
education." It discussed sexual topics, such as prostitution, that were considered unusually
frank for their day. Bennett was afraid that the play would be raided by police, and he hired
Bernays to prevent this from happening. Rather than arguing for the play on its merits,
Bernays cleverly organized a group that he called the "Medical Review of Reviews
Sociological Fund," inviting prominent doctors and members of the social elite to join. The
organization's avowed mission was to fight venereal disease through education. Its real
purpose was to endorse "Damaged Goods," and apparently the plan worked. The show went
on as scheduled, with no interference from police.

"This was a pioneering move that is common today in the promotion of public causes--a
prestigious sponsoring committee," notes PR industry historian Scott Cutlip. "In retrospect,
given the history of public relations, it might be termed the first effort to use the front or third
party technique." It was a technique that Bernays would return to time and again, calling it
"the most useful method in a multiple society like ours to indicate the support of an idea of the
many varied elements that make up our society. Opinion leaders and group leaders have an
effect in a democracy and stand as symbols to their constituency." Bernays helped jump-start
sales of bacon, a breakfast rarity until the 1920s, by enlisting a prominent doctor to solicit
fellow doctors' opinions on the salutary benefits of a hearty breakfast and by arranging to
have famous figures photographed eating breakfasts of bacon and eggs. To sell bananas on
behalf of the United Fruit Company, he launched the "celiac project," republishing and
disseminating a 20-year-old medical paper which found that eating bananas cured children
with celiac disease, a disorder of the digestive system.

"Mr. Bernays has . . . created more institutes, funds, institutions, and foundations than
Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Filene together," observed the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, a
nonprofit educational organization that flourished in the years following World War I.
"Typical of them was the Temperature Research Foundation. Its stated purpose was 'to
disseminate impartial, scientific information concerning the latest developments in
temperature control as they affect the health, leisure, happiness, and economy of the
American people.' A minor purpose--so minor that rarely did Mr. Bernays remember even to
mention it--was to boost the sales of Kelvinator refrigerators, air-condition units, and electric
stoves."

Examples
For simplicity's sake, the list below includes some organizations (like the Tobacco Institute)
that are not front groups per se but that engage in other deceptive activities.

• Accuracy in Media
• ActivistCash.com
• Adam Smith Institute
• The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
• Africa Fighting Malaria
• African American Republican Leadership Council
• AIDS Responsibility Project
• Air Hygiene Foundation
• Air Quality Standards Coalition
• Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
• Alliance for Better Foods
• Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care
• Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy
• American Beverage Institute
• American Council on Science and Health
• American Enterprise Institute
• American Forest Foundation
• American Forest Resource Alliance
• American Industrial Health Council
• American Policy Center
• American Tort Reform Association
• Americans for Tax Reform
• Americans for Balanced Energy Choices
• A.N.S.W.E.R.
• Association for Competitive Technology
• Beverly Hills Restaurant Association
• Black America's PAC
• Morton Blackwell Leadership Institute
• California Civil Rights Initiative
• Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions
• Campaign for Working Families
• Capital Research Center
• Cato Institute
• Center for Consumer Freedom
• Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
• Center for Environmental Education Research
• Center for Produce Quality
• Centre for Independent Studies
• Christian Coalition
• Citizens for a Free Kuwait
• Citizens for a Sound Economy
• Citizens for Better Medicare
• Citizens for the Environment
• Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain
• Claremont Institute
• Climate Council
• Coalition for Asbestos Resolution
• Coalition for Equal Access to Medicines
• Coalition for Health Insurance Choices
• Coalition for Southern Africa
• Coalition for Vehicle Choice
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth
• Congressional Human Rights Caucus
• Consumer Alert
• Consumer Distorts
• Consumer Federation of America
• Consumers' Research
• Consumers for World Trade
• Contributions Watch
• Council for Affordable Health Insurance
• Council for Agricultural Science and Technology
• Council for Solid Waste Solutions
• Council of American Muslims for Understanding
• Council for Energy Independence
• Employment Policies Institute
• Employment Roundtable
• Endangered Species Reform Coalition
• Energy Stewardship Alliance
• Environmental Issues Council
• EPA Watch
• European Science and Environment Forum
• Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy FORCE
• Foundation for Clean Air Progress
• Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
• FreedomWorks
• Global Climate Coalition
• Global Climate Information Project
• Global Warming Cost website
• Greening Earth Society
• Guest Choice Network
• Heidelberg Appeal
• Health Benefits Coalition
• Healthcare Leadership Council
• Healthy Buildings International, major Philip Morris contractor
• Heartland Institute
• Hepatitis C Coalition
• Heritage Foundation
• Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
• Hudson Institute
• Independent Women's Forum
• Information Council for the Environment
• Institute for Regulatory Policy
• Institute of Economic Affairs
• International Food Information Council
• JunkScience.com
• Keep America Beautiful
• Landmark Legal Foundation
• Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change
• Maine Conservation Rights Institue
• Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
• George C. Marshall Institute
• Mountain States Legal Foundation
• National Anxiety Center
• National Center for Genome Resources
• National Center for Policy Analysis
• National Center for Public Policy Research
• National Consumer Coalition
• National Empowerment Television
• National Endangered Species Act Reform Coalition
• National Endowment for Democracy
• National Environmental Policy Institute
• National Journalism Center
• National Legal Center for the Public Interest
• National Wetlands Coalition
• National Wilderness Institute
• Nestlé Coordination Center for Nutrition
• Nicaraguan Freedom Fund
• No More Scares Campaign
• Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine
• Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
• Political Economy Research Center
• Progress & Freedom Foundation
• Project Learning Tree
• Railwatch
• Reason Foundation
• Regulatory Impact Analysis Project
• Republicans for Clean Air
• Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment
 • Science and Environmental Policy Institute
• Sea Lion Defense Fund
• Senior Coalition
• Shape the Debate
• Silica Coalition
• Smart Growth Madison
• 60 Plus Association
• Social Issues Research Centre
• Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Global Warming
• Statistical Assessment Service
• Susan B. Anthony List
• Teacher Choice
• Temperate Forest Foundation
• Timber Communities Australia
• Torches of Freedom Brigade
• United Seniors Association
• Voters for Campaign Truth
• Washington Forest Protection Association
• Washington Legal Foundation
• Water Environment Federation
• Wise Use Movement
• Workplace Health & Safety Council

See also
• Astroturf
• Industry-funded organizations

External links

• http://www.coopamerica.org/individual/marketplace/IMBSRR05.H
TM
• "Moving A Public Policy Agenda: The Strategic Philanthropy of
Conservative Foundations," National Committee for Responsive
Philanthropy, July 1997.

• fundamental attribution error

Fundamental attribution error

Social psychologists describe the fundmental attribution error as the tendency to attribute
events to a person's character rather than to circumstances surrounding the events.
Propagandists exploit tendencies toward the attribution error with a variety of techniques,
including smears, ritual defamations and ad hominem attacks.

When offered in the passive voice with no direct attribution to person or to circumstance,
inference can sometimes mask a fundamental attribution error.

External resources
• Wikipedia Fundamental attribution error

• greenwashing

Greenwashing
"Greenwashing is what corporations do when they try to make themselves look more
environmentally friendly than they really are." [1]

“Greenwash” is defined in the 10th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as the
“disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally
responsible public image.” Its inclusion in the dictionary indicates the significance and
permanence of a growing trend among corporations to take advantage of the many consumers
who look for products with negative environmental impact. [2]

"Earthday Resources for Living Green has released this report annually for the last 11 years to
call attention to the past year's worst greenwashers, corporations that have made misleading or
false claims abut the environmental benefits of their products and industries. "Don't Be
Fooled" describes companies' greenwashing attempts as well as the truth behind their
misleading claims." Current and past reports are available [online].

The Washington Post has produced a Special Report titled BIG GREEN which as series of
investigative articles exposes the corporate infestation of The Nature Conservancy and
"documents on the organization's transformation from a grassroots group to a corporate
juggernaut."

Frequent PR Watch contributor Bob Burton has prepared a 5 page paper titled "Corporations
Will Save the World, won't they?" which describes how corporations lure their
environmentalist adversaries into the illusion of cooperative engagements such as Community
Advisory Panels which result in a win-win result for the corporations by reducing the energy
of their adversaries, and turning the media attention away from environmental advocacy
against the evil corporation into an image of the corporation attempting to benefit the
environment. [3]
"Several recent incidents show that, when faced with environmental crises attributable to
business interests cozy with the White House, the administration has developed an alternative
response: Suppress, Ignore, Preempt." [4]

Greenwashing is a form of public relations propaganda which gives something the

appearance of being environmentally friendly when it is, in fact, not.

An example of this would be an oil company being forced in a court of law to create a habitat
for endangered species in its oil fields. Greenwashing would occur when the company creates
a magazine ad campaign that is complete with paintings of a beautiful moonlit oil field and
nature coexisting, with the image assisted by text explaining how much that company cares
for Nature and endangered species, as well as how nature can beautifully coexist with oil
wells, factories, or whatever.

Another example is naming a piece of legislation "Clear Skies" when the legislation will not
result in sky clearing.

Case studies
• Building Bridges and Splitting Greens

• guerrilla marketing

Guerrilla marketing
The coining of the term guerrilla marketing is attributed to Jay Conrad Levinson. It is
commonly used as a term to describe ways that creative low-budget but high impact
campaigns can be waged to promote a product. (While Levinson's book was pitched to the
small business sector many of tactics are also commonly used in grass roots advocacy and
political campaigns).

Other Disinfopedia Resources

• viral marketing
• buzz

External links
• Jay Conrad Levinson, "Guerrilla Marketing : Secrets for Making
Big Profits from Your Small Business", Houghton Mifflin; 3rd
edition October 1998. ISBN: 0395906253
 • Guerrilla Marketing - the website of Jay Conrad Levinson who
wrote the original book and describes himself as that "the Father of
Guerrilla Marketing"
• Marketing: Guerrilla Marketing - a site that has links to several
articles on the topic.

• horror stories

• humor

• inane blather

Inane blather
A good example of inane blather has been shown in "Weapons of Mass Deception", Chapter
7:

"Let's go to CNN's Frank Buckley, who's awaiting the President's dramatic arrival,"
said CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "Tell us, Frank: How dramatic will it be?"
"It will be very dramatic, Wolf," Buckley replied.

• inference

Inference
Propaganda can use inference to convey an idea without directly stating the idea.
A common inferencial construction implies an event that might happen, then follows with
reasons the event would be preferrable, but never directly recommends anyone should cause
the hypothetical event to occur.

More propaganda techniques

• inflating statistics

• Ingroup/Outgroup Manipulations

• junk science and false accusations of junk science

Junk science
The Consumers Union (US) wrote that "as far as we have been able to trace, the phrase "junk
science" has been coined by those practicing public relations and lobbying activities on behalf
of some companies in certain industries--particularly the plastics, chemical, biotechnology,
and pesticide industries. While its coiners may have legitimate grounds for debate on some
issues, the phrase has been used far too often to discredit honest public interest organizations
and legitimate scientists who express concerns about consumer safety and environmental
risks." [1]

Usually when the phrase "junk science" is used to discredit public interest and consumer
activists, the phrase "sound science" is employed to describe the research said to back-up
industry's own claims on safety and risk.

"Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration – aided by right-wing allies who have
produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals – are engaged
in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the
Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own.
Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring, and blacklisting scientists and
engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or
challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed,
so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and
medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of
deliberately distorting scientific fact 'for partisan political ends.'"

Source: 26 February 2004: "The Junk Science of George W. Bush" by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,
The Nation.

Relatedly,

• the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government

Reform, maintains the Politics & Science website as an ongoing
record of interference with science by the Bush Administration.
• a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists "issued a statement
calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific
integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the
Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and
distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken
actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory
panels." [2]
• Some worry U.S. may bend facts for policy

External links
• Consumers Union, “Consumers Union Statement about Consumer
Distorts”, December 1999, accessed January 13, 2003.
• Wikipedia: "Junk science"
• J.R. Pegg, "Health Advocacy Group Warns of Conflicted Science",
Environment News Service, July 14, 2003.
• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., "The Junk Science of George W. Bush",
The Nation, February 26, 2004.
• Statement of over 1600 scientists voicing growing concern over the
Bush administration misuse of science in environmental
policymaking (as of 4/22/2004).
• Greg Hanscom, "Sound Science Goes Sour: An HCN collection on
the Bush Administration's use of science," High Country News,
June 23, 2003.

False accusation of junk science

(Redirected from False accusations of junk science)
In recent years charges of bad science and junk science in public policy debates has led to
false accusations of junk science becoming a propaganda technique in its own.

In this case, the propaganda technique may merely be an attempt to tack "bad science" as a
negative buzzword onto whatever is being attacked. It may be effective because counter-
arguments against these claims are long, complex and difficult to understand.

Accusations are typically levied by think tanks and public relations firms under order from
tobacco companies and businesses that have something to gain by denial of global warming.

Unfortunately, some claims of bad or junk science really are legimate, and sometimes these
are mixed with accusations that are completely bogus.

• JunkScience.com - Combines "junk science" accusations with

vitriolic anti-liberal diatribes. Author affiliated with the Cato
Institute and Fox News
• Junking Junk Science - Tech Central Station article claiming global
warming is "junk science" in vague terms

• knuckleball

Knuckleball
The term knuckleball is borrowed from the American sport of Baseball, in which it refers to
a pitch that can be difficult to hit precisely because the ball does not spin. According to a
physics lecture on a University of Texas web site,

"Probably the most entertaining pitch in baseball is the so-called 'knuckleball.' Unlike
the other types of pitch we have encountered, knuckleballs are low speed pitches
(typically, 65mph) in which the ball is purposely thrown with as little spin as possible.
It turns out that knuckleballs are hard to hit because they have unstable trajectories
which shift from side to side in a highly unpredictable manner."[1]

Similarly, a rhetorical "knuckleballer" disarmingly pitches a proposition without trying to

"spin away" any of its negative aspects, while offering an alternative, more positive
interpretation and appealing to one's reluctance to think of oneself as cynical or condemning.

Example
The writer of this conclusion to an online opinion piece is credited as a research analyst for a
London-based market research firm (which, however, does not list Coca-Cola as a client on
its web site):
 "In light of these issues [including allegations of environmental degradation and an
alleged sexual-harassment case involving a senior company executive and a former
Miss Universe with whom the company had had a product-endorsement contract],
Coca-Cola's decision to create an advisory board was an interesting move. From a
cynic's standpoint, it could be argued that the company's decision to create an advisory
council and then populate it with high-profile figures immediately affords it some
protection from criticism, and gives it easy access to the country's decision-makers -- a
useful asset in the face of social or legal action. Furthermore, it provides Coca-Cola
with the opportunity to create a more easily identifiable Indian brand, not unlike
Hindustan Lever, and as such reduce the propensity for its market to regard it as
'foreign'."

But do not judge Coca-Cola too harshly just yet:

"Less cynically, the creation of an advisory council is something of a precedent. This

is the first such move by a multinational operating in India, and may demonstrate a
realization that foreign multinationals need to be more attentive to local concerns and
show greater awareness of social responsibility if they are ultimately to succeed in the
local marketplace."[2]

External links
• http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/329/lectures/node73.html
• http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB24Df04.html
• http://www.wmrc.com/

• lawfare

• limiting the choices

Limiting the choices

"You're either with us [the Bush administration] or you're for the terrorists" is a perfect
example of limiting the choices. This technique is designed to make people think that those
are the only options, when in reality they are not. In this example, the additional options are:

• to be against both the Bush administration and the terrorists

 • to be for both the Bush administration and the terrorists
• to be neither for nor against one or both parties

In fact, rather than just the two choices George W. Bush gave people, there are a total of nine
choices, as shown in the table below:

Bush administration terrorists

† for against
† against for
against against
for for
neutral for
neutral against
neutral neutral
for neutral
against neutral

† Implied by Bush as the only choices

This is also known as the false dilemma, the either/or fallacy and the black-and-white fallacy.

Another common technique, an example of which can be found in U.S. President George W.
Bush's State of the Union 2004 speech, is to pair the proponent's cause with an apparent
opposite as if these two options were not only the only two options, but were also mutually
exclusive, as if you could have only one or the other; when in fact you can have both, with or
without anything in between.

Other Disinfopedia Resources

• propaganda
• propaganda techniques

• mainstreaming

• make contact personally

 • manipulate memes

Memes
Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins first published the concept of memes in his 1976 book
The Selfish Gene. By analyzing the conceptual building blocks of human thought and culture,
memeticists predict the spread of ideas based not only on the content of the idea, but also on
the power of primal memes associated with an idea. Memeticists claim the ability to program
their own minds and the minds of others by chosing the ideas represented both in the mind
and in the environment, described as memes, that affect behavior.[1]

External resources:

• Memetics publications on the web:

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Memetics/

• Journal of Memetics
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/

• manufacture of consent

Manufacture of consent
Journalist Walter Lippman in 1921 concluded the art of democracy requires the manufacture
of consent. Linguist Noam Chomsky calls the term an Orwellian euphemism for thought
control.

Chomsky describes the manufacture of consent: "Democracy permits the voice of the people
to be heard, and it is the task of the intellectual to ensure that this voice endorses what leaders
perceive to be the right course." Propaganda Review, Winter 1987-88; David Barsamian,
KGNU
 • misinformation

Misinformation
Misinformation is, simply put, information that is not true. It is sometimes associated with
propaganda and disinformation, but there are differences. Propaganda sometimes uses true
information, and disinformation is a form of misinformation that is deliberately untrue.
Misinformation differs from disinformation in that it is "intention neutral."

External links
• "Information and Its Counterfeits: Propaganda, Misinformation and
Disinformation," Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University.

• motherhood term

Motherhood term
A motherhood term is one that is accepted as good in any context. When attached to a
specific policy or ideology by propaganda, it tends to reduce the probability of the policy or
ideology being attacked, even if the person promoting it is not himself credible as a promoter
of the concept referred in the motherhood term.

For example, many proponents of so-called "family values", including Ronald Reagan for
instance, had been divorced, and thus arguably had experienced at least one serious failure of
such values. Similarly, the Bush League which claims to be "tough on crime" has been closely
involved in several large-scale criminal scandals such as the Savings and Loan debacle. The
use of terms like "family values" when attached to specific policies on abortion, for instance,
are potentially quite destructive to the real values of actual families, but this usually goes
quite unexamined, especially as statistics are not usually available, and disputes even on such
basic concepts as "family" itself may be at issue.

Given the ease with which motherhood-term based arguments can be turned back on their
users, their use may have been declining in the 1990s after heavy overuse during the 1980s in
North America. However, the War on terrorism brought a whole new range of motherhood
terms such as Homeland Security and the old bromide "freedom" - which somehow justifies
anything that compromises freedom in favour of the state's ability to investigate and detain
anyone.
 • mud slinging

Mud slinging
Mud slinging is an extreme form of Demonising the Opposition, often fallng short of libel by
using inferences rather than outright attacks. Tune into any campaign ad during an election
year to see it in action.

Mud slinging refers to ad-hominem rhetoric, vague allegations, false accusations or a general
focus on negative representations of an opponent in speeches, media quotes or attack ads. It is
a practice more common in politics than in mud wrestling, where audiences usually demand
actual grappling.

Some cognitive psychologists suggest mud-slinging pays. People are more likely to remember
negative information, and negative representations of an opponent can divert attention from a
speaker's weaknesses, say proponents of Behavioral Decision Theory. Appeals to emotion, the
theory suggests, influence behavior as well as do reasonable approaches. The election of the
Austrian-born action movie hero and body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California
gubernatorial recall election offers evidence of the power of mud-slinging, behavioral
decision theorists say.

"Not only did (California Governor-elect Arnold) Schwarzenegger have enormous name
recognition but his campaign’s focus on the alleged failure of the incumbent governor and his
use of simple, eye-catching slogans based on his action heroes helped him sweep aside voter
reservations regarding his political inexperience." Europa, 29 October 2003

• narrowcasting

Narrowcasting
A derivative of the term "broadcasting", narrowcasting is the delivery of messages to a select
audience.

First used in broadcast media, the technique often relied on resonance to attract the attention
of select audience members to a message most other listeners or viewers will ignore.

More recently, narrowcasting has involved the use of new electronic media to deliver
messages that might invoke widespread negative responses if broadcast to a more general
audience through more traditional electronic broadcast media. Propagandists sometimes find
narrowcasting to a select audience to be more cost effective than traditional broadcast tactics.
 • neurolinguistic programming

Neurolinguistic programming
"Neurolinguistic programming, or NLP, is a constantly evolving set of models,
presuppositions, patterns, techniques, and observation-based theories resulting from the study
of the structure of subjective experience, behavior and communication." [1] Generally, NLP is
a collection of suppositions about how the structure of language processing in the human
brain effects behavior, based on a combination of neurological research and somewhat more
subjective behavioral research.

The study started with the work of an information scientist and a linguist at the University of
California at Santa Cruz. By modeling the behavior of subjects they identified as highly
effective people, John Grinder and Richard Bandler were able to make out patterns of
thinking that assisted in the subject's success.

"The two theorized that the brain can learn the healthy patterns and behaviors and that this
would bring about positive physical and emotional effects. What emerged from their work
came to be known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming." [2] Grinder and Bandler's work soon
became the scientific basis for an older populist spiritual belief that "you create your own
reality."

"The basic premise of NLP is that the words we use reflect an inner, subconscious perception
of our problems. If these words and perceptions are inaccurate, they will create an underlying
problem as long as we continue to use and to think them. Our attitudes are, in a sense, a self-
fulfilling prophecy." [ibid]

A classic NLP technique, based on research showing that most people respond more
positively to language using a particular preferred sense as a metaphor, conforms a speakers
metaphor with a listeners preference. For example, one person might process information in
terms of vision, and say, "I see what you mean." Another centers on hearing and says, "I hear
what you're saying." For smell, "I've got the scent," etc.

A person's own language is the clue that shows which sense they relate to most strongly. NLP
suggests that a message tailored to use the language of a person's preferred sense is
unconsciously perceived by the target as more appealing.

Other NLP techniques involve agreement coupled with statements evoking ambivalence then
followed by a proposed alternative. For example, an NLP practitioner might say:
"I know you like to drink (ethyl alchohol) every day. It relaxes you and helps you get away
from problems at work and at home. Some of those problems are pretty much insurmountable,
it seems. Anyone with your problems would probably want to drink everyday.(agreement)."

"I knew a guy that drank like that. He said the drinking was helpful, but eventually, that was
causing him problems too. Eventually he found a counselor who helped him sort through his
problems. He wasn't sure it would help, but he decided to try it anyway and he was glad he
did. (invitation to ambivilance)"

"I can get you that guy's number if you want. Maybe he can give you the details about his
counselor and maybe you could see if that is something you want to try."(suggestion of
change)

Though generally found among collections of psychological material represented as "New

Age" NLP theory or related linguistic approaches are often incorporated in advertising or
propaganda produced by a variety of interest groups.

NLP is not considered credible by most academic psychology institutions.

• Wikipedia article on NLP

Other Related Disinfopedia Resources

• power of persuasion

• numeric deceptions

• official ideology

• omission
Omission
Deceptively omitting relevant and truthfull information that works against a thesis. The
fallacy of quoting out of context uses omission. Information is taken away that undercuts the
interpretation or impression that is conveyed.

• one-time charge

One-time charge
A one-time charge is just what it sounds like – a charge off for an unusual event that that is
not expected to occur again. However, it has become an accounting trick to cover up
expenditures that a person or group wishes to conceal; the expenditures are buried under the
guise of special expenses due to “extraordinary events.”

This technique is used in both industry and government. An example of a government one-
time charge is given by Paul Krugman in an article titled "Bush's Aggressive Accounting" in
The Great Unraveling: losing our way in the new century:

The events of Sept. 11 shocked and horrified the nation; they also presented the Bush
administration a golden opportunity to bury its previous misdeeds. Has more than $4
trillion of projected surplus suddenly evaporated into thin air? Pay no attention to the
tax cut: it’s all because of the war on terrorism.
In short, the administration’s strategy is to prevent criticism of what amounts to a
fiscal debacle by wrapping its budget in the flag.
…emotionally, morally [the war on terrorism] is a big deal; but fiscally it’s very
nearly a rounding error.

External links
• Paul Krugman, “Bush's Aggressive Accounting”, New York Times,
February 5, 2002. (The whole article has been reproduced on various
blogs).
 • orwellize

Orwellize
To orwellize an everyday word or phrase is to use it in an Orwellian way or give it an
Orwellian or meaning in some official context, especially by making an Orwellian or "Big
Brother-ish" acronym of it.

The word is referenced to British author George Orwell (1903-1950).

Examples

• The everyday word visit is orwellized as US-VISIT, for "United States

Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology".

• Patriot is orwellized as USA-PATRIOT, for "Uniting and

Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism".

Disinfopedia Resources

• Bush administration Orwellian logic

• doublespeak
• Patriot Act I

• outing

Outing
As a propaganda technique, outing has two distinct meanings:

1. Originally, it referred to attempts to shame opponents by revealing their associations with

groups, actions or categories that the public disapproved of - homosexuality for instance, or
membership in the Communist Party. McCarthyism was a trend towards this kind of
identification and very often included claims that were simply not true, pure propaganda.

2. As public disapproval of the things that were traditionally useful to discredit someone for
official posts waned, it became more and more common for officials in a position of power
and privelege to reveal the names of lower level agents. In previous eras this would have
opened them to be prosecuted for treason if they revealed the names of agents on active duty
doing security work. This happened at least twice in 2003 in the cases of David Kelly (who
killed himself) and Valerie Plame. In this form of outing, the allegations are probably true, the
person is no longer effective as a trusted agent, some of their assets are lost to the state, and
presumably more "politically reliable" agents take their place. There may be shame involved,
but maybe not. It may be of an intense and personal kind - Kelly killed himself.

In both senses, the term outing implies that a selective exposure has been made. If a
deliberate and fair-minded effort is being made to expose all people in a certain not-
trustworthy category in positions of trust, or to reveal all people who had any contact with
certain pieces of information, an outing is simply part of an inquiry. It's the selective nature of
it that makes it useful to identify and eliminate possible political and ideological opponents
from a power structure, and which makes it extra-judicial and not a part of ordinary oversight
activities.

A smear is often portrayed as an attempt at outing, but generally describes a case where the
allegations are not true, and not made against a large number of persons with some other
affiliation not relevant to the smear itself. A smear is aimed at getting the public to vaguely
mistrust someone, not at getting a particular person eliminated from the power structure by
specific verifiable accusations as outing is.

Before the war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Dr David Kelly, a
trusted member of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction investigation team. Leaked to the
media that -there were no such weapons, and there was no such threat. It was all being spun
by the government.- The security services and executive power in the UK then closed ranks
after he was exposed to the media. They claimed that there was reasonable evidence for the
war, (as of 2 years later, this has not materialised, both President G.W.Bush and Prime
Minister Blair have stated that apparently they don't exist). The courts became complicit when
the Hutton report, damned the BBC for broadcasting the leak, which turned out ot be a better
representation of the facts than the whole government/security services line. The only
important thing here was apparently that, as a government employee he should never have
been giving his opinion to the public. That was treason under the official secrets act. As a
result he lost his job and reputation for being correct, the government and SIS united in the
fabrication of heresay and imagination and left him out in the cold. He killed himself.

• passive voice

Passive voice
Use of the passive voice allows propagandists to avoid attributing or taking responsibility for
actions. "In the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is neither a do-er or a be-er, but is
acted upon by some other agent or by something unnamed (The new policy was approved). In
the active voice, the subject and verb relationship is straightforward: the subject is a be-er or a
do-er and the verb moves the sentence along (The executive committee approved the new
policy)." [1]

In propaganda, the passive voice sometimes masks arguments of authority. When the speaker
does not declare who performed an act, there is often a veiled inference or ambiguity that rests
solely on the authority of the speaker for a flawed logical foundation.

• pedantry

Pedantry
Posing one's self as the wise sage or professor, the teacher and illuminator of those presumed
to be less knowledgeable than one's self, may convince some people of the correctness of
one's ideas, even if they consist of unadulterated, or adulterated, balderdash.

• photographic manipulation

Photographic manipulation
Photographic manipulation as a tool utilized by propagandists is characterized by use of
images to manipulate the minds of voters.

James Donahue, in his article Herding the Sheep: Using Images Of Bush To Manipulate The
Minds Of Voters, asks "Have you noticed the halos and orbs around the head of President
George W. Bush in recent press pictures? ... You probably haven't because things like that are
designed to be seen by the subconscious mind. And genius Karl Rove, the guy whose job is to
make our president look good all of the time, knows just what buttons to push to keep his man
in the White House."

"One of the more sickening tricks, and most obvious," he writes, "are the pictures emanating
from the president's public relations office. Some of them are portrayed on this page for the
readers to inspect. If you look at them closely, you realize that they are not accidental. They
are staged and Mr. Bush is posing for them."
As he mentions, Donahue's article is accompanied by three photographs of Bush. Heading the
article is one where the Great Seal of the United States appears as a golden halo encircling the
President's head while he orates from the podium. The second, in the lower right-hand corner
of the article, shows Bush with head bowed (in prayer?) and glowing in a fuzzy bright golden
halo against a solid dark background.

• Note: Photograph has been identified as taken October 13/14, 2003, by

the Associated Press.[1] One caption editorializes: "This means that
the more than fifty percent of Americans who consider themselves
'born-agains' can rest assured that the U.S.-led War on Terror™ is, in
fact, a mission from God. Or His son, at least." Another states that the
photo is "straight out of Catholic iconography."
• All three photos can also be seen here. The one with the cross is
attributed to November 5, 2003.

However, says Donahue, "The picture of Bush posing before a lighted cross, under a crown
and the word LORD is probably the most pretentious of the lot."

"Why," he asks, "would someone as elevated in office as our president stoop to such trickery?
There is good reason. ... As writers Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague explained it:
'Television and movies have made us a nation, nay, a world that substitutes pictures for fact.
We make stars of actors and heroes of those whose heroism exists only in their publicity
releases. ... Every day we are shown pictures that the White House Republicans uses to
influence our vote. A carefully constructed news item is released to the media knowing full
well the pictures the TV outlets will run with it,' Louise and Sprague said."

Paul Martin Lester says that, "With digital hegemony, visual messages have reasserted their
position as an important communication medium, but at the cost of not recognizing the
combination of words and pictures as vital in communication." Unfortunaely, what is missing
in Donahue's article is the context of the photographs and any text which might have
accompanied them.

And, if web bloggers' reactions are any measure of the "success" of Bush's saintly photo ops,
"disgusting", "disgraceful", "dispictable" "sacrilegious" and words to that effect top the list.

"'Journalist' Who Arranged Iraqi Amputee Photo-Op Is A Bush Donor," Max Blumenthal,
May 26, 2004:
Blumenthal writes that he's "been wondering how Bush found the 7 Iraqi amputees for
his brilliant photo-op."
"According to an AP article posted on the Bush campaign website," he writes,
"legendary octagenarian Houston TV personality Marvin Zindler 'helped arrange for
their surgeries and publicized their story.' Early on, Zindler put Bush in touch with his
own plastic surgeon Joe Agris, who has operated on Zindler 30 times, and Agris
agreed to fit the Iraqis with new hands.
"Though Zindler is regarded as a 'champion of the underdog' for his investigative
reporting on Houston TV news, he donated $1000 to Bush/Cheney 2000 and dropped
a cool $2000 on Bush's 2004 campaign last summer. At the photo-op, Bush honored
Zindler along with the Iraqis."
See background article "New hands, new start" by Hugh Aynesworth, Washington Times,
April 29, 2004.

The cover of the May 3, 2004, issue of U.S. News & World Report caught the attention of
Anthony Hecht at Slapnose, April 27, 2004:
"This may seem insignificant," he writes, "but take a look at the cover of the current
issue of U.S. News and World Report.
"A couple things are notable about this image. Kerry -- a decorated war veteran who
volunteered for incredibly dangerous duty -- is shown wearing a suit. Bush -- an
undecorated Reservist who specifically declined war service, and faced military
discipline for failing to report -- is shown in uniform. Bush is cast in cool stately blue,
looking soldierly into the camera while Kerry is cast in commie red, in a picture of
him arguing against the war in Vietnam.
"It may seem silly, but these kinds of things have a profound effect. Ask any
psychiatrist, or watch some television commercials for a while. Images matter, and
these images side-by-side betray an extremely unfair bias."

Hecht also points out on April 24, 2004, that Bush's "take" on the appropriate use of the
image of military coffins is a bit "selective": [2]

"I think it's also interesting to point out, as Ted Koppel did tonight, that the one time
recently that a similar image -- one of a flag draped stretcher being carried out of
Ground Zero -- has been used in what most people agree is a disrespectful way was in
a campaign ad for George W. Bush."
"The message? Using images of fallen heroes to inform the public and to illustrate
their sacrifice and our respect for their service is disrespectful to their families. Using
those images to further one's political career, that's okay."

Other "Memorable" Bush Photo Ops

• Bush with Great Seal "halo" at fingertips; Bush framed by American

Flag (10/26/03); Bush "illuminated" (9/15/03); Bush ... "do-it-
yourself" caption (11/15/03).
• Photo Album: Bush-Cheney '04 Inc.
• Photo Album: "White House Photo Essays."
• December 2000: Compare two photos with identical "Bush"
backgrounds. "Air-brushed in"? Explanation?
• Photo Album: U.S. Department of State, September 11, 2001. Also see
The Memory Hole archived video of Bush the morning of 9-11.
• 11 September 2001: When Bush was told of the terror attack.
• Photo Album: September11News.com web site. Scroll down to about
the middle of the page. Note September 14, 2001, posed photo: "Bush
with New York City Fireman Bob Beck at Ground Zero of the World
Trade Center."
• 14 January 2002: Bush, with an angry red bruise on his cheek after
"having fainted and fallen from a couch after choking on a pretzel
over the weekend."
• February 2002: Photo Ops, Korea (korea.army.mil).
• 22 February 2002: "...at a joint press conference with South Korean
President Kim Dae Jung. While waiting for the translation of
questions to him, Bush's eyes wandered into space. Even during his
own comments, he showed little interest in what he was saying as he
rarely made eye contact with either Kim or the audience."
• 12 November 2002: Bush with Department of Homeland Security
Director Tom Ridge; banner in background reads "We will not fail".
• 1 May 2003: "Bush approached the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham
Lincoln in a S-3B Viking jet."
• 1 May 2003: "Bush gives the thumbs-up sign as he meets with flight
crews on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln."
• 1 May 2003: Bush in full military flight suit aboard U.S.S. Abraham
Lincoln.
• 1 May 2003: Shot aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with
"Mission Accomplished" banner (Click to enlarge).
• 1 May 2003: Note Bush "Strategy Session" on flight deck of U.S.S.
Abraham Lincoln (last photo on page). White House version with
banner "distant" from Bush.
• 2 May 2003: "Aboard Lincoln, President Bush Proclaims End to Major
Combat Ops in Iraq."
• 2 May 2003: Photo op of Bush speaking at United Defense Industries.
• 31 May 2003: "Bush delivers his speech in the courtyard of the Wawel
Royal Palace in Krakow, Poland." What could be more symbolic than
the "Stars & Stripes" gently flowing over the assembly?
• 5 June 2003: "Bush rolls up his sleeves as he is introduced by General
Tommy R. Franks at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar."
• Summer 2002: "President George W. Bush holding a book upside-
down in a classroom." Even more noticeable is the backdrop for the
photo op: a collage placing the Statue of Liberty over the student's
right shoulder, a red-white-and-blue map of the U.S.A. under an arch
with two golden stars bracketing "America" as a halo for the student's
head, and the "Preamble to the Constitution" as the President's "halo".
• 9 October 2003: "President Bush spoke to about 600 people at the
Center of New Hampshire while supporters and opponents rallied
outside."
• 2 November 2003: Bush with Mount Rushmore.
• 3 November 2003: "Bush delivers remarks on the economy at
CraneWorks' equipment warehouse in Birmingham, Ala." Note the
cathedral-like "church and pulpit" affect.
• Thanksgiving 2003 in Baghdad/Bush With Bird.
• 21 December 2003: 'Politically/ethnically-correct' photo-op during
Thanksgiving "visit" to Baghdad.
• 10 January 2004: Bush "speaking to female small business owners at a
formal event at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington."
Reuters. Note halo of lights surrounding Bush's head.
• 15 January 2004: Bush "announces his proposals for a space
programme, during a speech at NASA headquarters in Washington,"
See Bush administration/return to space.
• 15 January 2004: "Bush delivers remarks at Union Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in New Orleans, La." Note the
 symbolism of Bush's outstretched arms and cross on wall ...
"crucifixion"?
• 16 January 2004: Bush with Coretta Scott King placing wreath at grave
of Martin Luther King, Jr..
• 20 January 2004: "State of the Union 2004."
• 15 February 2004, Daytona 500:

• "Bush looks over the National Guard-sponsored race car under

the guidance of driver Bill Elliott prior to the running of the
Daytona 500." See related article George W. Bush's military
service."[3]
• "Bush shakes hands with NASCAR drivers and pit crews along
Pit Road before the Daytona 500."[4] See accompanying news
story, Bush Courts 'NASCAR Dads' at Daytona 500, Reuters,
and Bush takes to the track to woo 'Nascar dads', Financial
Times.
• "Air Force One rises above the grandstands along the super
stretch at Daytona International Speedway while taking off
during the NASCAR Daytona 500," AP.[5]

• 29 April 2004: Caption: "Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., left, and Sen.
Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., pose on the North Lawn of the White House
after they were both promoted to the rank of colonel by President
Bush during a ceremony earlier in the Oval Office Thursday, April 29,
2004, in Washington. Sen. Graham, who is an Air Force reservist, and
Rep. Buyer, who is an Army reservist, were both exempt from serving
in Iraq because they are congressmen, but plan to do their active duty
on the home front. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)"

• BuzzFlash Commentary: "Four Alarm Barf Bag Alert:

Chickenhawk AWOL Bush Promotes Two Chickenhawk
Republican Congressmen Who Won't Serve in Iraq But Make
Believe They are Serving the Nation By Getting Dressed Up in
National Guard Uniforms. They Let Other Young Men and
Women Die."

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a picture plus words worth?

• "Holy Redeemer": georgewbush.com Bush photo in a classroom for

"Clerical Office Training" (sign on wall), looking over the shoulder of
a young Black girl who is sitting at a computer terminal. Bush's head
lines up perfectly with the second line of lettering on the sign: "Holy
Redeemer Institutional COGIC Complex." January 18, 2004. Wonder
how long it took Rove to find that sign? Lots of subliminal symbolism
in this one.
• "Responsibility" plus "Jobs and Growth" at Bush's fingertips and
"Strengthening America's Economy" over Bush's head (literally).
• "Strengthening Health Care", once again over Bush's head.
• "National Urban League" with Bush overlaying the word "National".
• "No Child Left Behind" ... note position of "Child" in the pic.
Other Disinfopedia Resources
• Bush administration propaganda and disinformation
• Bush regime
• flash media
• propaganda
• propaganda techniques
• religion and empire
• U.S. presidential election, 2004
• U.S. presidential election, 2004: Campaign Ads
• U.S. presidential election, 2004: Campaign Quotes

External Links
• White House .org parody site.
• Bush's Sham Photo Ops.
• Molly Ivins, Watch Out for Those Bush Photo-Ops, Boulder Daily
Camera, December 15, 2001: "When George W. Bush was governor
of Texas, many political observers had a theory that whenever he
started holding photo ops with adorable little children, it was time to
grab your wallet because it meant some unconscionable giveaway to
the corporations was in the wind."
• Bush's Iraq Visit a Pre-Election PR Stunt, AFP, November 28, 2003.

• planting press article

• policy laundering

Policy laundering
Policy laundering is the use by government officials of reciprocal treaties or other
agreements with other countries to justify violating legal restrictions on their powers within
their own jurisdictions. In essence, "The treaty made me do it."
Example
• The American Civil Liberties Union cites a report by the UK-based
advocacy group Privacy International titled Transferring Privacy: The
Transfer of Passenger Records and the Abdication of Privacy
Protection, describing (according to ACLU)"[how]...the Bush
Administration is attempting to enlist the cooperation of Europe...to
build the airline passenger profiling system CAPPS II (Computer
Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), which is built around a
secret process of background checks and risk ratings for every person
who flies. But the American government demands have run up against
European privacy laws, which are far more comprehensive than
anything in force in the United States today....

"The report called the U.S. effort 'another clear case of what is becoming known as
"policy laundering," in which government officials use the requirements of other
jurisdictions as justification to obtain or enhance powers clearly wished for but
otherwise unobtainable....'"

In this example, European countries with stronger privacy protection laws, in complying with
US demands to screen air passengers, would be "laundering" their violation of the policies
enacted in those laws through the requirements of their agreements with the US.

External Links
• http://www.aclu.org
• http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14852&c=130
• http://www.privacyinternational.org
• http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/terrorism/rpt/transferringpri
vacy.pdf

• politics of personal destruction

Politics of personal destruction

"The politics of personal destruction--a phrase popularized by Bill Clinton during his
impeachment--has been in vogue since long before Clinton's impeachment. Although the
tactic of demonizing the opposition has been practiced with varying intensity throughout the
history of politics, this current round of hyper-partisan warfare can be traced back to 1987,
when President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert H. Bork for the Supreme Court."[1]
Other Related Disinfopedia Resources
• propaganda techniques
• smear

External Links
• The politics of personal destruction. A panel including Sidney
Blumenthal, James Carville, Maxine Waters and Ann Lewis,
greenspun.com, January 1999.
• The Politics of Personal Destruction. Discussed by Robert Bork, Eric
Dezenhall and Gertrude Himmelfarb. Independent Women's Forum,
October 14, 1999.
• Clinton laments 'politics of personal destruction' as she hawks book.
'This is my story', CNN.com, June 9, 2003.
• Jeff Coop, The Politics of Personal Destruction, CoopedUp, July 22,
2003: "The administration has taken an ill-advised turn from
defending its actions to attacking its critics."
• Ray Thomas, Politics of Personal Destruction, sierratimes, October 6,
2003.

• press release

• press conference

Press conference
A press conference (also called a news conference) is an interview held for news reporters
by a political figure or famous person.
 • product placement

Product placement
Form of advertisement, without disclosing it to the receiving party.

Case study #1:

Philip Morris paid film producers for featuring the specific products (such as Marlboro) in
films and for failing to disclose it. Children were primary target. [1]

External links
• Stephen Skinner, “Embedded Ads”, Background Briefing, Australian
Broadcasting Corporation Radio National, 22 February 2004.
• Neil Shoebridge, "Branding could burn the product placers", Australian
Financial Review, March 8, 2004.

• professionalism

• prophecies

Prophecies
Popular form of propaganda during war times and similar exteme emotional situations.
Allows convince the masses to the cause. Widely used by Hitler and Allies during the World
War II by fitting specific events which already occurred into supposed previous prophecies.
Used in many conflicts dating back to ancient times.
 • pseudo-journalist

Pseudo-journalist
One who poses as a news reporter or news anchor while pursuing another agenda might be
called a pseudo-journalist. Similar to the derogatory term hack, pseudo-journalism involves
impersonation of journalistic manners, sometimes with comical pedantry.

Pseudo-journalists use news formats to introduce topics of authoritative opinions, pretend to

be researching a news item to gather information for other reasons and act as reporters to
promote causes.

Also used to discredit legitimate journalists, or as a self-effacing admission of part-time or

would-be journalists, newsletter editors or on-line contributors.

Examples: Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Geraldo Rivera , Matt Drudge, Jon Stewart,
Video News Releases

Michael Moore
Michael Moore is a leftist writer and filmmaker. His works are controversial, but his movies
have broken all previous records for commercial success by a documentary film.

Table of contents [hide]

1 Projects
1.1 Current project
2 Criticism
3 Contact information
4 External Links

Projects
Films:

• Roger and Me (criticizes closing the Ford plant in Flint, Michigan)

• Canadian Bacon (fictional comedy)
• The Big One (criticizes layoffs, Nike outsourcing)
• Bowling for Columbine (investigates fear and gun violence)
• Fahrenheit 9/11 (criticizes Bush, war in Iraq)

Television:

• The Awful Truth

• TV Nation
Books:

• Downsize This!
• Adventures in a TV Nation
• Stupid White Men
• Dude, Where's My Country?
• Will They Ever Trust Us Again? (collection of letters from soldiers)

Current project

Sicko, a film about the problems of the health care system.

July 9, 2004: "I go after these HMOs and these pharmaceutical companies. The style of the
film is like 'Run Lola Run'. I don't know if I can run that fast for hours, but I just thought,
What if we were just relentless motherf---ers, because I can't think of anything more evil than
these HMOs. We try to see how many lives we can save in 90 minutes."[1]

July 27, 2004: "his critique of health-maintenance organizations. ... The idea [] stems from a
segment Moore did on his "The Awful Truth" TV show, in which he staged a mock funeral at
an HMO for a patient denied an organ transplant he needed to survive. The HMO relented and
paid for the transplant. ... "Even if this movie hadn't done as well, that movie was going to get
made, because I think the American people are clamoring to see the HMOs punished."
[Moore said]." [2]

Criticism
Moore is also the target of criticism, most recently in a book titled Michael Moore is a Big
Fat Stupid White Man and in an upcoming film titled Michael Moore Hates America.

• David T. Hardy, Jason Clarke, "Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid

White Man", Regan Books, June 29, 2004, ISBN 0060763957

Contact information
http://michaelmoore.com/

External Links
• "Michael Moore," Wikipedia
• Christopher Hitchens, "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore,"
Slate.com, June 21, 2004: A harshly critical review of Moore's film,
Fahrenheit 9/11.
 • pseudo-science

Pseudo-science
Pseudo-science (with or without the hyphen) is propaganda masquerading as science. This
concept is distinct from bad science, which typically reflects either simple misinformation or
sloppy scientific work, but does not itself represent a rejection of scientific principles.
Pseudoscience is not pseudoscience because it's incorrect. (Real science routinely arrives at
conclusions that are later corrected as more information is collected and new experiments are
performed.) Rather, pseudoscience can be recognized by its methods, which appear to be
scientific but in reality fail to meet scientific standards and procedures.

Material that does not purport to be scientific is not pseudoscience. A creationist tract that
claims that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and uses the Bible to argue its case may
be unscientific but not pseudoscience, since it makes no pretense at being based on science. A
similar tract that makes the same claim using "scientific creationism" arguments would be
pseudoscience, since such a work would have to either be unreasonably selective about the
evidence it considered, flagrantly misinterpret the large body of scientific evidence indicating
a much older age for the Earth, or both.

A hasty environmental study might represent poor science, but would not be pseudoscience
unless its conclusions were justified by gross deviations from scientific standards. Advocates
who use name-calling to categorize a poor study as pseudoscience might miss an opportunity
to teach their audience the difference between hasty investigations and thourough scientific
studies.

A source who claims to offer scientific evidence that one can manipulate weather with pure
mental powers is probably promoting pseudoscience. Extraordinary claims of this sort require
extraordinary evidence to be accepted as scientific. Highly speculative science, such as that
suggesting space-based missile defense could be plausible and useful, could be labeled
pseudoscience if the claims are presented as proven facts rather than as hypotheses requiring
further evidence before they can be considered reliable. Speculative conclusions presented in
media reports, though, are often not styled by their original authors as scientific conclusions,
but rather as recomendations for further study or policy-making based on provisional
scientific evidence. The qualifications and reservations expressed in original scientific reports,
however, are sometimes omitted or glossed over in media accounts or PR releases.

• public demonstration
 • push poll

Push poll
A push poll is where, using the guise of opinion polling, disinformation about a candidate or
issue is planted in the minds of those being 'surveyed'. Push-polls are designed to shape,
rather than measure, public opinion.

Examples include:

• Bush’s campaign strategists, including Karl Rove, devised a push poll

against John McCain. South Carolina voters were asked “Would you
be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if
you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”. They had no
interest in the actual percentages in the poll, the goal was to suggest
that he had. This was particularly vicious since McCain was
campaining with his adopted Bangladeshi daughter. The sight of the
little dark skinned girl made the seed planted earlier grow and John
McCain lost South Carolina, effectively ending his run for the
presidency.
• Salon.com reported on a push poll that was designed to remind voters
which candiates were Jewish, or had high ranking Jewish campaign
staff.[1]

External links
• Kathy Frankovic, "The Truth About Push Polls", CBSNews.com,
February 14, 2000.
• Paula Gibbs, "Push Poll Callers Contacting Voters", Wiscasset
Newspaper, September 12, 2002.
• "Public Opinion Strategies Push Poll", Mother Jones, May/June 1996.
• Daniel R. Morrow, "Karl Rove: Prince of Push Polling", The Potomac,
December 17, 2003.

• quoting out of context

Quoting out of context
When quoting another source, it is important to quote enough of the passage or speech to
convey the true meaning. Quoting out of context, conversely, is a technique that uses
isolated statements pulled from their original context in order to distort and usually contradict
the intended meaning.

This technique can be used in several different ways:

• to discredit the author of the quote

• to discredit the idea itself
• to gain credibility for an idea that is not supported by the full context

An example of the latter is evident in George W. Bush's attempt to justify his failure to take
any decisive action to prevent or reduce global warming by using a report from the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS), June 2001, to make claims that contradict its primary assertions.
The report blamed human activities for global warming while noting that natural variables
might be a contributing factor, yet the Bush administration conveniently focused exclusively
on the “natural variability” factor to make the claim that the report was inconclusive as to
whether global warming was caused by humans. This assertion was clearly contradicted by a
more extensive reading of the report:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human

activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.
Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades
are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant
part of these changes are also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced
warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st
century…The committee generally agrees with the assessment of human-caused
climate change presented in the IPCC… report.” Quoted in The Lies of George W.
Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception, David Corn

A slight variation of this technique is selective reasoning—choosing the facts that fit and
discarding the rest.

Other Disinfopedia Resources

• propaganda
• propaganda techniques

• raising standard of evidence

Raising standard of evidence

Raising standard of evidence is a propaganda technique sometimes used in refuting a
convincing and appropriate argument. It consists of defining an unreasonable standard of
evidence that must be met before the argument of one's opponent can be accepted.

This is most commonly seen with respect to conspiracy theory. Usually such a theory
describes events where there is high motivation to coverup real events, and where reliable
unbiased witnesses are hard or impossible to come by, e.g. espionage activities. Because two
or more groups are in competition both to influence and explain events as each other's fault, it
is necessarily the case that evidence cannot be as reliable as it could be in a scientific or
criminal matter. Very often, the only conceivable case that could be made is circumstantial:
those who had opportunity, resources, motive, and did in fact benefit from the outcome. But
rather than fairly require that all conspiracy theory meet a rigid standard of evidence,
propagandists are skilled at lowering it for their own side, and raising it for their opponents',
to the point where effectively they are trusted to arbitrate the truth without limit.

With abstract or specialized subject matter, such as medicine or mathematics, it is usually not
hard for an expert in related subject matter to pose as an expert in the controversial subject,
and censor material they find uncomfortable or unconvincing.

The primary defense against arbitrary raising of standard of evidence is to determine what
standard is being applied to the competing arguments, using representative cases made by
one's opponents. In doing so it can be quite useful to refer to a general scale of standards of
evidence themselves:

• axiomatic proof which is generally thought to be very reliable but

narrow.
• quasi-empirical methods including highly trusted human arbitrators.
• empirical methods as employed in the 'hard' physical sciences, those
focused on prediction, and which employ mathematics for modelling
• forensic standards
• statistical standards
• judicial standards

• red herring

Red herring
A red herring is an irrelevant issue used as a distraction to divert attention from the primary
issue. Red herrings are usually used in attempts to deliberately mislead.

There are various theories on the etymology of the phrase. They all involve laying out a fake
scent trail to distract hounds by using a smoked red herring (the herring becomes red when
smoked and is known for emitting a distinctive odor). In one version, the trail is laid by
hunters to test the bloodhounds or to prolong a fox hunt. According to another version British
fugitives used herring to distract hounds from their trail, and in yet another version poachers
used herring to distract hunting hounds from the game so they could claim it themselves. The
phrase was supposedly picked up in the 1920s to warn American investors that preliminary
prospectuses, dubbed “red herrings,” were not complete and could be misleading. [1] [2]

This type of fallacy is a subset of the fallacy of irrelevance. Related fallacies of this type
include: appeal to consequences, bandwagon fallacy, emotional appeal, guilt by association,
straw man, and two wrongs make a right.

Also known as: smoke screen, wild goose chase

Related Disinfopedia Resources

• distraction

• refutation

• reinforcement

Reinforcement
1. fancy name for new people comig into a conflict

2. very rarely used, but a way of using various techniques to show even after proof of doubt
that one's position is the right one

Reinforcement is a measure of biological reactions to a desirable substance or situation. Most

commonly used in research involving addictive substances, reinforcement is measured in
laboratories by the tendency of research animals to respond with seeking behaviors when
given a substance then deprived of the same substance. Those substances identified by other
research as acting on generalized "pleasure centers" in the brain are usually found to exhibit
reinforcing properties.
Neurophysiologists have identified neural networks (groups of brain cells) associated with
pleasurable responses, which can be manipulated with psychoactive drugs or by social
influences. The networks, some researchers suggest, evolved to help animals identify and
exploit useful situations, whether the situation is as simple as a tasty flower to a bee, or the
sight of a family member for a human.

By associating a concept with ideas known to offer reinforcing properties, propaganda

techniques such as motherhood terms exploit the biological tendency of humans to respond
favorably to ideas that have been experienced as pleasurable. Propagandists learned to use
reinforcement long before science identified the related biological mechanisms.

• rejection

• repetition

Repetition
If you repeat something over and over, no matter how outrageous it may be, people will come
to believe there's some truth in it. A good example of this is the claim that Saddam Hussein
was responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. No evidence has been found
suggesting collaboration between Iraq and the Al Qaeda network, yet Bush administration
officials have repeatedly mentioned the two in tandem. As a result, a recent opinion survey by
the Council on Foreign Relations shows that more than 40 percent of the American people
believe that some or all of the attackers on 9/11 were Iraqi nationals, when in fact none were.

Sometimes old propaganda has a way of haunting its perpetrators. In the late 1980s, for
example, the United States regarded Iraq as an ally in its ongoing conflict with Iran, even as
reports emerged that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own citizens -
Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja. The U.S. at the time argued that Iran was responsible for
the atrocity, and the controversy continues today, even though the United States now
officially insists that Iraq was responsible. According to Stephen C. Pelletiere, the facts
surrounding that claim have been selectively presented and distorted. "I am in a position to
know," he stated in the New York Times, "because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior
political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College
from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through
Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army
investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified
version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair." [1]

Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, which has conducted extensive investigations into the
Halabja affair, insists strongly that Iraq was responsible for the incident, yet the controversy
continues and may never be completely resolved. [2] Instead of leading to definitive answers,
old propaganda continues to be repeated long after it has outlived its usefulness to the
propagandists.

External links
• Stephen C. Pelletiere, "A War Crime or an Act of War?" New York
Times, January 31, 2003.
• Kenneth Roth, "The Iraqis' Use of Poison Gas" (letter), New York
Times, February 5, 2003.
• Jeff Softley, "Sean Hannity has a small....," Raw Story, no date. Viewed
March 20, 2004.

• rephrase an opponent's arguments

Rephrase an opponent's arguments

To distort an audience's understanding of information that might damage a propagandist's
effort, a propagandist often repeats but rephrases arguments presented by opponents.

A propagandist might only slightly rephrase the argument to blunt its impact, might make the
argument seem implausible or might replace credible with sensational claims. When one party
advocates, for example, a law limiting toxic emissions, the propagandist might claim that
party instead wants to ban all industry.

Rather than directly rephrasing the opponent's argument, a propagandist might attempt to
associate the opponent with groups advancing more radical causes. A propagandist might cite
radical elements in a political movement as representative of the overall movement,
rephrasing moderate calls for reform by centrists of the movement as extreme demands made
by organizations at the fringe of the movement.

Rephrasing is certainly not an original tactic of propagandists, nor is it limited to propaganda

efforts. Rephrasing might not be entirely intentional. Either a propagandist or any average
person might rephrase an argument as they understand it, regardless the intent of the person
presenting the argument. Sociologists identify a widely recognized tendency to view one's
own position more favorably than opposing positions as the fundamental attribution error.
Family counselors or other conflict resolution professionals interested in improving
communication skills often teach individuals to correctly state the argument of an opponent
before attempting to rebut the argument. The antithesis of rephrasing might be found in the
tactics of neurolinguistic programming. NLP practitioners encourage acceptance of a target's
point of view as a step toward suggesting alternative points of view.

See also: Propaganda techniques

• replacing credible with sensational claims

Replacing credible with sensational claims

Replacing credible with sensational claims is a common strategy of those seeking to
discourage conspiracy theory or any deep investigation of pro-technology propaganda. It also
works in electoral polictics or public interest campaigns when attempting to discredit some
concern.

One such tactic is to exaggerate valid environmental health concerns into invalid
environmental scares deliberately in order that the valid concern not be investigated or
liability assigned. A doctor's sober assessment of causes of certain limited child health
problems for instance may be drowned out by a large number of provocateur or incompentent
advocate complaints blaming seemingly related, but medically not provable to be related.

More blatantly, after the September 11, 2001 events there were rumours spread that Israeli
citizens had been warned, and had evacuated the WTC, or that Bush administration figures
had bet on a large stock market drop. These easily-disproven rumours distracted from
legitimate criticisms that Al Qaeda learning to pilot airplanes, their targetting of the WTC
earlier, a related plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower and another to fly a plane into a skyscraper
in Milan, Italy, were all well known and publicized realies as of summer 2001. In toto, this
intelligence failure could credibly be explained by either regime incompetence, regime
complicity or regime corruption. A focus on impossible-to-prove complicity served those who
sought to distract from the incompetence or corruption theses.

Weapons of mass destruction is a field particularly ripe for such claims substitution, as most
people (happily) have little direct experience or any expertise in dangerous technology.

• resonance
Resonance
In mass communication, resonance can be used to connect an audience with a message.

Resonance defines the familiarity with which the audience perceives the speaker. A
propagandist uses available icons, images, or ideas that evoke familiarity with an audience to
make the group more receptive to a message. Anecdotes, vocal or literary inflections, and the
context in which information is delivered can all be used to build reasonance with an
audience.

Resonant ideas also allow mass communicators to selectively present a message to portions of
a wider audience that is rendered more receptive by use of resonant appeals specific to that
sub-group. Most advertising and mass marketing strategy uses resonant selection to target
specific audiences, such as various age groups, genders or economic classes.

• ritual defamation

Ritual defamation
Ritual defamation can target anyone from school teachers to senior public office holders for
what propaganda scholar Laird Wilcox describes as repeated, sustained personal attacks
designed to avoid the substance of an issue while focusing attention on claimed character
flaws of someone who defends or is associated with an idea the defamers hope to discredit.

Related Disinfopedia Resources

• smear
• ad hominem

• sanitizing the facts

Sanitizing the facts

Sanitizing the facts is a propaganda technique that entails leaving out negative, unpleasant,
distressing or offensive details in order to make something appear more palatable and
acceptable.

For example, George W. Bush’s restriction on photographing coffins of soldiers from the Iraq
war leaves the deaths of the American soldiers a sanitized abstraction of numerical death tolls
while hiding the grim reality of actual dead bodies.

• satire

Satire
Satire is the ridicule of human vice and folly; it has served as a standard tool of propagandists
throughout recorded political history. It is usually a defense against libel in U.S. courts. In any
context, satire is by its very nature necessarily augmented with some message, depending for
humoural quality on a shared axiom among the satirist and the audience. Propagandists use
satire to reinforce ideas and to use inference to introduce new ideas.

• scapegoating

Scapegoating
Scapegoating is a propaganda technique that has been used throughout history as a means for
people to move blame and responsibility away from themselves by attributing it to others (or
to an object or event). A scapegoat is the person or group made to bear the blame for or
punished for those errors committed by others.

Related words and phrases: whipping boy, witchhunt, killing the messenger

Other Disinfopedia Resources

• propaganda
• propaganda techniques
• distraction (reference to distraction by scapegoating)
External links
• See also Wikipedia reference on scapegoating

• scholarly appearance

Scholarly appearance
Publishers in academic and scientific arenas establish documentary styles to assure
consistency and completeness of information they reproduce. Propagandists sometimes mimic
the publishing style of academia to make manipulative messages appear to be the product of
scholars.

Careful examination of bibliographies will often reveal a propagandist has not reviewed the
entire body of literature related to a matter, but rather has relied on a small, sometimes
isolated body of publications that sometimes might be the work of the same propagandist or
of closely related allies.

Scholarly appearance is a standard trait of much pseudo-science and exploits the power of
professionalism and credentialism to lend credibility to otherwise dubious information.

See also: medical paper ghostwriting

• shame

• shifting burden of proof

Shifting burden of proof

In a political dog-fight one participant may make an unfounded accusation towards their rival
and demand that the rival politican show PROOF that they are innocent. In most countries the
burden of proof is on the person making the accusation but by shifting this burden it implies
guilt on their opponent.

The power of this tactic is often enhanced by reliance on the the accusation being made by a
credible third-party and the inability of the accused to respond effectively by media dedalines.
A slow response - even if credible - is considered less newsworthy and often reported within
the frame of reference set by the original accusation.

However, such a tactic is not without risk for the accuser. Where there is a credible and swift
response within the initial news cycle, the frame of reference used can be reversed with the
accuser portrayed as a fabricator resorting to smear tactics.

Other Disinfopedia resources

• third party technique

• show trial

• slander or libel

• slow walk

• smear
Smear
A smear is among the simplest of propaganda techniques. It can take the form of repeated,
unapologetic, systematic name-calling, or otherwise implying or asserting that opponents
"are" bad, evil, stupid, untrustworthy, guilty of reprehensible acts, or part of some undesirable
category.

A smear might be conducted subtly or vaguely so the target cannot seek legal action against a
slander or libel, which must be specific and believable to be legally actionable. False
implications can be masked by otherwise truthful statements. Truth is usually a defense
against libel in most jurisdictions.

An archetypal implicit smear is the question, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
Whatever the answer, the question accuses the person of prior domestic violence. Smears
might use oxymoronic language, broad generalizations, false characterizations, irrelevant
information and loose associations. Smears appeal to emotion and discourage reasonable
discussion.

Public officials, politicians, media representatives and advocates tend to disagree at times
about when accusations of impropriety are relevant and when they are intended to smear.

Examples of smears include:

• allegations of homosexuality, in institutions which explicitly refuse to

employ gays or lesbians, or in cultures with social or legal sanctions
against homosexuality - (see also outing)
• Republican Party smears against Democrats as the "Party of Treason"
in the 1950s.
• allegations that someone is a convicted pedophile (this is an oxymoron
- a felon is convicted of specific acts, but a pedophile is a term from
psychiatry describing not acts but desires - for which there is no legal
liability - although some jurisdictions do define habitual offenders,
they do not in fact convict them of "being a pedophile")

Smears don't always work. Straightforward claims that one's opponent is morally bad may
sometimes backfire:

• assertions that choice between one politician and another is a choice

between good or evil, as Albert Gore Jr. did against George W. Bush
- claiming the mantle of good for oneself while describing one's
opponent as being evil. In a close election, dogged by a third party
implying both parties are so bad they are about to destroy life's
chances on earth, Gore's claim found little purchase.
• more specific allegations that one's opponent is an evil reptilian kitten
eater from another planet - a stunt unlikely to be repeated, given that
Ernie Eves (who used it against his opponent Dalton McGuinty) lost
that election.
For a moral smear to be effective, the association with evil probably needs to be believable,
though like any rule, there are likely exceptions (see big lie). A morally demeaning word
merely introduced in an innocuous context might tend to cast a cloud of doubt over an
opponent, if the audience is not alert to the device. In 1988, the George H. W. Bush campaign
associated the Democrat opponent with an implicitly dangerous criminal released on parole.

Repulsive imagery conveyed in a smear or ritual defamation might extend or reinforce a more
general moral appeal. If so, approaches like the "evil reptilian kitten eater from another
planet" appeal might be effective if they don't backfire and if other circumstances don't
overshadow the effect.

In the United States, Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush
have exploited the concept of evil to dehumanize an enemy. Speaking to the nation in a
widely broadcast message, Reagan blasted the Soviets as an "evil empire". G.W. Bush
presaged aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq with identification of what he called an "axis of
evil."

The concept of evil is rooted deeply in religious and secular lore throughout the U.S.,
allowing the presidents to allege evil both as a direct appeal to supporters swayed by religious
propagandists, and to offer a psychological justification for secular listeners who might follow
leaders' instructions to dehumanize an enemy that they might not otherwise despise.

Other Disinfopedia Resources

• Bush administration smear campaigns

• strategic ambiguity

The strategically ambiguous George W. Bush

By Bryan Keefer
June 12, 2003

President Bush's recent claim that weapons of mass destruction have been found in
Iraq highlights two disturbing trends in rhetoric from the White House. The first, as
we have pointed out, is the Bush administration's record of factual misstatements and
distortions. The second is the administration's - and especially President Bush's -
history of strategically ambiguous statements that, while technically or arguably true,
imply connections between two things which he cannot directly demonstrate.

Take, for example, Bush's declaration about the discovery of biological weapons on
Iraq. According to a White House transcript of a May 30 interview with Polish
television, the President declared that:
We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You
remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got
laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against
the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more
weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned
manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.

The trailers Bush refers to, however, have not provided direct evidence of weapons
themselves. Instead, analysts have surmised that the most likely use for the trailers is
the production of such weapons (though this conclusion remains controversial) --
hardly enough to back such bold claims as "[w]e found the weapons of mass
destruction." Though White House Press Secretary Ari Flesicher has suggested that
Bush uses "weapons" and "weapons programs" interchangeably, there is clearly a
difference between evidence suggesting weapons were produced and actual weapons
(link requires Salon Premium subscription or viewing of an advertisement).

Just as importantly, however, is the way Bush is building the claim. He takes one
reasonably well-founded assertion about what the trailers were used for, then
rhetorically implies that the discovery of the trailers is equivalent to finding weapons
themselves, stating that we will find "more weapons" (emphasis mine) and repeating
the word "weapons" three times after mentioning the labs. The final sentence, "But
for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned
weapons, they're wrong, we found them," is a classic example of a rhetorical fudge --
the "them" could refer to either the trailers or weapons themselves. By combining
them in this way, Bush implies that weapons have actually been found, but he does so
in such a way that he can claim he was only discussing manufacturing devices.

Bush has offered similar rhetorical linkages between Saddam Hussein and the
terrorist attacks of September 11th. As we have noted, there is no evidence that
Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in those attacks in any way. In an October 7,
2002 speech in Cincinnati, Bush announced that:

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the
United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level
contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to
Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment
in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and
biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-
making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th,
Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Bush's statement brackets assertions implying an operational connection between

Iraq and Al Qaeda -- a connection that is still hotly debated -- with vague assertions
that because "that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy"
and that "after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the
terrorist attacks," Iraq is guilty for those attacks by association.

Bush also attempted to create such an impression in a March 21 letter to the Speaker
of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate stating the reasons for the
military invasion of Iraq (this letter replicated language from a certification
mandated by Congress in the resolution authorizing military action):
I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the
United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against
international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations,
organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist
attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Again, Bush is strategically connecting Iraq to the September 11 attacks with his
rhetoric, claiming that the attack on Iraq is part of a campaign against "international
terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or
persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
occurred on September 11, 2001." Certainly, Bush's statements are at least partially
responsible for the persistent public misperception that Iraq and Saddam were
involved in the September 11th attacks.

While Bush used this strategy of rhetorical association most egregiously in

connecting Iraq to September 11, he has used the same tactic to promote other
policies. In a series of appearances to promote the recently signed tax cut, for
instance, Bush implied that the cuts would actually increase revenue for the
government.

Nearly all economists -- including the President's own Council of Economic Advisors
and his nominee to head the group -- agree that tax cuts almost always reduce
revenue (though some of the reduction may be offset by economic growth triggered
by the cuts). While Bush is careful to never directly state that his tax cut will directly
create increased revenues, he uses strategic language to connect the tax reductions to
future growth in government revenue.

For example, he stated on January 7 that tax cuts "are essential for the long run... to
lay the groundwork for future growth and future prosperity. That growth will bring
the added benefit of higher revenues for the government -- revenues that will keep tax
rates low..." He made a similar assertion is his stump speech on May 2 campaigning
for the tax cut:

And the other way to deal with the deficit is to put policies in place that increase the
revenues coming into the Treasury. And the best way to encourage revenues coming
into the Treasury is to promote policy which encourages economic growth and
vitality. A growing economy is going to produce more revenues for the federal
Treasury. The way to deal with the deficit is not to be timid on the growth package;
the way to deal with the deficit is to have a robust enough growth package so we get
more revenues coming into the federal Treasury...

This, in essence, is the same strategy: using rhetorical linkages in place of factual
arguments. Bush plays on two facts: tax cuts are likely to stimulate some growth in
the economy, and a growing economy will produce more tax revenue at a constant
level of taxation. By repeating the phrase "more revenues coming into the Treasury"
alongside a push for his tax cut, Bush implies a link between tax cuts and increased
government revenues.

Finally, Bush has made similar attempts to link the budget deficit to the war on
terrorism in general and the war in Iraq in particular. Based on data from the
Congressional Budget Office, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
(CBPP) calculated in April that, relative to the surplus of $360 billion for fiscal 2003
that CBO predicted in 2001, $340 billion has evaporated because of the recession and
technical adjustments to the estimate, $205 billion has been lost due to tax
reductions, $90 billion has gone to the war in Iraq, homeland security, and the
broader war on terrorism, and $70 billion has gone to non-war related budget
increases, leaving a deficit of $345 billion. (CBO recently estimated that the fiscal
2003 deficit would climb over $400 billion, due to lower-then-expected revenues and
the $61 billion in new tax cuts for 2003 which go into effect this year; as of
publication, CBPP had not updated its predictions.)

Yet Bush has repeatedly suggested that the war is in large part responsible for the
current budget deficit, while carefully avoiding any mention of tax cuts. For example,
on May 6 he stated:

And, yes, we've got a deficit because we went through a recession. You see, a
recession means you get less money coming into your treasury. When the economy
goes down, there's less tax revenues coming to the Treasury.
Secondly, we've got a deficit because we're at war. And one thing is for certain about
this Commander-in-Chief, we will spend whatever is necessary to win the war. We
owe it to every soldier in the American military to make sure they've got the best pay,
best equipment, best possible training. We owe it to the families of the military to
make sure that they're as well protected as possible. So our expenditures went up
because of the emergency in war, and revenues went down. That's the ingredients for
what they call a deficit.

As with the examples above, what Bush is saying isn't technically untrue. But the
detailed enumeration of the expenditures for the war, combined with his conclusion
"So our expenditures went up because of the emergency in war, and revenues went
down," not only omits the second-largest cause of the deficit - tax cuts - but also
suggests that without the spending on the war, there would be no deficit (which is
untrue). The casual listener would be left with the impression that it is the war in Iraq
that is in large part responsible for the deficit. (Bush made nearly identical claims in
speeches on April 24 and May 5).

In two other cases, Bush has even suggested that the war is responsible for the
recession itself. On May 2, he claimed that "A recession means the economy has
slowed down to the extent where we're losing revenues to the federal Treasury. We
got a recession because we went to war." And on May 12 he made a nearly identical
statement that "We have got a recession because we went to war." Not only is such a
claim false - an official committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research has
dated the beginning of the recession to March 2001 - but it also contradicts a series of
questionable claims by Bush that the recession started in January 2001. While it is
possible that Bush unintentionally misspoke, the implication is the same as the
quotes above: the war is responsible for the economic downturn.

Bush has become a master of making statements that are factually true but
misleading, while escaping criticism for doing so from the press corps. This is partly a
result of the deference generally granted to the president. Bush's reputation for
imprecise speech may also make reporters reluctant to criticize his words so closely.
And because his claims are often phrased in complicated and confusing ways, they
are difficult for the press to directly refute. Nonetheless, the implications of the
President's strategically ambiguous statements must be addressed.

Update 6/21/04 10:26 PM EST: The analysis of Bush's letter to Congress has been
updated to note that it replicates the language of the certification mandated in the
resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, and to quote the relevant portion
of the passage in full.

• straw man

Straw man
The straw man fallacy occurs when a statement misrepresents or invents an opponent’s view
(sometimes even the opponent is invented) in order to easily discredit it. The straw man
fallacy does not consist of stating an opponent's position, but only in stating it inaccurately.
The straw man argument is intended to give the appearance of successfully refuting the
original argument, thus creating the impression that it has refuted a position that someone
actually holds. A straw man is constructed expressly for the purpose of knocking it down. [1]

Wikipedia lists several different ways to set up a straw man:

1. Present one of your opponent's weaker arguments, refute it, and pretend that you
have refuted all of their arguments.
2. Present your opponent's argument in weakened form, refute it, and pretend that you
have refuted the original.
3. Present a misrepresentation of your opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that
you have refuted your opponent's actual position (for an example see this Google
debate on Communism and the Environment).
4. Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute their
arguments, and pretend that you've refuted every argument for that position.
5. Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticised, and pretend that
that person represents a group that the speaker is critical of.[2]

Richard S. Dunham illustrates the use of the straw man fallacy in politics in “Bush Attacks a
Dem Straw Man:”

“Politicians love to have silent, passive punching bags during election years. That's
why the GOP is pounding Mr. Tax-and-Spend. One thing good about a straw man:
You can keep punching away at him all you want, and he'll never hit you back. That's
one reason politicians love to cart straw men around with them on the campaign
trail…Good rhetoric. Trouble is, Mr. Tax-and-Spend Democrat doesn't really exist, so
he never speaks or talks back. None of the top Democrats on Capitol Hill is willing to
 endorse a tax increase during a downturn. But by attacking a straw man, and repeating
the attack often enough, Bush hopes to inextricably link Democrats to tax hikes.”[3]

The straw man technique can actually be used legitimately as a starting point to refine an idea
as illustrated below. In this case there is no deliberate deception; the idea is known to be
inaccurate by all parties:

“In software development, a crude plan or document may serve as the strawman or
starting point in the evolution of a project. The strawman is not expected to be the last
word; it is refined until a final model or document is obtained that resolves all issues
concerning the scope and nature of the project. In this context, a strawman can take
the form of an outline, a set of charts, a presentation, or a paper.”[4]

Other Disinfopedia Resources

• distraction
• red herring

External links
• Wiki reference
• Wikipedia reference
• Richard S. Dunham, “Bush Attacks a Dem Straw Man: Politicians love
to have silent, passive punching bags during election years. That's
why the GOP is pounding Mr. Tax-and-Spend,” Business Week
Online, January 22, 2002.
• strawman in software development

• third person reference

• tie down
 • unwarranted extrapolation

Unwarranted extrapolation
Recognized as a logical fallacy, some propaganda predicts with certainty future events based
on a few select circumstances. [1]

The tendency to make huge predictions about the future on the basis of a few small facts is a common logical fallacy.

As Stuart Chase points out, "it is easy to see the persuasiveness in this type of argument. By pushing one's case to the limit... one
forces the opposition into a weaker position. The whole future is lined up against him. Driven to the defensive, he finds it hard to
disprove something which has not yet happened.

Extrapolation is what scientists call such predictions, with the warning that they must be used with caution. A homely illustration is
the driver who found three gas stations per mile along a stretch of the Montreal highway in Vermont, and concluded that there must
be plenty of gas all the way to the North Pole. You chart two or three points, draw a curve through them, and extend it
indefinitely."(Chase, 1952)

This logical sleight of hand often provides the basis for an effective fear-appeal. Consider the following contemporary examples:

• If Congress passes legislation limiting the availability of automatic weapons, America will slide down a slippery slope
which will ultimately result in the banning of all guns, the destruction of the Constitution, and a totalitarian police state.
• If the United States approves NAFTA, the giant sucking sound that we hear will be the sound of thousands of jobs and
factories disappearing to Mexico.
• The introduction of communication tools such as the Internet will lead to a radical decentralization of government,
greater political participation, and a rebirth of community.

When a communicator attempts to convince you that a particular action will lead to disaster or to utopia, it may be helpful to ask the
following questions:

• Is there enough data to support the speaker's predictions about the future?
• Can I think of other ways that things might turn out?
• If there are many different ways that things could turn out, why is the speaker painting such an extreme picture?

• urgency to buy

• using celebrities

Using celebrities
In a guide to “using celebrities” in drug promotion campaigns Fiona Hall and Lucie Harper -
from the UK PR company Shire Health London - explained in the trade publication,
Pharmaceutical Marketing, that celebrities could ensure media coverage of a marketing
campaign.

“Celebrities can be very powerful tools in increasing publicity around a launch or campaign,
particularly when you do not have a strong news story and need a famous personality to drive
initial interest in your messages,” they wrote.

However, in countries where direct-to-consumer advertising is banned, celebrities can't

endorse a brand name product. Nor, they warn, are they cheap. “Celebrities cost a lot of
money, often between £15,000 to £25,000 for three hours of work, so you need to weigh up
how else you could use this money to influence your target audience,” they wrote.

“Celebrities should be managed carefully as there are risks involved. Are they going to stay
on message, or is there a possibility that they could be involved in a scandal in advance of
your launch?,” they warn. Even making celebrities available for interviews carries risks. “It
may be sensible not to involve them in 'off the cuff' questions from journalists. Try to pre-plan
interviews so your celebrity is not caught off guard,” they wrote.

External links
• Fiona Hall and Lucie Harper, “Using celebrities”, Pharmaceutical
Marketing, July 1, 2003. (Hall is managing director and Harper
associate director at Shire Health London.

• talking points

Talking points
Similar to a white paper talking points are ideas, usually compiled in a short list with
summaries of speaker's agenda for public or private engagements. Public relations
professionals sometimes prepare "talking points" for executives or other corporate clients to
help the client better conform public presentations with advice of the PR counselor.

• Talking points explained at The Daily Show

 • vagueness

Vagueness
Vagueness is a frequent indicator of propaganda in news reporting. "Remember the following
first rule of disinformation analysis: truth is specific, lie is vague," writes Gregory Sinaisky.
"Always look for palpable details in reporting and if the picture is not in focus, there must be
reasons for it."

External links
• Gregory Sinaisky, "Detecting Disinformation, Without Radar," Asia
Times, April 3, 2003.

• video news releases

Video news releases

Video news releases (VNRs) are video clips that are indistinguishable from traditional news
clips and are sometimes screened unedited by television stations without the identification of
the original producers or sponsors, who are commonly corporations, government agencies, or
non governmental organizations.

While expensive compared to the cost of a traditional news releases they allow a sponsor to
present their message without being filtered by journalists. They are commonly used unedited
by small regional television stations that have limited budgets for news production or are
understaffed. While some stations have a policy of not using VNR's, public relations
practitioners commonly cater for this by also providing a series of clips designed to be used as
stock footage.

A tricks of the trade guide to VNR's in PR Week explained "don't try to fool producers by
acting as though your VNR is not being pitched for promotional purposes".

"If your VNR has one or two product mentions, tell the producer immediately, but gear the
bulk of the pitch toward why the piece is relevant now, what makes it newsworthy," the PR
Week guide explained.

By way of example, the guide pointed to a VNR produced by MediaLink to promote Jennifer
Lopez's perfume, Glow. The VNR, concentrated on Lopez "as a Hispanic role model and one
of People magazine's recently rated most beautiful people. The story aired on E!, Good Day
Live, Extra, VH1, and even some Hispanic stations in Canada."
The head of Medialink's VNR production unit, Michelle Williams, told PR Week "the viewer
will take away something visual before they take away something audio. Instead of plugging
a product by talking about it, showing it in use".

Introducing a discussion on the topic, host Bob Garfield offers "At least viewers can rest
assured that stories they see on the local news are journalistically pure. Or can they? The
convergence of public relations ingenuity and broadcast stations' budgetary exigencies has
yielded another dubious hybrid: the Video News Release -- a P.R. bonanza, and the news
business's dirty little secret." In the discussion:

Larry Moscowitz is the founder and president of MediaLink, one of the world's largest
producers and distributors of VNRs: "We determined prima facie and scientifically
and electronically that every television station in America with a newscast has used
and probably uses regularly this material from corporations and organizations that we
provide as VNRs or B-Roll or other terminology we may use."
Former CBS correspondent Deborah Potter is director of the News Lab, the
Washington, D.C. nonprofit dedicated to quality local television: "They allow
newsrooms to do less of their own work without fear of running out of material before
the end of the hour. It's a concern, and it ought to be a concern, frankly, for viewers if
much of the material that they're starting to get on the news isn't news."
Candace White, marketing professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and
co-author of a 2001 study about VNRs, says the same self-interest that encourages
news directors to use VNRs dictates that the material is used responsibly: "I trust news
producers to be able to weed out true news value; I give them credit for being able to
recognize blatant sales pitches. Our study found that the corporate videos were used
the least, and the ones about health and safety were used the most."
John Stauber "believes the use of VNRs amounts to systematic deception of viewers,
both by the hidden interested parties behind them, and by news organizations with
impure motives themselves": "All public relations is not sinister or evil or bad. But I
think the important thing to understand is that indeed all public relations is
propaganda."

Selling changes to Medicare

In early 2004, Home Front Communications (HFC) was identified as the company that
produced two video news releases for the federal Department of Health and Human Services
(DHHS) promoting the benefits of the recently passed but very controversial Medicare law.
The VNR's featured scripts produced by the administration with two people posing as
'journalists' doing what purported to be interviews.[1]

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Kevin W. Keane, told the
New York Times "the use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government
and the private sector, ... Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some
research on modern public information tools." [2]

The revelation of the U.S. government using a VNR prompted six Democratic Senators, led
by Senator Edward Kennedy, to write to the heads ABC, NBC, CBS, WB, CNN, UPN, Fox
and the National Association of Broadcasters calling on them not to broadcast the tape. [3]
The DHHS incident also re-ignited debate amongst journalism and media organisations about
the production and use of video news releases. The Association of Health Care Journalists
decried the use of VNRs. In a media statement AHCJ President, Andrew Holtz, described the
identification of a government contractor as a reporters as "a triple assault on public trust."

"This practice lowers the standards of public service to that of common hucksterism, displays
a lack of respect and understanding of the role of journalists in a free society, and undermines
the credibility of both journalists and public officials," he stated. [4]

The President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Peter Bhatia, wrote to Tommy
G. Thompson, who is responsible for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
protesting against the "deceptive methods" used by DHHS in the VNRs. "It is fair, of course,
for the government to communicate with citizens via press releases on video as well as in
print. It is not ethical or appropriate, however, to employ people to pose as journalists, either
on or off camera," Bhatia wrote. ANSE argued that the lack of identification of the
government as the source "is outside the bounds of ethical behavior for HHS or any other
government agency" and urged Thompson to "discontinue use of this misleading practice."
[5]

The Radio-Television News Directors Association, was more pragmatic and re-stated its
policy developed a decade earlier. "RTNDA does not endorse the use of so-called video news
releases, but neither do we reject their use, as long as that use conforms to the association's
Code of Ethics," their policy states.

The code of ethics states that "sound journalistic practice calls for clear identification of all
material received from outside sources, including material distributed in the form of video or
audio news releases." [6]

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) found that the VNR produced by Home Front
Communications for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) - a part of the
Department of Health and Human Services - on changes to Medicare violated the ban on
government funds for on publicity and propaganda.

In its report the GAO wrote "CMS explained to us that HHS hired Ketchum, Inc., to
disseminate information regarding the changes to Medicare under MMA. Specifically, HHS
contracted with Ketchum to assist HHS and its agencies with a 'full range of social marketing
activities to plan, develop, produce, and deliver consumer-based communication programs,
strategies, and materials.'" [7]

In its report the GAO explained that "HFC wrote the VNR scripts, which were reviewed,
edited, and approved by CMS and HHS. ... HFC completed all production work, including
filming, audio work and editing. The final VNR packages were reviewed and approved by
CMS and HHS."

While CMS defended its funding of the VNR's to the GAO on the grounds that it is a
“standard practice in the news sector” and a “well-established and well-understood use of a
common news and public affairs practice”, it was an argument they rejected. "While we
recognize that the use of VNR materials, with already prepared story packages, is a common
practice in the public relations industry and utilized not only by government entities but also
the private and non-profit sector as well, our analysis of the proper use of appropriated funds
is not based upon the norms in the public relations and media industry," the GAO's General
Counsel, Anthony H. Gamboa, wrote in the agency's decision.

"In a modest but meaningful way, the publicity or propaganda restriction helps to mark the
boundary between an agency making information available to the public and agencies
creating news reports unbeknownst to the receiving audience," he wrote.

"We conclude that of the three parts of the VNRs, one part--the story packages with suggested
scripts--violates the prohibition. In neither the story packages nor the lead-in anchor scripts
did HHS or CMS identify itself to the television viewing audience as the source of the news
reports. Further, in each news report, the content was attributed to an individual purporting to
be a reporter but actually hired by an HHS subcontractor," the GAO found.

A spokesman for the HHS, Bill Pierce rejected the GAO findings and defended the practice
on the grounds that how the material was used was for the news producers and editors to
decide. “Each of those segments were separated into video and audio tracks. We left it there
for producers to decide…” Pierce said. “They could have stripped out sound and put in
voiceover, they could have put a voiceover in providing attribution. That’s why we produced
it the way we did,” he told The Hill. [ [8]

Material from the VNRs were used on forty television stations.

External links
• Sara Calabro, "PR technique: Winning over television's gatekeepers",
PR Week, January 19, 2004 .
• Robert Pear, "U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny", New
York Times, March 15, 2004.
• "Medicare VNRs trashed as propaganda", O'Dwyers PR Daily, March
16, 2004.
• Association of Health Care Journalists, "Journalists Cry Foul:
Association of Health Care Journalists faults government stealth ads",
Media Release, March 17, 2004.
• American Society of Newspaper Editors, "ASNE protests HHS video
press release", Media Release, March 18, 2004.
• Radio-Television News Directors Association, "RTNDA Urges
Caution and Disclosure When Using Video News Releases", Media
Release, March 18, 2004.
• Government Accounting Office, “Matter of Department of Health and
Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services – Video
News Releases”, May 19, 2004.
• Michael S. Gerber, "GAO calls Medicare video news releases illegal
propaganda", The Hill, May 20, 2004.
• Mark Sherman, "Administration ads violated law", The State.com, May
20, 2004 . (This is an Associated Press story)."The Bush
administration’s promotion of the new Medicare law through videos
made to look like news reports violated a prohibition against using
public money for propaganda, Congress’ General Accounting Office
said Wednesday."
Disinfopedia Resources
• infomercial

• violence

• viral marketing (word of mouth)

Viral marketing
Viral marketing is a technique that uses word of mouth or email to reach and affect an
audience. Some forms of viral marketing have existed for centuries. They are mentioned in
annals of Greek Athenian histories and are a common strategy in marketing and media
relations techniques.

The goal of a viral marketer is to create "buzz" about a product or idea, so that the idea
spreads widely. If effective, viral marketing may require very little effort on the part of the
propagandist, as the recipients of the message become the primary agents who spread it to
other people. On the other hand, the weakest thing about this form of marketing is that it is
hard to control. Like the "telephone game" that children play, the message may change as it
passes from ear to ear.

Examples
• Rumours
• Chain letters with warnings
• "Leaked" information
• Gossip
• Urban myths
• Secondhand versions of official reports

Case study #1:

Mobility and urbanization of American society at the beginning of 20th century unwittingly
helped spread the syphilis, which was a major public health disaster by the twenties. Penicilin
was still two decades away. Having the disease almost certain meant a painful death. It was
feared and was not tolerated. After the World War I the tobacco companies expanded business
into advertising to women, with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company being at the forefront with
its Camel brand. Very fierce competition ensued. Competitors apparently used the following
technique of word of mouth and fear to counter advertise:

Two "strangers" would enter an establishment such as pharmacy through separate entrances,
and independently from each other. A discussion will "incidentally" commence about
Reynolds' cigarettes, and one person would express fear that there is a danger of catching
syphilis from smoking Camels, because there is a confirmed epidemic among the factory
employees. Discussion would be picked up by bystanders, and fear relayed to others. Radio
was in its infancy at the time, and many people were illiterate, with no access to newspapers.
Such technique must have been actually used, since at one point Reynolds advertized a
$10,000 prize for exposing the perpetrators.

External links
• http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles.htm
• "Disease Mongering," PR Watch, 1st Quarter 2003, includes notes on
"buzz".
• "The Irresistible Outbreak of Trust", Wedgewise Viral Marketing
eBrief, contains a summary of the first 100 search engine results for
"Viral Marketing" (over 120 articles summarized), available for free
download.

A more sinister alternate meaning for the term viral marketing arose when it was revealed
that various drugco vending antiviral therapies for HIV had worked to suppress research into
the malaria therapy for AIDS. By doing so, some argue, they permitted the spread of the HIV
virus to do the marketing of their drugs for them, as there was no effective or cheap
alternative therapy.

• white papers

White paper
A document prepared by an interest group detailing arguments related to a particular issue.
White papers guide allies in their public and private efforts to argue their interests, and
sometimes serve as persuasive documents for presentation to media organizations or to other
targets of a persuasive effort.
 • whitewashing

Logical Fallacies
In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. Very
briefly, an argument consists of one or more premises and one conclusion. ... A fallacy is,
very generally, an error in reasoning. [1]

References on Logical Fallacies

1. Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies

2. Dr. Michael C. Labossiere's Fallacies
3. The Atheism Web's Logic & Fallacies
4. Wikipedia's Logical fallacy

Persuasion technology arms races

The use of audiovisual technologies in mass persuasion is supported by scientific research,
involving use of proprietary databases, audience response measurement, sociological research
and a growing understanding of the biological basis for human behavior. Persuasion
technology of some form is employed by most groups attempting to change minds on
commercial or political matters. Tools like Disinfopedia, Wikipedia, consumerium,
act.Greenpeace.org, crit.org and nooron.org are all attempts to equalize information and
technology access.

Recommended Books
• Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, Anthony R.
Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson
• Coercion: why We believe what They say, Douglas Rushkoff
• How To Marry The Rich, Gini Polo Sayres
• Influence: Science and Practice, Robert B. Cialdini

External links
• Notes from Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion
• Institute for Propaganda Analysis offers analysis, with current and historical examples,
of rhetorical tactics often used by propagandists, based on the framework developed in
the 1930s by the IPA.
• Army Field Manual 33-1: Psychological Operations (partial contents)
• Psyop and Military Links
• Alantic online, An Optimist After All These Years, An interview with Douglas Rushkoff
• Public Broadcasting Corporation, Coercion: why We believe what They say, Excerpted
from the "Advertising" chapter of Douglas Rushkoff.
• Carol Giambalvo's Cult Information and Recovery : Taken from Influence. Science
and Practice, Robert B. Cialdini
• FreeRepublic's Propaganda techniques
• Thinkquest's Wartime Propaganda
• Answer the &$%#* Question! Columbia Journalism Review
• Propaganda Communist Chinese Paintings (site in french)