What price Progaganda?

At first there were the usual denials...

But then the US admitted that, yes, it was writing news articles for Iraqi newspapers. Needless to say the spin in those articles had been predictably positive - even if it did not accord with fact. Why let the truth get in the way? Perhaps not surprisingly, a former aide to VP Cheney defended the practice as "entirely appropriate" in presenting images.

Anyone with half a brain and reflecting on the tactic would readily realise that propaganda is one thing but re-writing the facts or giving them a slant totally out of whack with reality is just not gonna fly! - as this Newsweek piece so clearly spells out.

Comments

Loulou said…

Are you just making up what this article says? Please re-read it. Nothing in it says or implies that the foreign articles "did not accord with fact" or that the writers were "re-writing the facts or giving them a slant totally out of whack with reality." Please show a single line that says this. You are the one creating propaganda. All it refers to is that we are paying for positive news to appear in the Arab press. The ethics of this you are free to debate. People focus on the negative and that is what always is the loudest voice, in the Arab world and here as well. No one is going to print the positive because hearing about a new school or local elections isn't as interesting as a car bomb killing dozens. The news is very powerful, especially in a culture that has had state-run media for several decades. The best route to peace at home and abroad is to report some positive news once a while, even if we have to pay for it.

December 07, 2005 1:36 am

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