PROPAGANDA

Dennis Reeves Cooper, Ph.D

Last week, I wrote about the alleged power of the press and told you that it may not be as powerful as you may have thought. A well-established academic theory known as “Agenda Setting” holds that mass communication is not very effective in persuading people concerning what to THINK; but it can be quite effective in persuading people concerning what to THINK ABOUT. In the years before I founded Key West The Newspaper (The Blue Paper) here in 1994, I earned an advanced degree in mass communication and spent a number of years in advertising and public relations in New York City and Philadelphia, as well as down here in Florida. I also taught these topics, as well as journalism and marketing, at the college level. So I was exposed to the “academics” of mass communication.

Many critics dismiss advertising and public relations simply as “spin”– efforts to manipulate a hapless population. In essence, PROPAGANDA. But if we can accept the Theory of Agenda Setting, we have to accept the fact that, in most cases, even the best efforts of advertising and public relations professionals can persuade only a percentage of their audiences to even THINK ABOUT the ideas they are attempting to communicate. But that is no small deal– because, if the message being communicated is truthful and attention-grabbing, a percentage of the audience will not only think about it, they will accept and act on it.

That is not to say that some messages that are “spun” and may be less than truthful cannot be successful. They can be– but usually not for long. For example, over the past couple of years, you may recall seeing ads for a diet product that users sprinkled on their food. The ads promised that users could lose up to 30 pounds in six months without dieting or exercise. Does that seem too good to be true? It is. And recently, the Federal Trade Commission has cited the company for false advertising. Another more dramatic example: After the 2008 election, who would have believed that, five years later, the once god-like Barack Obama would have the reputation as an in-your-face liar? Politics aside, the spin and false advertising simply caught up with him.

My very first opportunity to work in “mass communications” came when I was assigned to attend the U.S. Army Information School. At that time, the school was located at Ft. Slocum, on an island off the coast of New Rochelle. I was pretty much untraveled at that time and this assignment gave me my first opportunity to explore New York City. In the school’s main classroom– a very large room– a huge banner hung all across the front wall. It read, “Full Disclosure, Minimum Delay!” That banner was the first thing we saw on our first day of class and we saw it every day we were in class after that. After graduation and assignment to a Public Information Office on an Army post, much of our work would be to write daily press releases and distribute them to the local media. But occasionally, if there was an “event”– like a serious training accident– our job would be to get the facts and tell the media what we knew as soon as we knew it. No spin. No coverup. That was the policy of the Army because it was in the best interests of the Army. For example, if one or more young soldiers were injured or killed during a military exercise, the Army’s policy was full disclosure, minimum delay. The idea behind such a policy was that, while immediate full disclosure might result in one or two negative news stories, attempting to coverup the truth would almost certainly result in multiple news stories over a period of time, as the truth leaked out drip by drip. And the coverup would become the story.

Here in Key West, it has always been amazing to me that most politicians and government officials who find themselves in trouble for one reason or another can’t grasp this concept. The coverup always has more serious consequences than the original event. During my 18 years running The Blue Paper, I repeatedly “advised” officials in my commentaries that attempting to coverup incompetence and corruption was not going to go well for them. And it never did.

About PROPAGANDA. Today, the word generally has negative connotations– probably in part to the extreme use of propaganda by the Nazis before and during World War II. The Nazi government actually set up a Ministry of Propaganda, headed by the infamous Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels didn’t mess around when it came to the mass persuasion of the people to support the war. And it wasn’t all that difficult, since he controlled the press and even the arts (which included the burning of books).

But the word wasn’t always “bad.” Its origin dates back centuries to the efforts of the Catholic Church to “propagate” the faith. In fact, during the 1600s, the Pope actually set up a College of Propaganda to train priests who were to be sent to foreign missions. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if the priests may have been taught to spin the message.

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Dennis Reeves Cooper holds a Ph.D in mass communication and was an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee, Florida Atlantic University and the American College in London.