<story><title>A rare look into North Korea&apos;s famed Propaganda School</title><url>http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/101east/2011/02/2011217113256267999.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>espeed</author><text>Be careful not to assume from this video that propaganda primarily only happens in far-off dictatorships like North Korea. Propaganda is more useful in a democratic society because as Chomsky says, &quot;If you don&apos;t behave in a dictatorship, they&apos;ll just bludgeon you over the head.&quot; To control the population in democratic societies, governments and lobbyists use propaganda to control the masses through an &quot;artificially created public sentiment&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F07E5D8143FE633A25755C0A9609C946296D6CF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F07E5D8143FE...&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Modern propaganda originated during World War I under Woodrow Wilson. Americans were isolationists and didn&apos;t want any part of the war; however, the US government wanted to enter the war so it created the Creel Commission (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information&lt;/a&gt;) to influence public opinion towards entering the war.&lt;p&gt;The Creel Commission was so effective that it was able to turn Americans from isolationists into German-hating warmongers in only 6 months. The Creel Commission operated for 2 years, and it is where the modern PR industry emerged from.&lt;p&gt;But this was almost 100 years ago, and the government, lobbyists, and PR agencies have been perfecting it ever since. We are the propaganda experts, not North Korea.&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago, I formed an open-source project called &quot;The Propaganda Project&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propagandaproject.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.propagandaproject.org/&lt;/a&gt;) to build a Web service that will enable people to identify and catalog instances of propaganda techniques (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques&lt;/a&gt;) used in mass media to effectively pull back the curtain so that it loses its persuasive effect.&lt;p&gt;For example, let&apos;s take the three 60-minute cable news programs competing at 5 PM -- Glenn Beck (Fox News), Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (CNN), and Hardball with Chris Matthews Hardball (MSNBC).&lt;p&gt;The Web service will make it easy for people to identify and catalog instances of propaganda techniques used during each episode. Someone might see and tag in online video that Glenn Beck used a &quot;glittering generality&quot; at 1 min and 12 seconds into the show and an &quot;appeal to fear&quot; at 1 min 33 seconds. Someone else might see that Chris Matthews used a &quot;red herring&quot; at 1 min 20 seconds and Wolf Blitzer used a &quot;quote out of context&quot; at 1 min 40 seconds.&lt;p&gt;My premise is that there is a finite number of shows and an abundance of politically-passionate people that love pointing out the other-side&apos;s propaganda.  Over the course of an hour-long program, people might be able to identify 30 or more instances of propaganda techniques used in each program.&lt;p&gt;If the service becomes popular, and people use it to check to see if their favorite shows are using propaganda or if the other-side is, the networks won&apos;t want to be known as the networks with the most propagandist shows so they will force the shows&apos; producers to reduce the ratio of propaganda per episode.&lt;p&gt;This is a brand new project that&apos;s just getting off the ground so please give me your feedback, and let me know if you want to help.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DanielBMarkham</author><text>Wow. Where to start.&lt;p&gt;The first thing that caught me about your comment was this: &lt;i&gt;as Chomsky says, &quot;If you don&apos;t behave in a dictatorship, they&apos;ll just bludgeon you over the head.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the appeal to authority (which always is a red alarm for me) the problem is that dictatorships are completely different entities than are commonly thought. Most people think that in a dictatorship there&apos;s one guy in charge and he directly controls the lives and actions of all the people. But that&apos;s not true: simple span-of-control theory says that one person, at most, can observe and coordinate the work of 5 to 10 other people. The more control, the fewer number of people. So there are dozens of levels between Kim and his people, each level interpreting things their own way and each level impacting how things are run to a great degree.&lt;p&gt;Nope, dictatorships are actually oligarchies, with a symbiotic relationship between the dictator and the &quot;middle management&quot; so to speak. Even if the dictator took all the middle level management out and had them shot, there would just be a new structure put in place with all the same old problems (and symbiotic relationships)&lt;p&gt;My perception of your comment kind of went downhill from there. Some highlights were comparing &quot;news shows&quot; across several different channels, 1 of which was a news show, 1 was a quasi news show, and 1 was an entertainment show. I seriously doubt such comparisons are going to lead to much value for the reader.&lt;p&gt;Then we had the whole problem of definitions. As I understand it, propaganda is the dissemination of information in order to effect change in public opinion. It doesn&apos;t have to be false, involve logical fallacies, or any of that. Some of the best propaganda, as the Pentagon says itself, is simply telling people the truth about stuff they haven&apos;t heard before.&lt;p&gt;Then there was the over-reaching narrative of &quot;everything is propaganda&quot; -- joining up marketing, entertainment, sales, etc. It&apos;s a sign of a poor definition when it fails to distinguish things.  And of course we had to trot out a good dollop of American-bashing with the Creel commission and such. Sometimes I think America-bashing has become the salt and pepper of faux intellectual discourse. Discussion getting a bit tired? Throw in a few jabs at the Yanks. &quot;Easily manipulated into warlike frenzy&quot; and &quot;more controlled by propaganda than North Koreans&quot; (I paraphrase) are serious assertions. Assertions that you began with, then failed to offer any proof, aside from a Chomsky quote.&lt;p&gt;So apologies if I am being a bit harsh. I just didn&apos;t get much value from your comment at all.</text></comment>
<story><title>A rare look into North Korea&apos;s famed Propaganda School</title><url>http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/101east/2011/02/2011217113256267999.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>espeed</author><text>Be careful not to assume from this video that propaganda primarily only happens in far-off dictatorships like North Korea. Propaganda is more useful in a democratic society because as Chomsky says, &quot;If you don&apos;t behave in a dictatorship, they&apos;ll just bludgeon you over the head.&quot; To control the population in democratic societies, governments and lobbyists use propaganda to control the masses through an &quot;artificially created public sentiment&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F07E5D8143FE633A25755C0A9609C946296D6CF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F07E5D8143FE...&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Modern propaganda originated during World War I under Woodrow Wilson. Americans were isolationists and didn&apos;t want any part of the war; however, the US government wanted to enter the war so it created the Creel Commission (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information&lt;/a&gt;) to influence public opinion towards entering the war.&lt;p&gt;The Creel Commission was so effective that it was able to turn Americans from isolationists into German-hating warmongers in only 6 months. The Creel Commission operated for 2 years, and it is where the modern PR industry emerged from.&lt;p&gt;But this was almost 100 years ago, and the government, lobbyists, and PR agencies have been perfecting it ever since. We are the propaganda experts, not North Korea.&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago, I formed an open-source project called &quot;The Propaganda Project&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propagandaproject.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.propagandaproject.org/&lt;/a&gt;) to build a Web service that will enable people to identify and catalog instances of propaganda techniques (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques&lt;/a&gt;) used in mass media to effectively pull back the curtain so that it loses its persuasive effect.&lt;p&gt;For example, let&apos;s take the three 60-minute cable news programs competing at 5 PM -- Glenn Beck (Fox News), Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (CNN), and Hardball with Chris Matthews Hardball (MSNBC).&lt;p&gt;The Web service will make it easy for people to identify and catalog instances of propaganda techniques used during each episode. Someone might see and tag in online video that Glenn Beck used a &quot;glittering generality&quot; at 1 min and 12 seconds into the show and an &quot;appeal to fear&quot; at 1 min 33 seconds. Someone else might see that Chris Matthews used a &quot;red herring&quot; at 1 min 20 seconds and Wolf Blitzer used a &quot;quote out of context&quot; at 1 min 40 seconds.&lt;p&gt;My premise is that there is a finite number of shows and an abundance of politically-passionate people that love pointing out the other-side&apos;s propaganda.  Over the course of an hour-long program, people might be able to identify 30 or more instances of propaganda techniques used in each program.&lt;p&gt;If the service becomes popular, and people use it to check to see if their favorite shows are using propaganda or if the other-side is, the networks won&apos;t want to be known as the networks with the most propagandist shows so they will force the shows&apos; producers to reduce the ratio of propaganda per episode.&lt;p&gt;This is a brand new project that&apos;s just getting off the ground so please give me your feedback, and let me know if you want to help.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kia</author><text>There is one big difference. In North Korea you have only one point of view presented to the people - the point of view of the party. In democratic society you can have and freely express an opposing point of view.</text></comment>