mass-communication-theory

gray propaganda
Transmission of
information or
ideas that might
or might not be
false. No effort is
made to determine
their validity
Chapter 4 The Rise of Media Theory in the Age of Propaganda 77
was, as we have seen, usually defined as involving intentional suppression of contradictory
information and ideas, combined with deliberate promotion of highly
consistent information or ideas that support the objectives of the propagandist.
Sometimes white propaganda was used to draw attention away from problematic
events or to provide interpretations of events that were useful for the propagandist.
Becker asserts that to be white propaganda, it must be openly identified as coming
from an “outside” source—one that doesn’t have a close relationship to the target
of the propaganda.
Gray propaganda involved transmission of information or ideas that might or
might not be false. The propagandist simply made no effort to determine their validity
and actually avoided doing so—especially if dissemination of the content
would serve his or her interest. Becker argues that the truth or falsity of propaganda
is often hard to establish, so it isn’t practical to use veracity as a criterion
for differentiating types of propaganda. He asserts that during World War II,
the Office of War Information was restricted to transmitting white propaganda
(intended for American and friendly overseas audiences), whereas the Office of
Strategic Services could transmit only black propaganda (aimed at unfriendly foreign
audiences). The work of these two agencies was loosely coordinated by
Psychological Warfare, an armed services organization. Today we find the attribution
of labels like “black” and “white” to the concepts of bad and good propaganda
offensive. But remember one of this book’s constant themes: These ideas are
products of their times.
Propagandists then and now live in an either/or, good/evil world. American
propagandists in the 1930s had two clear alternatives. On one side were truth, justice,
and freedom—in short, the American way—and on the other side were falsehood,
evil, and slavery—totalitarianism. Of course, Communist and Nazi
propagandists had their own versions of truth, justice, and freedom. For them the
American vision of Utopia was at best naive and at worst likely to lead to racial
pollution and cultural degradation. The Nazis used propaganda to cultivate extreme
fear and hatred of minority groups. In Mein Kampf (1933), Hitler traced
the problems of post–World War I Germany to the Jewish people and other ethnic
or racial minorities. Unlike the American elites, he saw no reason to bother converting
or deporting these groups—they were Evil Incarnate and therefore should
be exterminated. Nazi propaganda films, of which director Hippler’s hate-filled
The Eternal Jew is a noted example, used powerful negative imagery to equate
Jews with rats and to associate mental illness with grotesque physical deformity,
whereas positive images were associated with blond, blue-eyed people.
Thus, for the totalitarian propagandist, mass media were a very practical means
of mass manipulation—an effective mechanism for controlling large populations. If
people came to share the views of the propagandist, they were said to be converted:
they abandoned old views and took on those promoted by propaganda. Once consensus
was created, elites could then take the actions that it permitted or dictated. They
could carry out the “will of the people,” who have become, in the words of journalism
and social critic Todd Gitlin, “cognoscenti of their own bamboozlement” (1991).
Propagandists typically held elitist and paternalistic views about their
audiences. They believed that people needed to be converted for their “own
good”—not just to serve the interest of the propagandist. Propagandists often
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.