Everything old is new again. One of the advantages of being a venerable organization is that your ancestors have already taken a go at issues and problems recurring today.

Propaganda Review was a Media Alliance magazine that explored techniques of manipulation, our vulnerability to them, and a society obsessed with the engineering of consent.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

So, with the generous help of William Bowles, we are embarking on the project of excavating as much of Propaganda Review as we can in order to make it available for a bit of context in today’s “fake news” debate.

In this edition, you’ll hear from:

• Loretta Graziano on economic statistics, why they aren’t as reliable as we think they are and the risks of information overload democracy. (“In an information overload democracy, leaders can expect the public to substitute one or two simple symbols for the full detail on complex national issues. They can expect public discourse to focus myopically on the familiar symbols and ignore other data, even when contradictions between the two are substantial“)
• Martin Lee on the use of Nazi war criminals by American intelligence agencies for espionage activities against the Soviet Union in Hitler’s Last Laugh. (“Thus did the Reagan administration cover up one of the most insidious foreign policy ventures in US history–a policy whereby thousands of active Nazis were deliberately and systematically recruited by US intelligence to further American objectives in postwar Europe. This wasn’t a covert sideshow run out of the White House basement. It was official US policy”)
• Ward Churchill on the US government’s war against the American Indian Movement (AIM). (“Tom Coli, a propaganda specialist, was dispatched to explain why the FBI was suddenly conducting Vietnam-style search and destroy operations on an obscure South Dakota Indian reservation”)
• David Pearson on the media and government deception and the age-old question of the difference between being a watchdog and a lapdog. (“The canon of objectivity tended to leave unreported large
  areas of genuine relevance that authorities chose not to talk about”)
• David Levi-Strauss on Jean Luc Goddard and Anne Marie Mieville’s brief experiment in subversive anti-television. (“Sonimage was unable to get its counter-TV into the midst of mainstream broadcast television”)

Continue reading Propaganda Review Issue 1, Volume 4 1987-1990 →

Everything old is new again. One of the advantages of being a venerable organization is that your ancestors have already taken a go at issues and problems recurring today.

Propaganda Review,, was a Media Alliance magazine that explored techniques of manipulation, our vulnerability to them, and a society obsessed with the engineering of consent.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it

So, with the generous help of William Bowles, we are embarking on the project of excavating as much of Propaganda Review as we can in order to make it available for a bit of context in today’s “fake news” debate.

In this first edition, you’ll hear from:

• Noam Chomsky on Orwell and totaliarianism (“If a government can’t control people by  force, it had  better control  what they think.“)
• Nina Eliasoph on Oliver North and Iran-Contra (“It’s hard enough to brush my teeth in time for work. When am I gonna think about Oliver North?”)
• David Levi-Strauss on Photography and Propaganda (“As Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1931, the tremendous development of photojournalism has contributed practically nothing to the revelation of the truth about the conditions in this world. On the contrary, photography in the hands of the bourgeoisie has become a terrible weapon against the truth.”). 
• John Carlisle on the Persuasion/Manipulation Loop in Political Polling. (“Reagan is  governing America  by a new strategic doctrine – the  permanent campaign.”)
• Marcy Darnovsky on why a Propaganda Review? (“Television puts deodorant and death  on equal footing  and turns both into  entertainment.”)
• Jay Rosen on the techniques employed by the entertainment industry (“As a form of propaganda,  entertainment’s  strategy is to  convert the  passivity of the  audience into  the image of its opposite.“)
• Marina Hirsch’s Notes from an Advertising Addict. (“I’m a couch potato and proud of my roots.”)

Continue reading Propaganda Review Issue 1, Volume 1 1987-1990 →