Propaganda was defined (at the beginning of this book) as follows: Propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of communication designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given group for a specific purpose. Taking a lesson from Communist theory, we can say that any form of mass-communication is operated for propaganda purposes if no other motive for running it is evident. Human beings talk; they like to talk. Much private talk is idle—but only an imbecile would talk over a radio network just for the pleasure of hearing himself talking. Propaganda is presentation for a purpose; it is the purpose that makes it propaganda, and not the truthfulness or untruthfulness of it.
The collected news of any modern country contains more truth each day than any one man can could read in a lifetime. The reporters, editors, writers, announcers who collect truth not only collect it; they select it. They have to. Why do they select it? That is the propaganda question. If they select it to "affect the minds and emotions of a given group for a specific purpose," it is propaganda. If they report that a little girl fell out of bed and broke her neck—with the intent of frightening parents among their listeners into following the Safe Homes Week Campaign—that is propaganda. But if they report it because it is the only death in the community, and because they might as well fill up the program, it is not propaganda. If you put the statement on the air, "An American negro workman in Greensboro, N. C., got eighty cents for a hard day's work last week," that can be presented and interpreted as:
- (a.) simple news, if there is something more to the story, about what the man said, or how he spent the eighty cents on corn meal to feed his pet tarantula;
- (b.) anti-capitalist propaganda, if you show that eighty cents is mighty little money for American business to pay its workers;
- (c.) pro-capitalist propaganda, if you show that the eighty cents will buy more than two weeks' wages of a worker in the city of Riga, when it comes to consumer goods;
- (d.) anti-White propaganda, if you show the man got only eighty cents because he was a Negro.
And so on, through a further variety of interpretations. The facts—man, happening, amount, place, time—are true in each case. They could be sworn to by the whole membership of an interfaith conference. But the interpretation placed on them—who communicates these facts to whom? why? when?—makes them into propaganda.
And interpretation can no more be true or untrue than a Ford car can be vanilla or strawberry in flavor. The questions of truth and of interpretation are unrelated categories. The essence of motive is that it is ultimately private and impenetrable, and interpretation commonly involves imputation of motive. You can dislike an interpretation; you can kill a man for believing it; you can propagandize him out of believing it; but you cannot sit down and prove that it is untrue. Facts and logic are useful in propaganda, but they cannot be elevated to the point where you can say, "Is it propaganda or is it true?" Almost all good propaganda—no matter what kind—is true. It uses truth selectively.
There is no secret formula which, once applied, provides an unfailing test for propaganda. It is not possible for a person unfamiliar with the part of the world affected, with the topic discussed, with the interested parties, and with the immediate politics involved to put his finger on an item and say, "This Rightist charge is propaganda," and then to turn and say, "But that Rightist statement is not propaganda. It is fact." Untruthful statements are made at times for other than propaganda purposes; truthful statements may be propaganda or not. The analyst must himself be an interested party. He must determine ahead of time what he will regard as propaganda, and what not. And he must do so by delimiting the field of his analysis before he starts. No one person or staff of people could ever trace all the motives behind a single statement; even to attempt that, he would have to be a novelist of the school of Marcel Proust. (And he would end up feeling like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, or Franz Kafka.)
Figure 21: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Slogans. Home-front propaganda was sometimes repeated in an inappropriate place, in order to achieve an effect contrary to that originally intended. These Nazi leaflets, dropped on American detachments in Europe, used modifications of the "It's Your Job!" posters and advertisements used by the U.S. for home-front purposes.
Figure 22: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Technique. When the content of enemy propaganda cannot be attacked, the media themselves can sometimes be criticized. This German leaflet attempted utilization of potential suspicions of Hollywood. In so doing, it used three techniques: built up from a news item, suitably faked; raised suspicion of the movies which the Germans knew our Army showed for morale purposes; and spread racial hate.