The sources of news are various. Classified incoming operational reports of the Army and Navy contain material of high interest to the enemy. There are obvious reasons for denying access to such information to the propaganda people. Propaganda men might think of their audience first and security second. If they do not know the secret information, but are advised by military consultants who do, security will be better maintained and the propagandist will not labor under the handicap of a double standard of information—what they know, and what they dare to tell.
In technically advanced countries, the regular commercial facilities of press and radio continue to do a normal news job, and usually do better work than the drafted amateurs in the government. (What intelligence agency in Washington could compile a weekly report as comprehensive, well edited and coldly planned as Time magazine?[32] The author often yearned to paraphrase Time, rearranging it and classifying it TOP SECRET, in order to astound his associates with the inside dope to which he had access.) The nature of news is not affected by its classification, and the distinction between news produced on the Federal payroll and news produced off it often consists of the superior professionalism of the latter.
The intelligence that goes into the making of propaganda must compete for attention with the home newspaper of the enemy. It must therefore be up-to-date, well put, authentic. There is no more space in propaganda for the lie, farce, hoax, or joke than there is room for it in a first-class newspaper. Even if exaggerations or nonsense appear in the commercial press of his own country, the propagandist must realize that he is Honorary G-2 to the enemy—a G-2 whose function consists of transmitting news the ultimate effect of which should be bad but which should go forth with each separate item newsworthy and palatable. (A little trick of the human mind helps all propagandists in this regard. Most people have a streak of irresponsibility in them, which makes bad news much more interesting than good. There is a yearning for bad news and a genuine willingness to pass it along. Bad news increases the tension upon the individual and tickles his sense of the importance of things; good news relieves the tension, and to that extent has the effect of a let-down.)
The palatability of news is not concerned so much with its content as with its trustworthiness to the enemy, its seeming to deal with straight fact, its non-editorialized presentation. (One of the reasons why Soviet Communist propaganda, after all these years, is still relatively unsuccessful , lies in the incapacity of the Communists to get out a newspaper with news in it. They put their editorial slant in all their news articles. "Man bites dog" would not make the front page in Russia unless the dog were Stalinist and the man reactionary.)
Figure 31: Oestrous Black. Young human beings, especially young males, are apt to give considerable attention to sex. In areas of military operations, they are removed from the stimuli of secondary sex references which are (in America) an accepted part of everyone's daily life: bathing beauty photos, magazine covers, semi-nudes in advertisements, etc. Our enemies tried to use the resulting pin-up craze for propaganda purposes, hoping that a vain arousal of oestrum would diminish morale. This choice Japanese item is from the Philippines. (The best collection of these is kept in a locked file—for experts only—at the Library of Congress.)
The Japanese who obediently hated the Americans when it was their duty to do so nevertheless could not help looking at maps that showed where the Americans actually were. Nazis who despised us and everything we stood for nevertheless studied the photographs of our new light bombers. The appeal of credible fact is universal; propaganda does not consist of doctoring the fact with moralistic blather, but of selecting that fact which is correct, interesting, and bad for the enemy to know.[33]
On the friendly side of the battle lines, the procurement of our own news is a budgetary matter. The propaganda office can subscribe to the news tickers, newspapers, telegraph services, and so on. How much is a matter of administrative housekeeping. In the field, the communications officer can frequently steal news from the news agencies of his own country or allied countries by the process of picking it out of the air. It would be highly unpatriotic of the news agency to send him a bill in the zone of operations, and he can classify his record copies of his material RESTRICTED so that the owners of the material would have no legitimate business acquiring copies that could later be taken into court to support a claim. (Americans would not do this, of course; the reference is to Byzantines.)
Figure 32: Oestrous Grey. This and the succeeding illustration show a series of four leaflets which the Nazis used against American troops in Europe. Anti-morale in intent, they rely on the illustrations to get attention and then develop their malicious, salacious anti-Semitic story. The series illustrates the strength and weakness of Nazi propaganda.