Propaganda has a negative connotation. That’s what the “other” guys use, where “guys” means competitor corporation, or country, or political party, or wartime belligerent.
When the other side says their soldiers are engaged in a peacekeeping mission, we smirk and know what they really mean is they are killing babies. On the other hand, our guys really are peacekeeping!
Let’s get our definition set:
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda,
That doesn’t sound so bad, so let’s finish that sentence:
which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented.
OK, that’s why people look askance at propaganda.
But that’s mostly a 20th-century phenomenon, what with its use of advertising and persuasion techniques. Prior to that it had its original meaning of “propagating” an idea. You had a good idea, you wanted to propagate to others, so you used propaganda to do so. It had a neutral meaning.
You know who propagates ideas?
Yup, kindergarten teachers propagate ideas all the time, and you know what, they also use selective facts (the relevant ones only) and loaded language (“don’t we love to draw?”) trying to appeal to the emotions of her students. See, propaganda is not necessarily a bad thing.
And we see ideas presented to us all the time, using the facts they want to present and with loaded language:
Hollywood has always been notorious for using propaganda, and it’s hardly a recent idea.
But remember, selective facts are not necessarily bad. Unless you want every fact in the known universe written into each newspaper story, the writer simply has to select only the important and relevant facts. Just because they leave some facts out (the interviewee was wearing a red sweater that day), it doesn’t mean they had some evil motive.
When you ask your spouse if they want to have chicken or beef for dinner, and you emphasize that you want the chicken yourself, you are using a propaganda technique — and that isn’t a bad thing!
The problem comes from the world we are living in that gives us this conundrum:
Yes, there are bad actors out there who eschew facts in favor of fakes, and who are trying to persuade you by leaving out relevant facts. It is important to learn to discern fake from fact. To realize when they have given you the relevant facts and when they have not.
But don’t kid yourself about your CEO or your mayor or your President (or Prime Minister). They use propaganda just as often as the “bad” guys. That’s why newspaper accounts of their country’s soldiers always try to avoid civilian casualties, but the other side is simply barbaric. Fact is, war is barbaric no matter who does it, but a soldier’s intent can go a long way toward making it as less bad as war can ever get.
Since war is by its nature barbaric, one side deemphasizes the barbarism, while the other side plays up the barbarism.
Reality can sometimes lie in the middle.
If every side uses propaganda for its own purposes, it can be helpful to read multiple news sources. If country A invades country B, reading news articles from both A and B can be quite educational.
Just don’t kid yourself that you never use propaganda. You do. So do I. So do we all. It’s called propagating an idea, and if you do it fairly, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s the unfair ones we have to be wary of.
In future essays I intend to take screenshots of newspaper stories from various sources and show the propaganda techniques used in that story. They are always there, and every side does it. And it’s not always bad. But sometimes it is.
I think this is obvious, but obvious does not mean easy. My Substack is basically a propaganda agency for whoever I feel like promoting that day, and was started with the intention of being just that. You're correct that the issue comes in the word relevant when discussing facts.
Facts are like humans. Torture them long enough and they will say whatever you would like. There is no need to lie. It's much better to twist facts that exist to suit the agenda you are trying to push, and once again, this is not a bad thing. This is (in essence) the practice of storytelling.
I feel there is an issue with those who believe they can escape from propaganda at any point, because all art, media, literature, etc. is trying to push it's listener, consumer, reader in a specific direction. If humans cannot see that it's happening, that's perhaps even more dangerous.
You are right. I think everyone uses propaganda in some way.