General

Propaganda as News

Curt at new-to-me blog Flopping Aces has been all over this story. In a tremendous display of bloggage, see here, here and here.

Yesterday, an Army reserve buddy emailed me some interesting observations:

So, what else is new. It also points out the AP stringers ‘manufacturing’ news images at different times.

Quote from some of my PAO training: “Remember, the media isn’t the enemy. But they sure as hell aren’t your friends.”

Another quote from PAO training: “Remember, if you grant an interview with the media, you must control the interview, and need to set ground rules. ‘Sir, how many interviews have you conducted since you became the PAO (public affairs officer) at Fort Bragg?’ None, I don’t trust those motherfuckers as far as I can throw them.”

It’s obvious that the enemy understands that, like Vietnam, this is primarily a war to weaken America’s resolve. Also, just as clearly, the Democrats and the media do NOT understand this.

It’s also obvious from this Brainshavings post that the military could do a better job getting their story out as they are being dissed by the major web news outlets while Al-jazeera has no problem. See this Bizzyblog post as well.

But really, the military should be all about killing people and breaking things, not managing an information and propaganda war. The military should knows how to handle media requests, but perhaps it’s time to assign message management to somebody.

Which agency was responsible for these sixty years ago?

… 1 minute later …

Answered my own question by hunting further at the link above.

The Office of War Information (OWI) was created in 1942 and served as an important U.S. government propaganda agency during World War II. During 1942 and 1943, the OWI contained two photographic units: (1) a section headed by Roy Emerson Stryker and (2) the News Bureau (the units were merged during 1943). The photographers in both units documented America’s mobilization during the early years of World War II, concentrating on such topics as aircraft factories and women in the workforce.

Stryker’s section at the OWI had been transferred from the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) in late 1942. Stryker’s FSA section is the source of a world-famous collection of documentary photographs; the color images from the FSA photographic section are also available in electronic form. The OWI News Bureau had operated within the Office for Emergency Management (OEM) during 1941 and 1942; some photographs from the OEM period are included in this set.

Altogether, the combined FSA-OWI collection of photographs at the Library of Congress numbers about 108,000, most of which are black-and-white.

I’m having a warm fuzzy thinking of the hoo-raw in liberal circles of GWB emulated FDR in setting up an OWI for the Iraq war. More here.

Apparently propaganda departments attract commie-symps like flies on you know what:

Many of these people were active supporters of President Roosevelt’s New Deal and extolled the President’s policies in producing radio programs such as This is War, which irritated Congressional opponents of such programs. In addition, many of the writers, producers, and actors of OWI programs admired the Soviet Union and were either loosely affiliated with or were members of the Communist Party USA. In his final report, Elmer Davis noted that he had fired 35 employees because of past Communist associations, though the FBI files showed no formal allegiance to the CPUSA.

Interesting. I’m not advocating propaganda, but I think responsibility for messaging and handling enemy propaganda should be assigned to someone. And really, at this point, I’d settle for a neutral media.

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