Topic:	Propaganda
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Guest:	Orville Schell, Professor of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
What is it?	Allegedly independent radio commentators taking money to spout the government line! Fake news reports being produced and distributed by the Administration to promote a partisan agenda! Journalists abandoning neutrality and objectivity to become cheerleaders for a political doctrine! Where can this happen? Right here in the good old U.S. of A. propaganda is all around us! But what exactly is propaganda? How can it be distinguished from legitimate news and information? Can democracy survive where propaganda flourishes? Join John and Ken for a fresh, philosophical look at propaganda.

About the Guest

Orville Schell was born in New York City in 1940, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in Chinese History where he earned a Ph.D (Abd). He has worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and travelled widely in China.

He is also a contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Granta, Wired, Newsweek, Mother Jones, The China Quarterly, and The New York Review of Books.

Schell has been the recipient of several writing fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center and is the winner of numerous awards, including the Harvard/Stanford Shorenstein Award for Asian Journalism, Overseas Press Club of America's Award for The Best Article on a Foreign Subject, a Mencken Award for the Best Feature and a Page One Award for the Best Investigative Story.

The author of fourtenn fourteen books, nine of them about China, a the contributor to numerous edited volumes, his most recent books are Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangrila From the Himalayas To Hollywood, The China Reader: The Reform Years, and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China's Leaders.  He has also served as a television commentator for several network news programs, has worked both as correspondent and a correspondent and consultant for a number PBS "Frontline" documentaries and been the correspondent for an Emmy award-winning program for"60 minutes" segment.

Schell serves on the boards of Human Rights Watch, the Sundance Documentary
Fund jury, and the Social Science Research Council. He is also a member of the Pacific Council, the Council on Foreign Relations and a regular particpant in the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Schell is currently the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

Listening Notes

What is propaganda? Is there anything wrong with it? Is it intrinsically bad? Both governments and corporations propagandize. What difference is there between the two? Does propaganda require lying? Is it worse for journalists to propagandize? Ken introduces the guest, Orville Schell, professor at UC Berkeley. Schell thinks that propaganda, if it distorts an issue, is bad. The negative notion of propaganda came out of fascism. Plato thought that leaders were entitled to tell “noble lies”. Ken pushes this point, asking if leaders can do that today. Schell answers that Lenin did exactly that. Schell emphasizes that propaganda is distorted information used by governments to manipulate the people.

What is the difference between marketing and propaganda? Paul Bernays came up with the idea of public relations, which was picked up by the Nazis. Schell thinks that there is a link between marketing and propaganda, historical and practical. Ken thinks that marketing is morally wrong.

People often think of totalitarian governments when they hear the word “propaganda,” but democracies use propaganda too. What is the difference between the two? Totalitarian governments bludgeon the public with a message while democracies are subtler about it. Schell emphasizes that people are easily manipulated into believing different things are in their best interests. John introduces the notion of manufacturing consent. John asks how television and the internet impact our ability to get information. Schell says that it has not increased Schell discusses why the media should function as a watchdog group. How can we immunize ourselves against the effects of propaganda?  Ken comments that the range of acceptable opinion in the media is narrow.

• Ian Shoales the Sixty Second Philosopher (Seek to 50:30): Ian Shoales gives a brief history of propaganda, from the ancient Greeks to modern politics.

• There was no Amy Standen piece due to the pledge drive.

Additional Resources

• The Wikipedia entry on propaganda

• Orville Schell's webpage

• A website devoted to propaganda analysis

• An archive of German WW2 propaganda

• A website on war, propaganda and the media

• The Center for Media & Democracy's page on propaganda techniques

• The Center for Media & Democracy's website

• A history of the Catholic congregation of propaganda

• Definitions for several propaganda-related terms

• Edward Bernays's book, Propaganda

• Larry Tye's biography of Bernays, The Father of Spin

• Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's book Manufacturing Consent

• Robert McChesney's book The Problem of the Media

• Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion

• Jacques Ellul's work, Propaganda

• George Orwell's classic, 1984

• Anthony Pratkanis's Age of Propaganda