Propaganda

"We all know truth is the first casualty of war. But which side in this conflict is the bigger liar?" writes Andrew Gumbel for the Independent. With al-Jazeera the only television reporting coming from the Taliban territory in Afghanistan and the Pentagon carefully spooning out information to US journalist, it's hard to know what's true. Gumbel looks at a few examples of what the Taliban said, what the Pentagon said, and what we now know.

The Bush administration has belatedly deployed its forces for a propaganda war to win over the Arab public. But the campaign, intended to convince doubters that the American attacks on Afghanistan are justified and its Middle East policy is evenhanded, has so far proved ineffectual. Thousands of words from American officials, it appears, have proved no match for the last week's news, which produced a barrage of pictures of wounded Afghan children and of Israeli tanks rolling into Palestinian villages.

The Bush administration and members of Congress have called for renewed efforts to improve America's image in the Islamic world, with Bush worrying aloud that the U.S. is losing the propaganda war to Islamic extremists. "I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us," Bush said. "We've got to do a better job of making our case." An expensive advertising campaign in the Arab world, coupled with beefed-up Voice of America broadcasts, is making little headway as these PR efforts encounter a skeptical audience.

Dr. Nancy Snow spent two years working within the ranks of America's official propaganda organ, the United States Information Agency, and then surgically exposed the inner workings of the organization in her acclaimed publication, Propaganda Inc. In this interview with the Guerrilla News Network, Dr. Snow breaks down the covert history of U.S. propaganda efforts both inside and outside of the country's borders. Tracing the strategies employed by top propagandists like George Creel and Walter Lippman, Dr.