News propaganda is a type of

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...

covert Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret. Secrecy is often controvers ...

ly packaged as credible

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...

, but without sufficient transparency concerning the news item's source and the motivation behind its release. Transparency of the source is one parameter critical to distinguish between news propaganda and traditional news

press release A press release is an official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public release. Press releases are also considere ...

s and

video news release A video news release (VNR) is a video segment made to look like a news report, but is instead created by a PR firm, advertising agency, marketing firm, corporation, government agency, or non-profit organization. They are provided to television n ...

s. The accuracy of this type of information, or lack thereof, puts the propaganda into the Black Propaganda or Gray Propaganda categories. As with any propaganda, news propaganda may be spread for widely different reasons including

governance Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, social norm, norms, power (social and political), power or language of an organized society over a social system (family, tribe, formal organization, formal or informal organization, a ...

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied prim ...

motivations, partisan agendas,

religious Religion is usually defined as a social system, social-cultural system of designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morality, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sacred site, sanctified places, prophecy, prophecie ...

ethnic An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

reasons, and

commercial Commercial may refer to: * a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television) ** Radio advertisement ** Television advertisement * (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...

motivations; their purposes are not always clear. News propaganda also can be motivated by

national security National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...

reasons, especially in times of war or domestic upheaval.

Jason Stanley Jason Stanley (born 1969) is an American philosopher who is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is best known for his contributions to philosophy of language and epistemology, which often draw upon and influence other ...

, who is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Yale University, he defines the characteristics of propaganda as the service of either supporting or eroding ideals. The first distinction between kinds of propaganda has to do with whether or not it erodes or supports the ideals it appears to embody. This is the distinction between supporting and undermining propaganda.

Use

Print media

Historically, print outlets have been a less common source of news propaganda than other forms of media. It can be more difficult for some heavily influential information that leans one way or another to get through all individuals involved in sending an article to print in a new paper or magazine, although it is more likely for propaganda to be spread through print publications in

developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...

Broadcasting

Going back as early as

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the radio has been used for news propaganda; the government of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

used radio to spread its ideals throughout Europe, as well as the United Kingdom, to drum up sympathy from countries like the US when the Germans had the upper hand. Television dominated as the main avenue for propaganda from its creation, especially in the United States. News channels reportedly have a tremendous amount of control over content and with the 24-hour news cycle more and more networks are looking to just put information out, regardless of whether or not the information is true.

New media

The phenomenon of

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

has made the spread of particular ideas more accessible to larger groups of people. In today's environment of social media, anyone can get their thoughts and ideas out to the entire world instantaneously. Those ideas are put out there for all to see and what becomes popular is also what becomes fact, the more people that see something the more likely it is to be accepted as fact. This type of environment is used as a common target for propaganda, as well as

information warfare Information warfare (IW) (as different from cyber warfare that attacks computers, software, and command control systems) is a concept involving the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:News Propaganda Journalism ethics Propaganda techniques Public relations techniques Fake news

Use

Print media

Broadcasting

New media

See also

References