Randal Marlin
Page 28
10 Bolinger 543. My ordering of Bolinger’s points differs from his own. He puts the missing performative first.
11 Bolinger 545.
12 From Henry Steele Commager, “The Defeat of America,” New York Review of Books, October 5, 1972: 7–13.
13 Bolinger 547.
14 The source is Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, eds., The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin’s Speeches (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1939) 47; italics in the original. Further references to this work are taken from this source and will be indicated by bracketed FAP and page number in the text. Father Coughlin was often lax with his attributions, to the detriment of clear understanding and evaluation.
15 An account of the Tea Party movement is provided by Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, and Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet, April 15, 2009; see
16 In a brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, the Association for the Modernization of Canadian Abortion Laws (AMCAL) stated: “Detective Sergeant Wm. Quennell, former head of the Abortion Squad of the Morality Department of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department, has estimated that 300 women die each year in Canada as a result of illegal abortions, of which about 35,000
are believed to be performed in metropolitan Toronto alone each year.” See, Canada, Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (November 2, 1967) 139. Quennell, himself, in a private letter in my possession, attributed his figure to a newspaper report, which appeared in 1966 and which included natural as well as illegal abortions. The ambiguity of the word “abortion” (induced versus natural) caused much confusion in these early debates, so that figures tended to fluctuate. The figure of 100,000 yearly illegal abortions in Canada is attributed to AMCAL by Zena Cherry in a Globe and Mail article (in AMCAL’s brief the figure of 300,000 is mentioned in the Minutes at page 143). Cherry also gives 8,000 a year as the CHAPTER 3: PRoPAgAnDA TECHnIQUE: An AnALySIS 135
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estimate of illegal abortions in Toronto per year. See “AMCAL Campaigns For End to Abortion’s Barbarisms,”
Globe and Mail, March 22, 1968: 9.
17 Dr. Robert Cushman, Medical Officer of Health, Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen (“Second-hand Smoke Kills 100 Each Year,” March 24, 1998). It should be clear from other things in this book that there is no intent here to undermine the overall case against the tobacco industry regarding the harmfulness of second-hand smoke.
18 Eleanor MacLean, Between the Lines: How to Detect Bias and Propaganda in the News and Everyday Life (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1981).
19 Lawrence E. Harrison, “Chile,” letter, Globe and Mail, September 20, 1995.
20 See US Senate, Covert Action in Chile, 1963– 1973, Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1975) especially pages 27 and 29. I made these points in a letter to the Globe and Mail, published September 27, 1995.
21 UK Defence Committee of Inquiry, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Defence Committee, July 21, 1982.
22 Canada, Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, Minutes of the Proceedings on the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, Seventh Proceedings (November 6, 1992) 79–81.
23 Mary-Lou Finlay, letter, Ottawa Citizen, May 5, 1983.
24 MacLean 35.
25 “Nov. 25 [1997]: Police and APEC protesters clash. The RCMP arrest 42 demonstrators after using pepper-spray to control the crowd. Prime Minister Jean Chretien jokes that ‘for me, pepper, I put it on my plate.’”
See
26 “Purity at Any Cost,” editorial, Globe and Mail, August 16, 1982; and “Prof. Henripin responds,” letter, Globe and Mail, August 20, 1982.
27 Globe and Mail, January 26, 1984: 1. In making this point, I am aware that new allegations and controversy have arisen over the extent of Vatican awareness, and I make no judgment on the matter here. I refer simply to the facts as presented in the story at the time.
28 Globe and Mail, May 24, 1984. It seems unlikely that the Globe and Mail was deliberately trying to stir up antagonism between Catholics and Jews. However, given enough examples, one can make a good case for at least the operation of some kind of unconscious bias. The media always have a temptation to widen their circle of readers or viewers by presenting items in a way that will strike a note of alarm.
29 “Conservatives Call Protesters ‘Extremists,’” September 26, 2011,
story/2011/09/26/ottawa-oilsands-protest-parliament-hill.html>.
30 W.V.O. Quine, “Reference and Modality,” From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961) 139–59.
31 Quine also uses the expression for modalities (necessary, possible, etc.), which do not concern us here.
32 Orwell, Homage to Catalonia 63.
33 Paul Grice, “Presupposition and Conversational Implicature,” in Radical Pragmatics, ed. Peter Cole (New York: Academic Press, 1981) 183–97.
34 Ottawa Citizen, October 30, 1987.
35 Marketing Law Reporting Service, vol. 3 (Cobourg, ON: Business Law Reporting, 1984). I would also like to thank C.G. Sheppard and R.W. Lally of Consumer and Corporate Affairs Canada for helpful information.
36 New York Times, June 27, 1996: A6.
37 Ottawa Citizen, February 10, 1996: A14.
38 Hugh Winsor, “The Power Game,” Globe and Mail, November 14, 1997: A6.
39
40
article11956026/?service=mobile>.
41 Michael Wheeler, Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics (New York: Dell, 1976) 82–86; 104. See also Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics (New York: Norton, 1954) for this and many other examples of pol ing bias.
42 See Herbert H. Hyman, et al. “Interviewing in Social Research,” A Research Project of the National Opinion Research Center (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954) 159ff.
43 Ottawa Citizen, May 20, 1980.
44 Barry Kiefl, letter, Globe and Mail, September 11, 1984.
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45 I quote from a survey release dated January 3, 1973. These surveys are sent to libraries and the media. I viewed this particular one in Carleton’s MacOdrum Library.
46 Globe and Mail, October 29, 1990: A7.
47 Michael Marzolini, chairman of Pol ara, Inc., in an article published in The Hill Times (Ottawa), November 10, 1997.
48 Robert J. Moore, “Reflections of Canadians on the Law and the Legal System: Legal Research Institute Survey of Respondents in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg,” in Law in a Cynical Society? Opinion and Law in the 1980s, ed. Dale Gibson and Janet Baldwin (Calgary and Vancouver: Carswell Legal Publications Western Division, 1985) 73.
49 Wheeler 22.
50 Wheeler 109.
51 Chris Cobb, “Perils of Pol ing: Is There No Right Answer?,” Ottawa Citizen, November 15, 1997.
52 Wheeler 116.
53 Wheeler 111.
54 Jimmy Edwards, letter, Ottawa Citizen, March 31, 1986.
55 “Decision on Abortion Should Be Patient’s Canadian Poll Finds,” Globe and Mail, September 23, 1982; Randal Marlin, “Abortion Polls,” letter, Globe and Mail, April 22, 1985.
56 Wheeler 107.
57 See Randal Marlin, The David Levine Affair (Halifax: Fernwood, 1998) for documentation of the rise and decline of the furor in the media against the hiring in Ottawa of David Levi
ne, former Parti Québécois (separatist) candidate, as Chief Executive Officer of the newly amalgamated Ottawa Hospital in 1998.
58 Georgette Gagnon and Dan Rath, Not Without Cause (Toronto: HarperCol ins, HarperPerennial Edition, 1992) 252–55.
59 Wheeler 24.
60 Conrad Black, A Life in Progress (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1993) 125.
61 Huff. All further quotations are taken from this edition.
62 See Ben Fritz, Ryan Keefer, and Brendan Nyhan, All the President’s Spin (New York: Simon and Schuster Touchstone Books, 2004) 132–34.
63 Fritz, Keefer, and Nyhan 75–76.
64 The New Statesman, November 24, 1978. Reference for Dorfman’s work is given in the article to the Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 201(July-September 1978): 4362. See also Boyce Rensburger, “Briton’s Classic IQ Data Now Viewed as Fraudulent,” New York Times, November 28, 1976, which adds to the list of Burt’s probable frauds and includes sceptical questions by scientists as to whether two col aborators, cited in his articles, ever existed.
65 John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (New York: Basic Books, 1995) 60–62.
66 Paulos 16.
67 Paulos 14ff, 17.
68 Paulos 135–37.
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CHAPTER 4
Ethics and Propaganda
CHAPTER 4:
ETHICS AND
PROPAGANDA
InTRoDUCTIon: WHAT IS ETHICS?
In today’s world, with its many conflicting attitudes and moral outlooks, scepti-
cism about the possibility of arriving at universal moral judgments is widespread.
Disagreement on some fundamental issues exists even in seemingly peaceful, harmo-
nious societies. However, whatever theoretical scepticism may exist, there is still the
necessity to work out rules for living together in society. Among other things, ethics
is a systematic study aimed at discerning which rules and forms of thought and behav-
iour will contribute to a better existence and which will not. So described, there is an
element of circularity in this definition of ethics, since “better” already presupposes
the existence of some difference between good and bad. That should not be a problem,
though, because the study of ethics may revise our understanding of what is better.
Everyone starts with their own preferences, in the light of which a notion of “better”
operates, whether or not the person is conscious of this. Even a moral sceptic who
claims to deny the existence of morality will express moral indignation at gross viola-
tions of rights, especially if that person is a victim of such transgression.
Ethics is also about lifestyles, happiness, and individual roads to self-improve-
ment and perfection. For present purposes, the social aspect is more important,
because propaganda is an activity that, by its nature, involves many others. What we
are looking for is an ethical evaluation of propaganda or propaganda-like activities.
To do this, we begin with a general outline of some dominant ethical ideas found in
the history of ethics. Secondly, since propaganda has often been tied by definition
to some form of manipulation, a discussion of the whole question of the ethics of
lying will be undertaken with a view to providing an anchor point from which to
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approach the other issues. Thirdly, the question of communications that are not lies but that share some of the same propensities of lies will be evaluated from an ethical
point of view.
ETHICAL THEoRIES
Ethical theory in the broadest sense is sometimes divided into meta-ethics and norma-
tive ethics. The main preoccupation of meta-ethics is the analysis of ethical concepts
and the language used in discussions of ethical matters, along with the justification of
ethical theories. Normative ethics involves the investigation of moral questions with
a view to providing answers from whatever ethical theory seems appropriate. It would
seem that meta-ethics cannot be sharply distinguished from normative ethics since
a thorough investigation of normative ethical questions is bound to lead to raising
questions deemed more suitable to meta-ethics: applying a certain theory to solve an
ethical dilemma requires justifying the use of that theory and not another. Also, the
language in which normative ethical answers are provided may contain words such as
“ought to” and “have a right to” that need clarification.
Extreme moral scepticism is theoretically difficult to refute, but it is also self-
stultifying. To have a fruitful discussion of ethics, a measure of decency and goodwill
must be presupposed, along with a certain openness to the possibility of improving
one’s own perspective by listening to challenges that others may bring to it.
Religion features prominently in many people’s thinking about ethics. The reason
is that religion provides a world view with intelligible meaning for one’s existence,
usually with an explanation for suffering and death and hope for a future life. To those
whose source of belief is limited to the purely scientific, religion often appears to be
a kind of security blanket for the weak-minded and intellectually dishonest. But the
unattractiveness of a scientific world view in which chance variation and natural selec-
tion is the central story about the origins of our existence will likely guarantee the
existence of large numbers of people receptive to the possibility of some other source
of knowledge, whether through reason or revelation. The major religions come with
ethical codes, and some people accept them in fairly broad detail, although the exact
interpretation of the Bible, Koran, or Torah is subject to much dispute. Whatever the
source, religion or otherwise, of one’s ethical prescriptions, there is always a twofold
problem. First, does the set of prescriptions seem right? Second, are the prescriptions
self-consistent? Suppose one of the prescriptions is to love one another and, therefore,
not to judge other people, while another is to put to death someone who commits a
consensual but “unnatural” sexual act. From a modern perspective, the contradiction
is glaring, but perhaps there were related beliefs connected with the times in which the
prescriptions were made that make them intelligible at least.1 If there were, there can
be some continuity in ethical development as the related beliefs are discarded in the
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light of advancing knowledge. Most religions have progressive thinkers who are open to revising ethical doctrines in the light of empirical knowledge.
Religion is often the source for deontological theories, meaning theories that do
not make obligation depend solely on some consequence-based criteria but at least in
part upon some recognized authority. For many religious believers, the wrongness of
eating certain foods, or eating them at certain times, is accepted as such because God
has indicated this either directly through revelation or indirectly through a prophet.
This is different from believing that rightness and wr
ongness of actions are to be deter-
mined only in the light of the anticipatable consequences of those actions. Theories of
the latter kind—such as ethical egoism and utilitarianism—have been given the name
consequentialism. The ethical theory of Kant combines rationality with deontology
and is sufficiently influential to have earned the name Kantianism. To the theories so far mentioned, which deal with actions, there are also theories relating to individual
self-improvement and perfectionist views.
To argue in detail for or against any of these theories is a matter for a book on
ethical theory as such. Since we are dealing with applied ethics, only a brief outline of
their strengths and weaknesses will be given. In our arguments relating to the ethics
of propaganda, we should be aware of the different areas of likely agreement or dis-
agreement between the different theories. Where their differences produce converging
results, we have reason to be more confident in those results. When they differ, we will
need to provide supplementary argument to indicate why we favour the outcome from
one theory rather than another, or why we prefer to treat such an outcome simply as an
unsettled question in ethics. We do not have to suppose that every question in ethics
must have a definite, problem-disposing answer. We want our discussions of ethics to
give us solutions to problems, but they can be illuminating and satisfying even if they
do not have such a result.
The value of deontological theory is that it can accord with the feeling or intu-
ition of “seeing” that something is right or wrong in cases where consequentialist the-
ory seems to yield contrary and unsatisfactory results. The idea that it might be right,
under certain conditions, to execute an innocent person—perhaps because that would
appease a large mob and prevent large-scale violence—has seemed to many people
utterly abhorrent and morally corrupt. Yet, the situation can be described in a way
that seems to require the pure consequentialist to accept the action as morally right.
This is only one of many scenarios that lead some philosophers to make room for the