General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Pew Study says MSNBC is almost all "opinion", but what I don't undersand is this: [View all]OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)On the other hand, much that is characterized as propaganda comprises undeniable facts. Mr. Brisbane points out the relative smallness of our airplane defenses. Is this propaganda? The conclusion that we should immensely enhance our expenditures on military and naval aircraft may be argumentative, but it is not essentially deception. The Junior Chamber of Commerce urges that the use of school buildings be denied to Communist groups. Whether or not the practice thus urged is sound public policy is a matter of opinion, not fact. Mr. Hearst (as Mr. Coolidge did in his Delineator articles, when Vice-President) declares that our colleges are permeated with "reds." This may or may not be a fact, according to the definition given to the term "red." What the facts mean, and what should be done about them, if anything, are matters of opinion.
It should be pointed out, moreover, that not everything taught in the schools can be definitely labeled as fact. Perhaps the data of mathematics are facts; yet the examples given for solution in any given textbook of arithmetic or algebra may-can, in truth-scarcely escape embodying a point of view concerning economic institutions. A school reader containing stories of the lives of great men may inculcate Carlylean individualism; a community civics may, on the other hand, stress ideals of and co6peration the importance of the group. A high school economics text (if it be several years old) may indicate that the Federal Reserve Act made depressions
impossible or unlikely. Through all the writing and teaching of the social subjects runs inevitably a current of interpretation. The spoils system may be described as an evil that should be abolished; it may be stated that the Supreme Court interprets, but never makes law; the Spanish-American War may be referred to as a humanitarian undertaking designed to save Cubans from oppression. These are not facts, but opinions about facts.
Wooddy, C. H. (1935). Education and propaganda. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 179, 228-229.