Politics

Books on Propaganda

By Sheldon Rampton

The iconic "Uncle Sam Wants You" poster was part of U.S. government's propaganda campaign during World War I, organized by its Committee on Public Information.

A student contacted us recently who who is writing a paper that "explores the legal limits of US government propaganda." He asked if we could recommend any books or essays that "deal with the limits of US legislation concerning PR and propaganda."

Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of books written about this particular topic, although there are several that discuss how U.S. government propaganda techniques were developed and practiced, often to the detriment of democracy.

Among the more recent books that discuss U.S. government propaganda, of course there are my own books -- Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq and The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the War in Iraq. And, of course, there are a number of articles on PRWatch.org, written by myself and by my colleague, Diane Farsetta, about the Pentagon military analyst program that was exposed last year by New York Times reporter David Barstow. The articles we've written that are most relevant to this topic include:

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Full post as published by PR Watch on July 07, 2009 (boomark / email).