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The Case for COVID Propaganda
Propaganda — can it have a positive purpose, especially in the case of a common enemy — a pandemic? The definitions of propaganda presented by dictionaries and encyclopaedias commonly hold negative connotations, but should it be deployed in the current national and global crisis?
Undoubtedly we see propaganda every day, even when we are not in a state of declared war. The output of the right-wing press and Fox News in the US is unashamed propaganda. The BBC in the UK, though termed a ‘public broadcaster’ is constitutionally a state broadcaster, funded by a punitive TV tax and with an explicit propaganda function written into its charter and governance. Even those who hold to the claim that the BBC is one of the best and impartial sources of news in the world would have to admit that under the BBC Trust and dependent on the indulgence of the government, would mean that the BBC is largely in thrall to the administration of the day. At the same time, the chronic underfunding of higher education over the past twenty years has created a marked social — and therefore political — imbalance in those able to study for and attain jobs in the media.
In the Second Word War, propaganda was employed by the British government so effectively — and arguably without oversight — that much of it has passed into current culture and myth, something that was successfully exploited during…
