In November I read your full page message from your publisher and editor. I have subscribed to The Herald for over 10 years now and found the message very interesting. So, I had to do a bit of research on my question: When does journalism become propaganda?
First I had to define each:
Journalism: The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines consisting of the direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.
Propaganda: A systematic effort to persuade a body of people to support or adopt a particular opinion, attitude or course of action. It is often a disparaging sense, as of a body of distortions and half-truths calculated to bias ones judgment or opinion.
I have collected a few weeks worth of the Opinion pages from The Herald over the past couple of months I have read them and tried to determine which they represent: journalism or propaganda. I must say that I feel that about 90 percent of them deal with propaganda. I guess the question is, are these folks journalists. Some of them appear on national news networks and are consistent with what they write in The Herald.
I know the page is labeled “Opinion,” but the people writing these articles are identified by most people as journalists. However, in my humble opinion, they are really propagandists and should be identified as such.
Take another look at the definitions above and read some of the articles on the Opinion page and make your own judgment.
Jerry Keenan
Lake Stevens
