What Is Propaganda? The Difference Between Government Messaging, Media Bias and False Reporting

By Lucretia Hughes

WASHINGTON — Americans are surrounded by information.

Government agencies issue statements. Politicians hold news conferences. Television networks choose which stories lead their broadcasts. Commentators offer opinions. Reporters make mistakes. Social media users circulate claims within minutes.

But not everything that is biased is propaganda, and not everything called propaganda is necessarily false.

Understanding the difference matters.

Propaganda generally involves information deliberately designed to influence attitudes or behavior toward a particular objective. It can contain false information, but it does not have to. A message can contain accurate facts while selectively presenting them to persuade an audience.

Government messaging is different.

Federal agencies routinely communicate with Americans about laws, programs, emergencies, regulations and government activities. A government press release identifying the agency that issued it is plainly government communication. The audience knows who is speaking and can evaluate the information accordingly.

The Government Accountability Office has drawn an important distinction between that kind of communication and what it calls “covert propaganda.”

GAO has said the critical element of covert propaganda is the government’s concealment of its role in creating or sponsoring material. In other words, the source matters.

That distinction became particularly important during a controversy involving government-produced video news releases.

In 2005, GAO warned federal agencies about prepackaged news stories produced by the government that were designed to resemble independently produced television news reports.

Some included people portraying reporters and scripts that television anchors could use to introduce the segments.

The problem, according to GAO, was not simply that the government had communicated with the public.

The problem was that viewers could watch what appeared to be an independent news report without knowing the federal government had actually produced it.

GAO concluded that agencies could use prepackaged news material without violating the federal prohibition on unauthorized publicity or propaganda if viewers were clearly informed that the government had prepared or participated in preparing the material.

That brings us to media bias.

Media bias is not automatically propaganda.

News organizations constantly make editorial decisions. Editors decide which stories receive front-page treatment, which stories receive 30 seconds on television and which stories receive no coverage at all.

Reporters decide which sources to interview. Producers select photographs and video. Headlines emphasize certain aspects of a story. Commentators interpret events through their own ideological or political perspectives.

Those choices can produce accusations of bias from audiences who believe important facts, perspectives or context have been minimized.

But bias and false reporting are still different things.

A news report may contain accurate facts while presenting them selectively. Another report may contain an incorrect statement because a reporter relied on inaccurate information, misunderstood a document or failed to adequately verify a source.

An error alone does not establish deliberate deception.

False reporting becomes a more serious journalistic problem when information presented as fact is unsupported, materially inaccurate or published despite evidence contradicting it. Determining whether a particular false report was intentional requires evidence about what the journalists or organization knew at the time — not merely the fact that the report ultimately proved wrong.

There is another category that Americans should understand: misinformation and disinformation.

Misinformation generally refers to inaccurate information regardless of whether the person spreading it intended to deceive.

Disinformation refers to false or misleading information deliberately created or distributed to deceive.

Propaganda is broader.

Propaganda can use truth, half-truths, selective facts, emotional imagery, repetition or falsehoods. Its defining feature is its persuasive purpose rather than whether every individual statement is false.

That is why identifying the source of information is so important.

GAO made that point explicitly while examining a Department of Education video news release. The agency argued that its material contained factual information and therefore should not be considered covert propaganda.

GAO disagreed.

It concluded that failing to tell viewers that the government produced the material deprived the audience of an important fact needed to judge the information’s credibility.

The distinction remains relevant in the social-media era.

Government agencies, elected officials, political campaigns, advocacy organizations, corporations, journalists and ordinary citizens can now communicate directly with millions of people without going through a traditional newsroom.

A government statement can be reposted by a journalist, clipped by an activist, discussed by a television commentator and circulated across social media within hours.

After enough sharing, the original source can disappear from view.

That makes media literacy more important, not less.

Before accepting a major claim, Americans can ask several basic questions:

Who originally produced the information? Is the source identified? Is the material news reporting, government communication, advocacy or opinion? What evidence supports the claim? Are primary documents available? Has important context been omitted? Have independent sources confirmed it?

Those questions do not require Americans to distrust everything they see.

They require something more useful: scrutiny.

Government messaging is not automatically propaganda. Media bias is not automatically a lie. An incorrect report is not automatically intentional disinformation. And propaganda does not necessarily consist entirely of falsehoods.

The lines become particularly important when government-produced information is presented in a form that resembles independent journalism.

GAO has repeatedly said that government agencies may provide information about their policies and activities. But when the government creates news-like material and conceals its role from the intended audience, GAO has treated that lack of attribution as the defining problem of covert propaganda.

A free society depends on citizens being able to examine information and reach their own conclusions.

That requires more than asking whether a statement is true or false.

Americans also need to know who is speaking, who produced the message, who paid for it, what evidence supports it and what the audience is being asked to believe.

Those distinctions separate government communication from covert government propaganda, opinion from reporting, bias from fabrication and journalism from persuasion.

And knowing the difference may be one of the most important tools an informed citizen has.