I'm interested in seeing how many good examples of propaganda the posters on this board can come up with. References and/or links would be helpful, if you know them, but not essential.

The best example of propaganda I ever heard was during a psych class I took in college. We were studying how the media leads (or misleads) us into thinking something is what it isn't. Our professor was using as an example the way the old Soviet news reporting worked.

His example was a story about two cars in a race...one of the cars was Russian-made and the other was American-made. In the race, the American car actually won. But, the headlines in the Soviet newspapers the next day would read:

RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN CARS IN RACE! RUSSIAN CAR COMES IN SECOND! AMERICAN CAR COMES IN NEXT TO LAST!

I wish I could give a reference for this example of propaganda but I can't. It may have been the professor's own original example

I find it very sad that I am now having to associate the word "propaganda" with some American reporting when, at the time I heard this example, I only associated it with the old USSR. I thought our Freedom of the Press and Free Speech guarantees in our Constitution were unassailable and would always mean the truth would win out.

I'm no longer so naive, but I still feel betrayed sometimes.

Catherine