Economaton

The Wall Street Journal published a fine piece of propaganda this Saturday, entitled Cuban Revolution: Yoani Sánchez fights tropical totalitarianism, one blog post at a time. This article is no lunatic passing out Xeroxed copies of his manifesto on a streetcorner; the Wall Street Journal attracts a rather well educated readership, and thus requires propaganda of a much higher caliber. Half truths are smoothly worked in via the omission of important details rather than through brazen lies, which would easily be detected by many readers. A few mildly neutral statements about the Cuban government are carefully inserted; contrasted with the blatant attacks present throughout the article, these function to lend it a sheen of objectivity. Let’s take a look in more detail at how the WSJ’s top editors carefully groom their presentation of reality so as to shepherd the public along the opinion paths they’ve chosen for us.

Through careful selection of facts, the reader is fed information that is technically true though lacking critical context necessary to fully understand its import. This allows the WSJ to maintain a charade of journalistic neutrality while still accomplishing their propaganda goal of creating and reinforcing negative attitudes towards socialism generally and the current government of Cuba in particular. Read the rest of this entry »