VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Interview with Nancy Snow, associate professor of communications and an expert on propaganda.

Pomykata: In an election year everyone wants information and, like it or not, modern propaganda often plays a role in shaping the messages we pay attention to. Joining us today is Nancy Snow, Associate Professor of Communications and an expert on propaganda who has written two books on that subject. Nancy, you've taught courses such as "Political Communications and Elections". What advice would you give voters to help them sort through the rhetoric and to critically evaluate what they hear?
Snow: The first thing that I would tell voters is to avoid relying strictly on campaign commercials. What we know from research is that most people get information about their world from local TV news. If people really want to dig deeper you could go to campaign websites, you could go to non-partisan organizations, for instance Common Cause which has a California chapter. They will break down propositions for people and you can glean a lot more information from that. And another thing that I would tell voters is to utilize media that are outside their comfort zones. Don't just rely on the typical media that they have a habit to use. Generally with the internet, even though there's so much information available on the internet, our habit - we are habitual creatures - we go back to the same websites all the time. What happens is that it doesn't really allow you to think more critically. It generally, when you get the information from your usual websites, reinforces your already-held view. So you want to try to get some information that's going to kind of challenge your perspective.

Pomykata: That's an interesting point because do you find that - politics is a very emotional thing - do you find that sometimes people want to just read what reinforces what they think? In other words, to get them to take that step.
Snow: Sure all the time. And politicians know this too. Politicians will utilize the emotional habits of people. For instance, I noticed with Arnold Schwarzenegger there's an ad about him and it's even shot from sort of below looking up so that he appears much more strong and gubernatorial. You know, "the governor is in charge." Then they'll do a quick camera cut and they're showing his challenger, Angelides, and all of a sudden all of the color has just drifted away and it's in black and white or grey and the music overlay changes. Again this is trying to get at your emotional responses - governor good, opponent bad. And it seems like it would be a very elementary perspective of campaign to see through. But again, we're all short on time, we all utilize mental shortcuts whether you're very intelligent or not. And so you have to really guard against that, especially if you're undecided on an issue and you're relying on these campaign commercials, these emotional overlays, to provide information. They are just not good guides for that.

Pomykata: Nancy I would like to go back to a couple of years ago in an interview where you discussed your book, "Information War". You made an interesting
statement, "In a democratic society we often have a false sens of security as we hold to the idea that a free press will always protect us from propaganda, which is defined as the big lie often repeated. In reality, modern propaganda is driven more by half-truths, one-sided or incomplete information, so opinions are often easily managed and manipulated." Let's flash forward to today. What thoughts do you have on that?
Snow: Well, I do think that we have a false sense of security in a democratic society because we're sort of quick on the draw to say, "well at least we don't live under a totalitarian regime." But when you look at things in black and white and you have some wearing the white hats and some wearing the black hats, you miss a lot of the grey. And even in a society like ours, were we have the Bill of Rights, a wonderful Constitution, where we have a much more open society, where I believe the media really are more responsive and responsible and accountable for their informationÉ Where there is, thanks to our 1st Amendment, a firewall of protection between the government and the press. Even in the 21st century post-9/11, the New York Times as a media establishment said, "Hey we got it wrong." In a democracy however, they are held to a higher standard and that's were, again, we don't want to be overly confident about all of the great rights and privileges we have here. We have to be very astute stewards of our media system. And I include citizens in this because the world is watching, they're watching in Iraq, watching in Afghanistan, they're watching the world over. And we keep presenting ourselves to the world as having the best media system in the world. There is no absolute free media anywhere. I tell my students that all the time. There is no absolute free press! It's non-existent. You have to, even in a democratic society, be ever-vigilant. This is very Jeffersonian, going back to the days of Thomas Jefferson. He said that if you want a democracy then you have to be vigilant about having a free press. So this is centuries old here and were doing a pretty good job but we could do a lot better.

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