Four corner reflection

The term propaganda refers to the concept of information, ideas or rumours reshaping an individual's ideology. This is done so through the use of exaggerated statements being displayed upon the general public, hence leading to the transformation of ideologies. The prompt that I have chosen to discuss is ' The term propaganda always refers to a negative message'.

I personally disagree with the statement ' The term propaganda always refers to a negative message', in my opinion in order for a concise decision to be made on whether or not a particular propaganda is negative or not all depends on the context. Throughout the years propaganda has continued to leave it's mark on people, meaning it has either influenced their opinions negatively or positively. When it comes to deciding about how we feel regarding a particular propaganda we must consider the reason as to why it exists in the first place. We must ask ourselves why was it created, who is it targeting and who created it, through answering these questions we will be able to have a better understanding as to why we are and have been presented with such information on a poster, commercial, etc..

When propaganda is viewed as having a “negative” message it could mean a couple of things. The first thing that could cause someone to think a particular propaganda is negative could be that they are the one's being targeted in this particular piece of propaganda, just like In the ' Why Fight For Russia ?' handout the Russian's were the ones who were being targeted by the British and were set out to look like a murderous, unreliable country. Now if the Russian's got their hands on this leaflet do you think they would view this as something positive? Of course not because their country as a whole has been set up to be looked at in a negative light. This ties in with the ' Control Room' documentary and the ' A Son's Death, a Mother's Agony, A Country's Shame' article, these two sources obtain opposing message's yet at the same time they relate to one another.

The ' Control Room' documentary revolved around the Iraqi war and here it was explained how the American Army and the Al Jazeera news station had been portraying one another in their news coverage. The opposing sides had both stated that they believed that they had been portrayed in negative lights this was due to the fact that they had both been coming from a subjective point of view as opposed to an objective one. They were both doing what they thought was best in order to inform the general public about what was occurring in their world, in this case both sides of the story needed to be projected.

In terms of the ' A Son's Death, a Mother's Agony, A Country's Shame' article it was about how a former American football player had traded in his football helmet for an army one. Pat Tillman was a  soldier in the United States Army, unfortunately Pat had been killed in action. Now it was not how he died that was covered rather how his death was covered up.  The truth was that Pat Tillman was shot by an American soldier not an Afghan soldier, that was the story that was presented to the public that Pat Tillman had been shot by the enemy. His mother was the one who got to the bottom of the case and in the end the truth was set free, the story of how Pat Tillman actually died was revealed to the world. Now this made the United States Army be frowned upon and viewed in a negative light, displaying the lengths that they would go to cover up an accident. 

Although both of the cases I presented had contradicted my statement it occurred due to the fact that these cases were set out to be presented as negative from the very beginning. When presenting any form of news one must always take into account the consequences of what might occur once information is released. The key here is to always speak the truth, no matter how frighting or shocking it may be the truth must always be set free.