What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586485601 ISBN 13: 9781586485603

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2007

Synopsis

Propaganda. Manipulation. Spin. Control. It has ever been thus—or has it? On the eve of the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's classic essay on propaganda (Politics and the English Language), writers have been invited to explore what Orwell didn't—or couldn't—know. Their responses, framed in pithy, focused essays, range far and wide: from the effect of television and computing, to the vast expansion of knowledge about how our brains respond to symbolic messages, to the merger of journalism and entertainment, to lessons learned during and after a half-century of totalitarianism. Together, they paint a portrait of a political culture in which propaganda and mind control are alive and well (albeit in forms and places that would have surprised Orwell). The pieces in this anthology sound alarm bells about the manipulation and misinformation in today's politics, and offer guideposts for a journalism attuned to Orwellian tendencies in the 21st century.

About this title

About the Author:

Formerly the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Orville Schell is the author of over a dozen books and a frequent contributor to major newspapers and magazines. He divides his time between New York and Berkeley. Andras Szanto, is the co-author and editor of several books, and has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and many other publications. He lives in New York.

From Publishers Weekly:

Three years before he published 1984, Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language, an attack on the use of political speech "in defense of the indefensible." That essay (reprinted in full) serves as the point of departure for these 20 articles on modern methods of American propaganda, which editor and freelance journalist Szántó calls "subtle, insidious, sugarcoated, focus-grouped, and market-tested." Contributors are consistently thought-provoking, but happily diverse in background and concern: Farnaz Fassihi, senior Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, takes on war reporting; USC journalism professor Martin Kaplan explains why he refers to television news as "the Infotainment Freak Show"; and cognitive scientist George Lakoff discusses the psychological principles manipulated to goose the efficacy of political messages. An epilogue from moneyed progressive George Soros (whose Open Society Institute co-sponsored the publication) expresses hope that this book will "inoculate the public against false arguments"; timed to coincide with the 2008 presidential election, Szántó's collection should indeed resonate with Americans increasingly put out by the obfuscating tactics of many political campaigns (and careers).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1586485601
• ISBN 13: 9781586485603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Andras Szanto