In August 1984 I was a Fulbright scholar to the Federal Republic of Germany.  Ronald Reagan was about to be elected to his second term as president and I was no fan of the Hollywood actor-turned-politician.   

The first week I arrived in Germany, Reagan made his infamous joke...

Last week, one of my former students wrote me about the Whitehouse/Fox News Channel hullabaloo.  

Jennie was enrolled in the first class I ever taught at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California.  The class was “War, Media and Propaganda,” and I taught it in spring 2002. ...

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. Luke 12:48 

The concept of noblesse oblige applies to President Barack Obama’s win of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.  Roughly translated as...

On Monday, October 5, 2009, Americans woke up to first place.  This was before Brett Favre had his legendary night against his former team, the Green Bay Packers, and took over the individual spot.  

The U.S. moved from last year’s 7 spot to number 1, and we have...

Today's Google News has the wedding of reality TV star Khloe Kardashian and Los Angeles Lakers' forward Lamar Odom getting more hits than the passing of New York Times columnist, William Safire. Now granted, Khloe and Lamar have more blogger followers, including Perez Hilton's "wedding deets" to share with those...

Rhetoric is just fine until someone gets hurt.

This seemed to be the message of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when asked Thursday about anti-Obama vitriol surrounding health care reform:

I think we all have to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We are a free country and...

Composure. Joe Wilson lost it Wednesday night. And now Defending U.S. Open Champion Serena Williams lost it Saturday night en route to her highly favored fourth U.S. Open Championship.

I'm a longtime fan of both Williams' sisters. I've covered tennis tournaments in the past and have seen them up...

I got a lot of razzing yesterday about Joe Wilson from my Syracuse University students.

We were talking about persuasion and influence, what to do and what not to do and how my fellow South Carolinian was in the "not to do" category.

I shared that I have mingled...

Barackaganda

A person whose work I respect very much recently wrote the following:

My own view is that attempting to manipulate perceptions directly, without recourse to the conditions that created those reputations in the first place, is a pretty good definition of propaganda, and what's more, it doesn't work.

The...

I can't imagine what it must have been like for the families of the Syracuse University students to get the news on December 21, 1988. Pan Am Flight 103 exploded into a million pieces over the tiny Scottish town of Lockerbie, forever now associated with all 270 victims of one...

Jane Velez Mitchell calls it the war against women. Nancy Grace spotlights the missing, and presumed murdered, woman or girl du jour.

All violence is condemnable, but is there anything comparable to the sheer quantity of women killed in domestic violence situations?

The latest macabre example began as...

When it comes to Kim Jong-Il, nobody, not even political spin machinist Bill Clinton, can fully compete with the mass manipulation pageantry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Evan Ramstad of the Wall Street Journal referred to the Clinton trip as a "boon" for KJ:

Mr. Kim scored...

Just last Friday we lost the most trusted man in America. This week we've anointed a fake journalist his replacement. Or so Time magazine would have us believe.

http://www.timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_417.html

Nothing to get apoplectic about, even if you are Anderson Cooper or Rachel Maddow fans. This poll,...

Last month we lost the moonwalker. Today we lost the man on the moon.

Walter Cronkite, dead at 92, had a long physical life but his forever legacy is trust. Plain and simple, Cronkite was more credible in his journalistic career than most any American president.

Why did...

Several years ago the Governator starred in a tourism ad that was one wild ride of commercial propaganda. The theme was to poke fun at the California laid back lifestyle and make double entendres about work versus play in the land of fun and sun. It's beautifully shot, with all...

In the fall of 1995, I ventured out on my first full-time academic position. I had moved from Washington, DC to an Our Town-like village in New Hampshire called Henniker, still known as "the only Henniker on earth." Then teaching political science at New England College, I waxed nostalgic for...

Ben Bagdikian is one of my media heroes. The 7th edition of his classic book, The Media Monopoly, was published by Beacon Press in 2004 as The New Media Monopoly. Bagdikian is one of those authors whose predictions earned him the Chicken Little label of credulity. When he first published...

Americans are uniquely obsessed with our good name the world over. After all, we invented the persuasion industries from advertising to public relations and no other country has a more recognized image, good and bad, across the planet.

This makes it all the more puzzling why the position of...

Larry Tye is the author of The Father of Spin: Edward R. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations. He is currently writing a book about the legendary baseball player, Satchel Paige. I sat down with him last week at the Newhouse School, Syracuse University, to talk about Edward Bernays,...

In May 2004 I gave a speech at an ACLU fundraiser in Los Angeles. Beforehand I was told that the actor James Whitmore would introduce me. He said words to this effect: "Now ladies and gentlemen, I work as an actor and play different roles. But we have a great...