In the 1930s, Americans worried about propaganda, but different people worried about different things. Some people worried that home-grown propagandists were amplifying the messages of the Nazis in Germany. Others worried about the messages of the communists in the Soviet Union.
In 1949, Harold Lasswell, a political science professor, proposed a series of tests for identifying propaganda. One was a correspondence test. If the content of your favorite news commentator’s broadcast corresponded with the content of a known propaganda channel — say the newsletter for a political party — that’s evidence that you have tuned into propaganda, not news.
On this line of reasoning, Father Coughlin’s broadcasts were not news commentary, but Nazi propaganda. Pravda was not a newspaper but Soviet propaganda. When people ask me about Fox News, I say it’s a profitable business but I can’t see it as a news organization. Can you?
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