A study generating national attention illustrates that Bill O’Reilly makes use consistently of propaganda techniques identified in the 1930's.
Professor Mike Conway is co-author of a study focusing on the oft-discussed media personality Bill O’Reilly. While many have accused the Fox News anchor of inciting fear and bias among his audience, what makes Conway and his colleagues’ research unique is quantitative data to back up their claims.
Conway, along with IU telecommunications professor Maria Elizabeth Grabe and journalism doctoral student Kevin Grieves, picked up where the Institute for Propaganda Analysis left off in the 1930s, using a system of coding speech that analyzes the use of propaganda.
"It was supposed to be a way for the public to determine if someone is giving them propaganda instead of facts," Conway said.
The IPA originally studied the rhetoric of Catholic priest Charles Coughlin, whose popular radio broadcasts during the years linking World War I and World War II often voiced anti-Semitic and even pro-Nazi views.
They looked for the seven elements of propaganda previously identified by the IPA: name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, card stacking and band wagon. Techniques were measured by the number of times they occurred in a minute, a strategy Conway said he thought would counteract the different lengths of the two men’s broadcasts.
This is a borrowed reprint originally posted on May 16, 2007 at 10:02 a.m on the website of the Indiana University School of Journalism. Follow the link below to their original article. It contains download links for the PDF of the original study at the bottom of their article.
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