Bad news
Over the last ten years new terms have entered the English language. We have 'spin doctors' who, on a 'bad news day', manipulate information to protect their government's 'media flank.' Terminology of this sort is particularly common on military operations, where 'media minders' supervise 'pools' of those journalists who have not been 'embedded', so that their reports can be 'shaped' to conform to the dictates of an all embracing information strategy.
Many deplore the news management of the current age, hearkening back to earlier periods, when fearlessly independent reporters exposed wickedness and brought governments down.
' ... the British government manipulated information to increase the chances of national survival.'
Of course, there never was such a time. Beginning with the emergence of the Greek city states in the fifth century BC, all governments have attempted to manipulate information to their advantage, and have often suppressed those who have sought to tell a different story. This tendency is most apparent when the very existence of the state is under threat. In extreme situations governments can interpret chance events - storms, fortuitous deaths, and so on - as evidence of the intervention of an external agency (often supernatural) working on their behalf.
Such agencies can come in the form of fate (Athens 480BC), a divine wind (Japan 1281), a protestant God (England 1588), a special providence (Prussia 1762) - example could be piled upon example. In the early summer of 1940 Britain's very existence was threatened, and unsurprisingly, the British government manipulated information to increase the chances of national survival.
Published: 2004-02-06
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