A propaganda failure

The study of propaganda makes you more sensitive to the examples you see about you every day. For my dissertation I am exploring the nature of propaganda and government, and propaganda’s ability to reproduce or resist the imbalance of power in society. When The Sun newspaper publicly proclaimed their support for the Conservative Party before the Labour Party conference, it positioned itself as form of resistant propaganda seeking to bring about political change, and marked the end of Rupert Murdoch’s support for New Labour. A cynical view would be that this switch was a reflection of growing support for The Conservatives, whom The Daily Telegraph places in the recent polls at 41% to Labour’s 28%, and was a move designed to ingratiate Murdoch with the probable future leaders of the country, rather than a sudden change in the newspaper owner’s political beliefs. Regardless of the reason, The Sun recently launched a campaign directed against the Prime Minister, accusing him of writing an inconsiderate hand-written letter of sympathy to the mother of deceased Guardsman Jamie Janes in Afghanistan. Nick Robinson points out that the issue of the letter’s legibility and possible spelling mistakes, are being used by The Sun as a proxy for the “more important debate about whether ‘our boys’ are fighting and dying in vain”. As propaganda it has somewhat backfired, with growing sympathy for the attack on Gordon Brown due to his eye-sight and his reputation for poor handwriting. It seems The Sun has misjudged the overall mood of the country, or at least the mood of those who oppose the war and believe Gordon Brown’s foreign policy in Afghanistan to be wrong. People may believe the government can do more to supply and reinforce the armed forces, to reduce the rate of casualties, but this issue is separate to that of Gordon Brown’s sincerity in his expressions of sympathy.

The letter as it appeared in The Sun with the caption: "Shoddy ... Pm's scrawled, barely legible letter with errors highlighted"