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From Roger Ebert’s “The O’Reilly Procedure” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 14 June 2009):

The seven propaganda devices include:

• Name calling — giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
• Glittering generalities — the opposite of name calling;
• Card stacking — the selective use of facts and half-truths;
• Bandwagon — appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
• Plain folks — an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are “of the people”;
• Transfer — carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
• Testimonials — involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.

Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, language & literature, on writing, politics