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.