The question, "Is there such a thing as accidental propaganda?" In other words, if there is no intent to propagandize, is the effect of a piece of writing or film sufficient to justify calling it "propaganda?" I bring this up because the Christian Datoc Washington Examiner piece I discussed yesterday has some interesting quirks of language. These quirks may have had effects on readers that were unintended by both Datoc and The Examiner. Without mind reading skills, I have no way of knowing the intentionality. Regardless, I think these quirks of writing are worth a brief look.
I think that I'm correct in saying that The Examiner is considered conservative. Therefore one might, in today's bipolar political environment, expect Examiner pieces to possibly be Kennedy-friendly as a way to undermine President Biden. Yet some of the language choices in yesterday's Datoc piece did Kennedy no favors.
For example, Datoc uses the line, "Kennedy claimed in a recently unearthed video that COVID-19 was genetically engineered to protect Chinese and Jewish people." This is a very curious translation or interpretation of what Kennedy actually said. Kennedy did not "claim" anything. He said that some people claimed it but did not himself take any ownership of it. Then the phrase "genetically engineered" comes into play. The problem is that one could torturously interpret "genetically engineered" multiple ways. Most readers would likely read it as implying human intervention or direction. Technically, however, one could say "genetically engineered" to simply refer to the virus engineering itself via natural selection or other processes.
Another line from Datoc's piece was "During Monday's briefing, however, Jean-Pierre directly refuted Kennedy's claims." First of all, she did not. The word "refute" has meaning. "Trying to refute" is not synonymous with "refute." Second, Datoc is gauging the nature and effectiveness of Jean-Pierre's presentation for the reader by baldly claiming that Jean-Pierre "refuted" Kennedy. Datoc is offering himself in a judge role, which isn't really his job. Worse for him, he got it wrong. Jean-Pierre did not refute Kennedy.
Conclusion
I can hypothesize that Datoc misstepped journalistically because he was reporting under deadline immediately after the press conference event, and he presumed that he was conveying the gist of the story. I think that he took too much interpretative responsibility onto himself and botched the piece with a couple of bad word choices. I suspect neither he nor The Examiner are very happy about it.
Bob Dietz
July 18, 2023
