The Propaganda Zone

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen or heard Bill O'Reilly, but now there is documented evidence.

What's the most common tactic in O'Reilly's rhetorical arsenal? Is it logic? No. Satire? Nope. The pun? Nuh-uh.

Bill O'Reilly's favorite rhetorical device is, apparently, the insult.

The IU researchers found that O'Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.

"It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," said Mike Conway, assistant professor in the IU School of Journalism. "He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."

What's more, O'Reilly's name-calling is consistent with some of the most commonly-used propaganda devices in political speech.

What the IU researchers found in their study, "Villains, Victims and Virtuous in Bill O'Reilly's 'No Spin Zone': Revisiting World War Propaganda Techniques," was that he was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes -- such as "villians" or downright "evil" -- to people and groups.

Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns.

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 oppositie 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.

IU's researchers focused on Bill O'Reilly, but with respect to the use of propaganda devices, their findings would be consistent with most of the political speech employed by right-wing pundits and commentators. Think about Sean Hannity, whose rhetorical vocabulary consists almost entirely of glittering generalities, card-stacking, straw men, and false choices. Think about Ann Coulter, whose very job appears to be hurling insults at people and groups to the loud approval of her constituents. Think about Rush Limbaugh, who has refined the plain folks appeal beyond anything Father Coughlin ever dreamed of.

I have no doubt that tonight's O'Reilly Factor will open with a "Talking Points Memo" about why Indiana University hates America and wants the terrorists to win.