Be careful not to assume from this video that propaganda primarily only happens in far-off dictatorships like North Korea. Propaganda is more useful in a democratic society because as Chomsky says, "If you don't behave in a dictatorship, they'll just bludgeon you over the head." To control the population in democratic societies, governments and lobbyists use propaganda to control the masses through an "artificially created public sentiment" (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F07E5D8143FE...).

Modern propaganda originated during World War I under Woodrow Wilson. Americans were isolationists and didn't want any part of the war; however, the US government wanted to enter the war so it created the Creel Commission (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information) to influence public opinion towards entering the war.

The Creel Commission was so effective that it was able to turn Americans from isolationists into German-hating warmongers in only 6 months. The Creel Commission operated for 2 years, and it is where the modern PR industry emerged from.

But this was almost 100 years ago, and the government, lobbyists, and PR agencies have been perfecting it ever since. We are the propaganda experts, not North Korea.

A few weeks ago, I formed an open-source project called "The Propaganda Project" (http://www.propagandaproject.org/) to build a Web service that will enable people to identify and catalog instances of propaganda techniques (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques) used in mass media to effectively pull back the curtain so that it loses its persuasive effect.

For example, let's take the three 60-minute cable news programs competing at 5 PM -- Glenn Beck (Fox News), Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (CNN), and Hardball with Chris Matthews Hardball (MSNBC).

The Web service will make it easy for people to identify and catalog instances of propaganda techniques used during each episode. Someone might see and tag in online video that Glenn Beck used a "glittering generality" at 1 min and 12 seconds into the show and an "appeal to fear" at 1 min 33 seconds. Someone else might see that Chris Matthews used a "red herring" at 1 min 20 seconds and Wolf Blitzer used a "quote out of context" at 1 min 40 seconds.

My premise is that there is a finite number of shows and an abundance of politically-passionate people that love pointing out the other-side's propaganda. Over the course of an hour-long program, people might be able to identify 30 or more instances of propaganda techniques used in each program.

If the service becomes popular, and people use it to check to see if their favorite shows are using propaganda or if the other-side is, the networks won't want to be known as the networks with the most propagandist shows so they will force the shows' producers to reduce the ratio of propaganda per episode.

This is a brand new project that's just getting off the ground so please give me your feedback, and let me know if you want to help.