Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History (2022) by Andie Tucher

Long before the current preoccupation with "fake news," American newspapers routinely ran stories that were not quite, strictly speaking, true. Today, a firm boundary between fact and fakery is a hallmark of journalistic practice, yet for many readers and publishers across more than three centuries, this distinction has seemed slippery or even irrelevant. Early American journalism was characterized by a hodgepodge of straightforward reporting, partisan broadsides, humbug, tall tales, and embellishment. Around the start of the 20th century, journalists who were determined to improve the reputation of their craft established professional norms and the goal of objectivity. However, Tucher argues, the creation of outward forms of factuality unleashed new opportunities for falsehood: news doesn't have to be true as long as it looks true. Propaganda, disinformation, and advocacy-whether in print, on the radio, on television, or online could be crafted to resemble the real thing. Shedding light on the long history of today's disputes over disinformation, this book is a timely consideration of what happens to public life when news is not exactly true.

Pulp Empire: A Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism (2021) by Paul S. Hirsch

In the 1940s and 50s, comic books were some of the most popular, and most unfiltered, entertainment in the United States. Publishers sold hundreds of millions of copies a year of violent, racist, and luridly sexual comics to Americans of all ages until a 1954 Senate investigation led to a censorship code that nearly destroyed the industry. But this was far from the first time the US government actively involved itself with comics; it was simply the most dramatic manifestation of a long, strange relationship between high-level policymakers and a medium that even artists and writers often dismissed as a creative sewer. In Pulp Empire, Paul S. Hirsch uncovers the gripping untold story of how the US government both attacked and appropriated comic books to help wage World War II and the Cold War, promote official, and clandestine, foreign policy, and deflect global critiques of American racism. As Hirsch details, during World War II, and the concurrent golden age of comic books, government agencies worked directly with comic book publishers to stoke hatred for the Axis powers while simultaneously attempting to dispel racial tensions at home. Later, as the Cold War defense industry ballooned, and as comic book sales reached historic heights, the government again turned to the medium, this time trying to win hearts and minds in the decolonizing world through cartoon propaganda. Hirsch's groundbreaking research weaves together a wealth of previously classified material, including secret wartime records, official legislative documents, and caches of personal papers. His book explores the uneasy contradiction of how comics were both vital expressions of American freedom and unsettling glimpses into the national id, scourged and repressed on the one hand and deployed as official propaganda on the other. Pulp Empire is a riveting illumination of underexplored chapters in the histories of comic books, foreign policy, and race.

Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind (2024) by Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats — the essential tool kit for psychological warfare — have evolved from military weapons used against foreign adversaries into tools used in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America's deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin's Revolutionary War-era fake newspaper and reaching its apotheosis with disinformation during 21st-century elections. The nation's secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling, fashioned by operatives who drew on their experiences in the ad industry and as science-fiction writers. Now, through a weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged, it has found its way into the hands of culture warriors, in conflicts from school board fights over LGBTQ+ students to campaigns against feminist viewpoints. Stories Are Weapons delivers a powerful counter-narrative, as Newitz highlights the process of psychological disarmament, speaking with Indigenous archivists preserving their histories in new ways, activist storytellers, and technology experts transforming social media.

Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How To Build Immunity (2023) by Sander Van der Linden

From fake news to conspiracy theories, from inflammatory memes to misleading headlines, misinformation has swiftly become the defining problem of our era. The crisis threatens the integrity of our democracies, our ability to cultivate trusting relationships, and even our physical and psychological well-being — yet most attempts to combat it have proven insufficient. In Foolproof, one of the world's leading experts on misinformation lays out a crucial new paradigm for understanding and defending ourselves against the worldwide infodemic.

Dogwhistles and Figleaves: How Manipulative Language Spreads Racism and Falsehood (2024) by Jennifer Mather Saul

It is widely accepted that political discourse in recent years has become more openly racist and more filled with wildly implausible conspiracy theories. Dogwhistles and Figleaves explores certain ways in which such changes — both of which defied previously settled norms of political speech — have been brought about. Jennifer Saul shows that two linguistic devices, dogwhistles and figleaves, have played a crucial role. Some dogwhistles (such as "88," used by Nazis online to mean "Heil Hitler") serve to disguise messages that would otherwise be rejected as unacceptable, allowing them to be transmitted surreptitiously. Other dogwhistles (like the 1988 "Willie Horton" ad) work by influencing people in ways that they are not aware of, and which they would likely reject were they aware. Figleaves (such as "just asking questions") take messages that could easily be recognized as unacceptable, and provide just enough cover that people become more willing to accept them. Importantly, these work against the background of a divided public. They are particularly effective in influencing people who are conflicted yet malleable — those who don't want to be racist, for example, but are willing to be convinced that something which seems racist really isn't. Saul shows how these dogwhistles and figleaves have both exploited and widened existing divisions in society and normalized racist and conspiracist speech.

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (2002) by Noam Chomsky

Chomsky's back pocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control has been updated and expanded into a two-section book and redesigned following the acclaimed format of his Open Media anti-war bestseller, 9-11. The new edition of Media Control also includes 'The Journalist from Mars, ' Chomsky's 2002 talk on the media coverage of America's 'new war on terrorism.' Chomsky begins by asserting two models of democracy — one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky 'propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state, ' and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson's Creel Commission 'succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population, ' to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war. 

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (2002) by Edward S. Herman

In this path-breaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order. Based on a series of case studies the media's dichotomous treatment of "worthy" versus "unworthy" victims, "legitimizing" and "meaningless" Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina-Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media's behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include how the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994–1995, the media's handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media's treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.