Rather than let you see a full range of relevant information from which you can make your own determination, Wikipedia articles appear to use the “What You See Is All There Is” method of propaganda messaging. If all you know is (a potentially biased) perspective, then you will adopt that perspective.
““In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.” This quote is from Ben Franklin but it leaves out so much context as to be used incorrectly today. It relies on the modern day readers perspective that a vaccination existed then, but perhaps he was an anti-vaxxer. In fact, their “innoculation” had a 1 in 50 fatality rate during smallpox outbreaks. And it was not until about 100 years later the concept of an effective vaccine came into play. This quote works as propaganda because of the “What You See Is All There Is” phenomena – the viewer makes assumptions based on our contemporary situation.
Al Jazeera runs a column by a professor of philosophy who says capitalism is a failure and that only government can deliver the “innovation” necessary to deliver vaccines for Covid-19. Al Jazeera fails to note his background as an avid socialist member of groups opposed to the “neoliberal capitalist model”. Failing to disclose this background context turns this into a propaganda piece versus not legitimate analysis of issues.
A pseudo news story – one of many – proclaims not enough women are in “STEM” fields. This conclusion depends on how you define “STEM” fields. By leaving out many fields of “science”, they are looking primarly at “TE” – technology and engineering only. When all “S” (science) and “M” (math) are included, the discrepancies are not nearly as large. The root issue, though, is that many fields have a dominant gender – but this issue is ignored in favor of focusing exclusively on women in “TE” fields (while pretending this group is “STEM”). For example, about 90% of nurses, which employs millions of workers, are women – yet “health science” is typically excluded from the charts and data tables used to show us that women are not studying “STEM” – because they mean “TE”.
Propaganda messaging played and continues to play an enormous role in the public’s view on the Affordable Care Act a.k.a. ObamaCare. For example, Democrats have made pre-existing condition exclusions the centerpiece of their 2018 public commentary on the ACA.
Yet, never explained is that most Americans already had protections against pre-existing condition exclusions – it was the individual market that did not have protections (details in the post). Further, contrary to what you have been led to believe, the ACA does, in fact, establish a pre-existing condition waiting period. The ACA did not eliminate pre-existing condition waiting periods (see post for details).
The propaganda messaging used the methods of Fear, Assertion, Lying and What You See Is All There Is and has been extraordinarily effective. The Republican opposition has been clumsy and largely counterproductive with utterly ineffective propaganda messaging of its own.
(This is a major update to a previously posted item on this topic – formatting, editing and a better explanation of the propaganda methods used have been done to improve the previous post and make it easier to understand.)