Propaganda Laundering

What does it mean "to launder"? In a literal sense, it means to wash or to clean. When money is laundered, it is usually under the guise of some legitimate business. The first sentence of w:Money Laundering reads "Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source." In other words, if the source does not appear to be legitimate and trustworthy, then it is not by definition laundering.

How would one define the term "Propaganda Laundering" or "Information Laundering"? The first sentence of w:Information laundering states "Information laundering is the surfacing of news, false or otherwise, from unverified sources into the mainstream." Can you spot the problem here? Do you think it would work to launder one million dollars in cash if, when you were asked where you got it, you replied "an unverified source"? Even more absurdly, w:Media manipulation#Propaganda laundering describes propaganda laundering as "using a less trusted or less popular platform to publish a story of dubious origin or veracity for the purposes of reporting on that report, rather than the story itself". How would a less trusted source make information appear more legitimate?

Obviously neither definition makes sense. On 12/9/23, I created a Wiktionary entry and tried to work up a decent definition, and I did not get farther than ^[1] until the entry was wrested from me after a back-and-forth ^[2] and changed to something nonsensical. I had written it as "The act of taking information from a potentially biased source and presenting it in a journalistic, disinterested, or otherwise seemingly objective and uncritical manner (e.g. as a "trusted" source), thereby giving it wider exposure while lending it credibility and potentially obscuring vested interests." The other editor locked it and changed it to "The act of legitimizing misinformation by presenting it in the same manner as widely trusted news sources, in order to increase its exposure and lend it credibility with the target audience; in some cases, the process may be repeated several times, through increasingly trusted sources." Consider their phrasing, "by presenting it in the same manner as widely trusted news sources", as if to suggest "widely trusted news sources" can't or don't directly launder propaganda themselves. The problem is simple: a source that's not widely trusted has no capacity to launder propaganda. Their definition and those I quoted from Wikipedia are vacuous. They never apply. The use of the term "misinformation" is also suspect. "Information" would do just as well, as my definition had already identified the source as partial. The word "misinformation" is a perennial member of the mass media's brain-numbing argot. A weaker word than "propaganda", it carries the connotation of information with an obscure, "unofficial" or perhaps foreign origin. The pair of absurd definitions quoted from Wikipedia reflect this. Again, there is this bogus, contradictory implication that "widely trusted sources" could not possibly be party to propaganda laundering. The entire definition was bastardized to this effect. It fails to distinguish and describe the relationship between 1. the launderer, and 2. the self-interested, partial source on whose behalf the information is laundered.

Therefore I shall give the term its natural definition here: Propaganda laundering occurs when a trusted source of information (e.g. a trusted news organization) uncritically communicates information on behalf of a partial source, thereby making the information appear more credible.

This definition is attestable, see ^[3] and more recently ^[4]. It has essentially the same meaning as the one I had originally added when I created the Wiktionary entry. While not a direct attestation, Herman and Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" demonstrates that this is a socially-important concept. In the opening paragraph, Herman and Chomsky state their thesis quite plainly: "It is our view that, among their other functions, the media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them." If memory serves, they did not use the phrase "propaganda laundering" but it would have been a befitting choice. It's certainly more convenient than the phrases they use; "the Western propaganda system", "the propaganda model", etc. Why they didn't, I cannot say for certain. The book also exhibits other 'sub-optimal' word choices. It's still a good read, but I digress. At any rate, the social relevance of this concept arguably justifies the existence of a concise term.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave them on the talk page.

AP295 (discuss • contribs) 03:35, 14 February 2024 (UTC), expanded on 4/16

My variation on the Old Person of Basing [1]: