Category talk:American propaganda films

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Inclusion for this category has to be better defined, otherwise, it's subjective POV. --Pwnage8 (talk) 14:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Potential for Only Biased Interpretations

This category really need to be limited in what is included in it. Otherwise, the how thing is rather subjective and unscientific. Guidlines must be set in place, as many users have made guidelines for this category, but have only selectively employed them. — comment added by Scapler (talk • contribs) 23:21, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. In fact I added two of Michael Moore's films to the category to illustrate precisely this point. The definition of propaganda (taken from its page here) is the following:

Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large number of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience.

Any essay, book, or documentary worth its salt argues for a main thesis, presents information in support of that thesis, and tries to sway the audience to the position of the author. Thus Category:American propaganda films could be broadly interpreted as being coextensive with Category:American documentary films.

But it gets much worse than this; because the term "propaganda" is generally regarded as pejorative (despite the fact that there's nothing wrong with trying to persuade an audience with arguments), any editor can add any documentary to this category simply in order to disparage it, and have a valid rationale for doing so. Without a clear criteria to determine inclusion, bias is not only possible, but inevitable; for evidence, just peruse a few of the recent films that are and are not included. I suggest one of the following options:

• State unambiguous criteria for inclusion in this category. This criteria should include 1) the film should be labeled as a propaganda film in the introduction to the article about it; 2) the film should be regarded as propaganda by historians, not merely characterized as propaganda by ideological opponents of the message of the film (this would automatically rule out any recently released films).
• Rename the category to "American wartime propaganda films" and restrict it to only include films released during a war (including anti-communist films produced during the cold war) or when the nation was considering entering a war which had as a primary purpose to increase public support of that war.
• Leave the name as-is, but restrict inclusion to films which meet the requirement of the previous suggestion.

Any of these suggestions would require the removal of films such as Bowling for Columbine and Expelled from the list, which I would view as a good thing, since accusing a film of being propaganda is not the role of an encyclopedia. Wikipedia's role should be to cite prominent claims that a film is propaganda (as is done quite appropriately in the Expelled article), and categorize films which can be uncontrovertially labeled as propaganda (e.g. D-Day -1, which was actually produced by the government to persuade people to buy war bonds) in categories such as this one. Remember, the difference between a propaganda piece and a documentary which supports a thesis is largely one's point of view.

-- 75.21.74.124 (talk) 13:51, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I removed the category from the michael moore films as they are documentaries. Now, I don't pretend they aren't biased, but the category is propaganda films, not films with bias. Propaganda films are films such as those produced by the government in wartime about how you can do your bit and stuff like that. It's not for documentaries which happen to go against the status quo. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I put up a proposal for inclusion criteria at Category talk:Propaganda films. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I should state that I'm the same person as 75.21.74.124. skeptical scientist (talk) 20:11, 1 August 2008 (UTC)