Keeping The Word

"Words are slippery," warned Historian Henry Adams. The word propaganda has slipped quite a bit. At one time it described any information, true or false, that was spread to promote a cause. But today nearly everyone understands it as referring to distortions of the truth. That did not sway the U.S. Supreme Court last week. It ruled 5 to 3 that the Justice Department could invoke a World War II-era law to label as "political propaganda" three Canadian documentaries on acid rain and nuclear war, including a 1983 Academy Award winner. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 1942 defined propaganda in its broader sense, without designating it as true or false. Therefore, he said, the Government's use of the term to classify the films "has no pejorative connotation," and to require that they be registered under that law does not chill First Amendment freedoms. The dissenters complained that the majority reasoning smacked of newspeak. Wrote Justice Harry Blackmun: "It simply strains credulity for the court to assert that 'propaganda' is a neutral classification."