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The Parkland Institute’s report on “parental rights” is heavily ideologically slanted. It repeatedly frames parental involvement as a threat to children’s well-being, assumes bad faith on the part of parents and policymakers, and cherry-picks anecdotes—often from the U.S.—while ignoring Canadian legal frameworks that balance children’s rights with parental guidance. It conflates routine educational transparency with medical care access, overstating risks to vulnerable youth. Below, we break down the report’s claims and set the record straight.
1. Claim: “‘Parental rights’ is being deployed to justify legislative changes that restrict inclusive practices…” (p. 4)
Refutation: Alberta’s amendments require parental notification and opt-in consent only for instruction mainly and explicitly about gender identity, sexual orientation, or human sexuality. Incidental references are not covered, maintaining inclusivity while respecting parental involvement.
2. Claim: “These measures… often override children’s rights and ignore the perspectives of supportive parents…” (p. 5)
Refutation: Canadian law balances children’s rights with parental guidance. Alberta’s policy aligns with this principle, ensuring parental engagement without undermining children’s rights.
3. Claim: “Conservatives generally disagree… that children may have rights independent of what their parents may decide is best for them.” (p. 7)
Refutation: This overgeneralizes. Canadian legal frameworks, including the mature minor doctrine, recognize children’s rights independent of parental decisions.
4. Claim: “Such framing of parental rights… is a clear threat to the rights of vulnerable children.” (p. 6)
Refutation: The policy actually protects children by ensuring parents are informed and involved. Presenting it as a “clear threat” ignores the benefits of parental engagement and legal safeguards.
5. Claim: “Parental opt-in for instruction on gender and sexuality… curtailing access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and youth.” (p. 8)
Refutation: Educational policies do not regulate medical care. Access to gender-affirming care is governed by healthcare policy, not school curricula.
6. Claim: “Conservative governments… moved to enshrine a conservative view of ‘parental rights’ in law.” (p. 9)
Refutation: Alberta’s changes are procedural—requiring notice and opt-in—not ideological. The policy simply formalizes parental involvement in education.
7. Claim: “Parents angered by the government overriding their right to support their children’s access to gender-affirming health care.” (p. 8)
Refutation: This conflates education with healthcare. Alberta’s educational policy does not interfere with parental involvement in medical decisions.
8. Claim: “Complaints [about school library materials] actually came from [advocacy groups]… familiar to anyone who has been following… Moms for Liberty’s attacks on books.” (p. 10)
Refutation: Advocacy group involvement doesn’t negate the legitimacy of parental concerns about content. The policy ensures parents are informed, regardless of who raises issues.
9. Claim: “The law… does not give parents the right to override their children’s rights.” (p. 11)
Refutation: True, but incomplete. Canadian law emphasizes balance. Parents still play a key role in guiding their children, especially regarding sensitive educational content.
10. Claim: “Public education… beset by moral panics and wedge issues.” (p. 12)
Refutation: Labeling legitimate parental concerns as “moral panic” is dismissive. The policy simply promotes transparency and communication between schools and families.
Bottom line: The Parkland report is ideologically driven, cherry-picks anecdotes, and overstates risks while ignoring Canadian law and the benefits of parental engagement. Alberta’s policy seeks balance, transparency, and respect for both parental and children’s rights—exactly what a fair, neutral approach should do.
References
- Parkland Institute Report: Challenging ‘Parental Rights’: A Primer for Parents, Students, Educators, and Advocates
- Alberta Education Act Amendments: Supporting Alberta Students and Families
- Parental Rights in Education: What are the legal rights of parents to be notified and opt-in for instruction?
- Children’s Rights in Canada: Rights of children
- Children’s Participation Rights: Review of Children’s Participatory Rights in Canada
In today’s media-saturated world, we’re bombarded with stories. Some inform, others persuade, and many subtly shape how we see reality. But how do we distinguish a harmless news report from a crafted narrative or even propaganda? This is the first post in a series dedicated to equipping you with the tools to identify narratives in Western media—starting with clear definitions of what a media narrative is and what propaganda means, with all its nuances. Let’s dive in, grounded in curiosity and a relentless pursuit of truth.
What Is a Media Narrative?
A media narrative is a cohesive story or framework that media outlets use to present events, issues, or ideas. It’s not just the facts but the way those facts are selected, framed, and connected to create meaning. Narratives give structure to the chaos of information, helping audiences make sense of the world—but they also shape perceptions, often unconsciously.
For example, consider coverage of a protest. One outlet might frame it as “citizens demanding justice,” emphasizing personal stories of grievance. Another might call it “unrest threatening public order,” highlighting property damage. Both may report accurate details, but the framing—the narrative—guides how you feel about the event. Narratives aren’t inherently bad; they’re how humans process complexity. The catch? They’re curated, and that curation reflects editorial choices, biases, or agendas.
Philosopher Jean Baudrillard, in his work Simulacra and Simulation (1981), warned that media can create “hyperreal” versions of reality—representations that feel more real than the truth itself. When a news story repeatedly emphasizes certain details (say, a politician’s gaffe) while ignoring others (their policy record), it crafts a hyperreal narrative that can overshadow reality. Recognizing this is the first step to questioning what you’re being told.
What Is Propaganda? A Nuanced View
Propaganda is a loaded term, often conjuring images of wartime posters or authoritarian regimes. But its reality is more complex, especially in modern Western media. Formally, propaganda is communication designed to manipulate beliefs, emotions, or behaviors to serve a specific agenda. Unlike education, which seeks to inform, or persuasion, which argues openly, propaganda often conceals its intent, prioritizing impact over truth.
However, propaganda isn’t just bald-faced lies. It thrives in half-truths, out-of-context facts, or what Friedrich Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom (1944), might describe as the distortion of truth to serve centralized power or ideology. Hayek argued that control over information—whether by governments or institutions—can erode individual freedom by shaping what people accept as true. Similarly, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, in Manufacturing Consent (1988), revealed how media can serve elite interests by filtering information to align with corporate or political agendas. They described a “propaganda model” where news is shaped through ownership, advertising pressures, and reliance on official sources, subtly nudging public consent toward desired narratives. In media, this might look like:
- Half-Truths: Reporting a politician’s controversial quote without the context that softens or explains it.
- Out-of-Context Truths: Highlighting a single statistic (e.g., crime rates) to push a narrative while ignoring broader trends.
- Marrying Truth to a Lie: Pairing a factual statement with a misleading implication, like suggesting a policy caused an economic dip when other factors were at play.
These tactics don’t fit the cartoonish image of propaganda, but they’re effective because they’re subtle. A news outlet might report a true event but frame it to align with a broader agenda—say, amplifying fear to drive clicks or support a political stance. Baudrillard’s concept of the “precession of simulacra” applies here: the narrative becomes the reality, detached from the original truth.
Propaganda’s nuance lies in its spectrum. A sensational headline might lean propagandistic by exaggerating for attention, while a state-backed disinformation campaign manipulates systematically. Both distort, but their intent and scale differ. Understanding this spectrum empowers you to spot propaganda without dismissing all media as untrustworthy.
Why This Matters—and What’s Next
Media narratives and propaganda shape how we vote, what we fear, and who we trust. Left unchecked, they can distort our grasp of reality, as Baudrillard cautioned, or erode our ability to think independently, as Hayek feared. But by learning to identify these forces, you reclaim agency. You start seeing the strings behind the stories.
In the coming posts, we’ll explore practical tools to dissect Western media narratives—how to spot framing, question sources, and uncover hidden agendas. We’ll draw on real-world examples, from election coverage to social issue reporting, to make these skills tangible. For now, ask yourself: What stories am I being told, and who’s telling them?
Curious to dig deeper? Next time, we’ll break down how narratives are built, using a recent news story as a case study. Stay tuned, and let’s keep chasing the truth together.
Jacques Ellul’s Definition of Propaganda Compared to Common Understanding
Jacques Ellul, in his seminal work Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1962), presents a nuanced and expansive definition of propaganda that diverges significantly from its common understanding. Commonly, propaganda is perceived as deliberate, often deceptive messaging by governments or organizations to manipulate public opinion for political ends, such as wartime posters or authoritarian regime broadcasts. Ellul, however, redefines propaganda as a sociological phenomenon inherent to modern, literate, industrial societies, encompassing not only overt political campaigns but also subtle, pervasive influences embedded in media, culture, and technology. This essay contrasts the popular perception of propaganda as obvious, old-style war propaganda with its modern, subtler form, clarifying how propaganda works today by marrying truth to a lie, providing truth out of context, or being misleading in ways that mask the propagandist’s true intent.
The Common Perception: Old-Style Obvious War Propaganda
Most people envision propaganda as the blatant, heavy-handed messaging seen during wartime or under authoritarian regimes. This “old-style” propaganda includes iconic examples like World War I and II posters—think “Uncle Sam Wants You” or “Loose Lips Sink Ships”—or Nazi broadcasts demonizing enemies. These efforts were characterized by:
- Clear Intent: The goal was unmistakable, whether to boost morale, recruit soldiers, or vilify opponents.
- Emotional Appeals: Fear, patriotism, or anger were leveraged to provoke immediate reactions.
- Obvious Bias: Exaggerations, stereotypes, or outright lies made the manipulation evident to a critical observer.
This type of propaganda was easy to spot due to its overt nature and reliance on simplistic, often deceitful narratives. The common perception thus frames propaganda as a tool of specific historical moments—wars or dictatorships—rather than an ongoing, everyday phenomenon.
Modern Propaganda: A Carefully Curated Truth
In contrast, modern propaganda operates with far greater subtlety, blending truth and deception in ways that obscure its manipulative intent. Rather than relying on obvious lies, today’s propaganda is a “carefully curated truth” that passes without immediate recognition of the propagandist’s agenda. Jacques Ellul emphasizes that effective propaganda must resonate with reality, using facts as its foundation while shaping them to serve a specific purpose. Here’s how it works:
- Marrying Truth to a Lie: Facts are paired with distortions to create a compelling, yet misleading, narrative. For example, a political ad might highlight a candidate’s charitable donations (truth) while implying they single-handedly solved a social issue (lie), glossing over broader context.
- Truth Out of Context: Information is presented accurately but stripped of critical details. A news report might cover a protest by focusing solely on isolated acts of violence, ignoring the peaceful majority or underlying grievances, thus skewing public perception.
- Strategic Framing: Emotional appeals and selective emphasis guide interpretation. An advertisement might use scientific data—like “9 out of 10 dentists recommend”—without clarifying the sample size or methodology, nudging consumers toward a biased conclusion.
Unlike old-style propaganda, modern forms avoid outright falsehoods because they risk exposure in an information-rich world. Instead, they exploit trust in factual reporting, slipping past scrutiny by appearing credible. As Ellul notes, “Propaganda must be based on facts… but facts are not enough; they must be interpreted” (1962, p. 52). This curation ensures propaganda aligns with pre-existing beliefs, making it harder to challenge.
Examples of Modern Propaganda
- Media: A news outlet reports a politician’s speech verbatim but highlights only inflammatory snippets, shaping audience outrage while claiming objectivity.
- Advertising: A skincare brand touts a product’s “clinically proven” benefits, omitting that the study was small, biased, or inconclusive.
- Social Media: Viral posts share real statistics—like crime rates—but frame them to stoke fear or division, leaving out mitigating factors.
These tactics illustrate how modern propaganda thrives on partial truths, emotional resonance, and strategic omissions, distinguishing it from the blunt lies of wartime posters.
Propaganda’s Inseparability from Modern Society
Ellul argues that propaganda is not just a tool of specific actors but a sociological phenomenon inherent to literate, industrial societies. Several factors make it pervasive today:
- Information Overload: With mass media and digital platforms, people face too much data to process critically, relying on simplified narratives that propaganda provides.
- Literacy and Technology: Educated populations trust written or broadcast information, while advanced tools—like targeted ads or algorithms—amplify propaganda’s reach.
- Complexity of Life: Industrial societies create uncertainty, driving individuals to accept curated truths that offer clarity, even if manipulated.
Unlike the common view, which ties propaganda to deliberate campaigns, Ellul sees it as a structural feature of modernity, thriving in democracies as much as authoritarian states. “Propaganda is a necessity for the functioning of a technological society,” he writes (1962, p. 87), highlighting its role in managing mass attitudes.
Conclusion
The popular image of propaganda as obvious, old-style war messaging—think posters and wartime broadcasts—captures only a fraction of its reality. Jacques Ellul’s broader definition reveals propaganda as a subtle, pervasive force in modern society, where truth is curated, contextualized, or paired with deception to serve hidden agendas. By contrasting the overt manipulations of the past with today’s sophisticated blending of fact and misdirection, we see that propaganda’s power lies in its disguise: a “carefully curated truth” that slips past without examination. Understanding this shift invites us to question not just blatant lies, but the subtler influences shaping our world daily.
Works Cited: Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. Translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner, Vintage Books, 1973.
Noam Chomsky is 92 years old, yet his grasp of world and US politics remains a force to be reckoned with.
“The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?
Even during the Obama years, international polls showed that world opinion regarded the US as the greatest threat to world peace, no other country even close. Americans were protected from the news, though one could learn about it from foreign media and dissident sources. Sometimes illustrations are reported. Thus there has been some mention of the recent UN vote condemning the savage Cuba sanctions, virtually a blockade: 180-2 (US-Israel). The NY Times dismissed it as a chance for critics of the US to blow off steam. That’s quite normal. When there are reports of how the world is out of step, the usual framework is curiosity about the psychic maladies that lead to such pathological failure to recognize our nobility.
There’s nothing new about that stance. It’s typical of imperial cultures. Even such an outstanding figure as John Stuart Mill wondered about the world’s failure to comprehend that Britain was an angelic power, sacrificing itself for the benefit of the world – at a moment when Britain was carrying out some of its most horrifying crimes, as he knew very well.”
John Pilger does what a journalist is supposed to do. He questions decisions made by those who are in charge and hold them to account for their decisions. As witnessed during the lead up to the Iraq war in 2003 most of the easily accessible media in the West is, for the most part uncritical and (appallingly) accepting of what those in power want us to believe.
This isn’t new information – let’s go back to 1946.
“In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: “Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”
Stirring up fear and blind patriotism is the first ingredient in the propagandist’s recipe book. For people who are afraid, are all to willing to forget their common humanity when they perceive a “threat” to their future.
The real reasons we fight ‘terrorism’ and ‘defend our freedoms’.
“The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.
The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an “agreement” that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.
As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.
From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.”
Actual freedom and actual independence are the official enemies. There is no international glorious commitment to human rights and freedoms, but rather, the economic and political machinations of state that are the true driver of the various ‘humanitarian interventions’ across the globe.
Did you need to see this in action on a smaller scale. Well, there just happens to be a captioned poster for that.
This is why words like ‘power’ and ‘justice’ must be so carefully defined and put into the proper context – because people experience these concepts in vastly different ways depending on their place in the social hierarchy. It is particularly fair? Not even close, but it is how power, and by extension, how our society works.
State terrorism and religious terrorism are directly correlated.
“According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. The Unicef report on the children killed says, “most [of them] under the age of ten”.
As a direct consequence, Sirte became the capital of ISIS.”
Within most of major media, the results of our violence is almost never mentioned. The silence is deafening with regards to our culpability in committing these atrocities.
“When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”
The complicity of most of our media means that state power, and the ‘national interest’ remains potently in the background, unchallenged, unexamined, and uncritically accepted.
“The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, “What would have happened if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?”
He replied that if journalists had done their job, “there is a very, very good chance we would not have gone to war in Iraq”.
It was a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question — Dan Rather of CBS, David Rose of the Observer and journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous.
In other words, had journalists done their job, had they challenged and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today, and there would be no ISIS and no siege of Aleppo or Mosul.”
Demand better of your media outlets. Spend time perusing alternate sources of media, be cognizant of the ‘official’ narrative. Ask questions.
Some places to start: Tom’s Dispatch, Counterpunch, Al Jazeera, Media Lens.
From Counterpunch:
“Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for president, has been the sudden target of attacks from all corners of online media since the official end of Bernie Sanders’ campaign at the Democratic National Convention. Outlets like the Washington Post, New York Magazine and Gizmodo have assaulted Stein by using out-of-context quotes to assail her, wrongly, for being anti-vaccination and anti-WiFi, which is a code for being “anti-science.” This allows us a unique opportunity to confirm the structural role of the media as hypothesized by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent: that the media is a propaganda arm for the elite and powerful, and is used to condition us to accept the bounds of socio-political discourse as set by the ruling class. It also shows us the desperate need we have for an alternative media culture to counteract mainstream discourse.
The attack on Stein (and not, conveniently, on Gary Johnson), is linked to the need by the elite to de-legitimize A.) critics of neoliberal policies and B.) potential alternatives to the political status-quo. Trump and Clinton have had and will have no discussion about thirty years of neoliberalism and austerity. Sanders gave a voice to those within the Democrats who were willing to question, but since his defeat momentum on the left has shifted to Stein and the Green Party. It is, granted, still early, but the outpouring of support means there is a possibility the left could begin to regroup outside the Democratic Party. Real success for Stein could mean a permanent presence on the national stage for the left, to which a president Clinton or Trump would have to answer and which would be able to build an entirely different ideological discourse in the United States.”
The treatment of Jill Stein should be an interesting application of the propaganda model. What we’ve seen during the election cycle confirms much of what Herman and Chomsky hypothesized – issues that affect the public are not being discussed, there is an acceptable line of questions, answers, and responses that are allowed in the media – the rest are swept to the margins and actively ignored.
Is there any wonder left as to why the American people look so dimly on their Congressional representatives? They are supposed to speak for the people, yet strangely enough, once elected other interests seem to take precedence.
You can read about the Propaganda Model of Herman and Chomsky here.
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