Neither objective nor subjective

Abstract

In journalism subjectivity is not the binary opposite of objectivity. The protagonists on both sides of the Cold War propaganda war were engaged in neither objective nor subjective journalism. While Western journalists working in the trenches of the Cold War at Radio Free Europe or Voice of America used the “mimicry of objectivism” and the “aura of objectivity” as their weapons to counter political propaganda from the East, journalists behind the Iron Curtain were consciously and proudly committed to direct propaganda as the only effective way of intervening in the affairs of the world. This introductory essay suggests a historical frame for interpreting the different practices of the two sides. The three papers that follow this introduction, all based on detailed archival work, analyze different aspects of the unprecedented propaganda Cold War. This war was fought under a serious constraint: the grave shortage of information from the opposing side. Working under conditions of uncertainty, reliable information was substituted by either self-delusion, wild fantasies, hearsay, lies, or unjustifiable trust in unreliable information. The papers attempt to bring the reader closer to an era that seems to be the opposite of ours: instead of an information deluge, propagandists, pundits, and analysts of the Cold War were forced to live with a dearth of information.