My favorite example of this is what happened during WWII. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) operated completely above board. By that I mean that when they got the news, they did nothing to alter it. It came in, they read it exactly as it was presented to them.
The navy suffered it's greatest defeat/victory at Dunkirk. Thousands (330,000 between May 28 and June 4) of men were evacuated from the French soils at Dunkirk. 850 private vessels were used in the evacuation, and not without loss! Over 200 were damaged or sunk).
I'm telling you all this so you will understand that the BBC reported it just as it happened. They changed absolutely nothing. The German radio reported it exactly the same way. But for the British people it was quite a different report. Churchill fully expected the Germans to invade England and his response was "Come ahead. We will never surrender." The British people were not in a state of Panic. They believed Churchill.
But why did the BBC do what it did? It was because when the tied turned and Germany began to loose [and lie about it] (or become stalemated in Leningrad) who do you think the German people believed?
It was a huge propaganda victory for the BBC. They kept on with the same policy they had when they were losing. They told the truth. And they were confidently believed.
America was not without her propaganda. Some of it very successful like "loose lips lose lives." That was to warn people on the home front not to talk about where their relatives were.
Women were recruited to do men's work while the men were away. It worked extremely well. Even Walt Disney produced cartoons for mostly children that urged them to get behind the war effort.
