While being bombarded with these ideas constantly, we often reach to a stage where we stop questioning the reasons and motives behind the messages. Goebbels has a saying which explains the essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, that in the end they can never escape from it (31). This is in fact very dangerous, as we grow up in a culture that uses propaganda pretty much for everything, even for positive reasons, the usage of critical thinking decreases constantly. As this starts at a very early age, the new generation grows up to be individuals who never questions, who accepts the facts given to them as they are and who can be mislead very easily. People should be given unbiased facts and allowed to decide how they feel on their own. Even though some propaganda campaigns seem to have positive motives they still use the same techniques as the others and lying to massive amounts of people is nowhere near ethical.
Positive campaigns may use various techniques of presentation to inform as many members of the public as possible with the goal of promoting public health, safety, or other issues of public interest. According to Nancy Snow propaganda is actually a value-free term (32). That means it is not evil or good by nature and the purpose defines the ethics behind it. One example people tend to give as an ethical propaganda is the anti-smoking campaign designed to prevent children and teenagers from taking up the cigarette-smoking habit. The campaign can be considered as "white" propaganda because it comes from a known source and "is immediately recognizable as propaganda" (Thompson 21). The main aim behind these campaigns are to build public awareness of the health damage smoking causes, to encourage smokers to quit and not to smoke around others to prevent secondhand smoking. .
However anti-smoking campaigns still gives unbiased facts and/or misleads the truth, using the same techniques as the other propaganda examples that are considered unethical.