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I appreciate the subsequent clarifications on "population control" and "social engineering", particularly since these phrases have had pejorative meanings associated with them. Such pejorative meanings have arisen in part because of Hollywood films or television shows featuring mass propaganda schemes as part of the plot ("Wag the Dog" comes to mind). Despite, or maybe because of, this, David Marx and Rick Tarara advocate such "tried and true methods of propaganda."
However, people who intend to use the media "to encourage (glorify) certain behavior" must realize the media will at the same time profitably encourage and glorify alternative behaviors including exactly the opposite behavior. Television stations run slick PSAs against smoking, drugs, dropping out of school, promiscious sex, drinking, etc., but by the time most of us return from the mayor's office, they are back to the show's characters reveling in the "coolness" of these same activities.
As for Mark Shapiro's promotion of "educational programs that provide accurate information" (which sounds more refined than "propaganda"), the same problem will occur when different programs provide accurate information that conflicts with accurate information provided by other educational groups. If some of the public side with one group, and others side with another, who decides which education program will be permitted (or not)?
Rick Tarara gives us a clue when he suggested such social engineering techniques as "oppressive parking fees" and "tax incentives" that just skip education and go right to the use of force by government bureaucracies.
Rick Strickert
Austin, TX