Parry in this lengthy article traces the history of "perception management" back to the Vietnam war and the large domestic opposition to that war. He offers a lot of the details of the growing role of the CIA in shaping news to fit administration policies. My only criticism of the essay is its liberal bias: too much agency is given to Reagan's role, the assumption that perception management started under Reagan's administration, and its corollary that we had anything like a free press before this time. I grant that during this period, the ruling class was greatly disturbed by the anti-Vietnam War movement, and sought to accelerate the use of propaganda and discipline renegade reporters who didn't following ruling class script.
Though Reagan’s creation of a domestic propaganda bureaucracy began more than three decades ago – and Bush’s vanquishing of the Vietnam Syndrome was more than two decades ago – the legacy of those actions continue to reverberate today in how the perceptions of the American people are now routinely managed. That was true during last decade’s Iraq War and this decade’s conflicts in Libya, Syria and Ukraine as well as the economic sanctions against Iran and Russia.
.... At this advanced stage of America’s quiet surrender to “perception management,” it is even hard to envision how one could retrace the many steps that would lead back to the concept of a democratic Republic based on an informed electorate.