The Cards are Stacked Against You

Media Bias: Germany vs. USA

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Let’s start with the postcards.

During the Holocaust, Nazi officials forced prisoners to send home messages saying they were treated well. These carefully worded cards, true only in the most manipulative sense, were part of a broader scheme to mislead the public. Here is a machine-generated translation of one such postcard:

9 January 1944

By fortunate occasion, I can tell you that I and dear Alice are healthy. We often think of you, as well as Jana and Frieža. Thank you for the package you sent— especially the homemade bread, which tasted very good. Greetings to all my acquaintances. Paul, Dvořák, and Tomašek would like to and often write as a sign of life. I feel very anxious and gloomy, and I am very much looking forward to receiving news soon. Especially greet Bílek, Albrecht, and Souda and pass along greetings from me. Once again, I greet you warmly and remain.

Yours,

Rudolf Jellinek

In 1944, the Nazis staged a beautified ghetto, if such a thing can exist, for Red Cross inspectors. They even went so far as to film propaganda showing their “happy” prisoners. This is a pretty shocking example of how images and messages can be carefully selected or crafted to hide an inconvenient reality.

While the context is very different from today’s media landscape, the tactics are still recognizable. It’s card-stacking.

What is Card-Stacking?

The term card-stacking didn’t come from those postcards, but perhaps that would have been appropriate. In fact, the IPA started teaching about it around the same time the Nazi regime rose to power.

Rather, the name actually comes from gambling, where someone might cheat by manipulating the cards to be they’ll win. In propaganda, it means only showing information that helps one side of the story, while hiding or leaving out anything that might support the other side.

As a propaganda tactic, card-stacking was officially named in 1937 by a group called the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA). They defined card-stacking as:

“The propagandist deploys all the arts of deception to win our support for himself…by means of this device propagandists would convince us that a ruthless war of aggression is a crusade for righteousness.”

“He stacks the cards against the truth. He uses under-emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and evade facts. He resorts to lies, censorship and distortion. He omits facts. He offers false testimony.”

In simpler terms, this means the person spreading the propaganda message picks and chooses what to show (also known as cherry-picking), sometimes even making things up to make their side look good and the other side look bad. By the early 1940s, propaganda literacy was being taught in U.S. schools, reaching hundreds of thousands of students.

How does it work?

Card-stacking works by highlighting only certain facts to take advantage of the way our brains process information. It combines several mental habits, or cognitive biases, into one powerful trick.

As British Labour politician, Richard Crossman, once said:

“The art of propaganda is not telling lies but rather seeing the truth you require and giving it mixed up with some truths the audience wants to hear”

Most people don’t notice what’s been left out. Instead, many of us take in the selected information we’ve been given as if it’s the whole story, especially if it confirms what we already want to believe.

This is because of something called confirmation bias, a mental shortcut where people tend to believe things that match what they already think and ignore or rationalize things that don’t.

A card-stacked message will intentionally line up with a bigger story that the audience already believes, so they accept it easily. Indeed, studies show that people are more likely to look for, believe, and remember information that fits in with what they already think, even if it’s not the full truth.

One meta-analysis found that one-sided messages, which present only a single point of view, tend to be more convincing among audiences with limited knowledge of the sides, have lower levels of formal education, or are already inclined to agree. However, two-sided messages, especially ones that directly respond to the other side, work better for people who are more skeptical or better informed. In short, the less people know, the more a one-sided message can sound like the whole truth.

By knowingly “playing into” this bias, advertisements often only list a product’s good sides, unless the law mandates otherwise. And this will seem very convincing to someone who doesn’t know much about any counterclaims or drawbacks. Leaving out the bad parts keeps people from thinking about what might be wrong.

Card-stacking is especially effective when it stirs up strong emotions like anger, fear, or pride. Studies show that these emotions can trigger motivated reasoning, which means people start thinking in a way that protects their beliefs and feelings.

For example, a biased news channel will show only the facts and stories that make their side look good (usually with very emotional words and phrases). This emotional pull also makes biased messages feel personal, justified, and true. The channel counts on their audience to already agree with them and be emotionally invested. Thus, they trust these one-sided stories even more.

How do governments deal with card-stacking?

USA

Making sure news stories give balanced information has been a concern for a long time. Both the United States and Germany have made rules, some stronger than others, to reduce the worst effects of card-stacking in public conversations.

In the U.S., the main rule that focused on balanced reporting was called the Fairness Doctrine. It was enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from the late 1940s and said that radio and TV stations had to talk about important public issues by showing different sides of those issues.

The idea was that, because there were so few channels available, anyone who got a license to use them had a duty to be fair and not turn their station into one big ad for one side. Under this rule, if a station aired a show or editorial that clearly supported one side, it had to also present contrasting views.

By the 1970s, the FCC called the Fairness Doctrine the,

“single most important requirement of operation in the public interest.”

But in 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was removed under President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The reasons they claimed had to do with the First Amendment (freedom of speech), increased media diversity, and reducing government control.

Since then, U.S. broadcasters have had more freedom to be openly one-sided. Today, there are only a few specific rules, like truth-in-advertising laws (to stop false ads) or the Equal-Time Rule for candidates during elections. But, there is no longer a broad rule in the U.S. that requires news outlets to show both sides of an issue.

On top of that, the U.S. has also relaxed its rules about who can own media outlets. In the past, there were limits on how many newspapers, TV, or radio stations a single company could own, especially in the same city. But since the 1990s, many of those rules have been rolled back.

Today, big companies can own lots of stations and newspapers all over the country. This means fewer companies control more of the media that people see and hear. While this doesn’t necessarily force card-stacking, it makes it easier for one-sided messages to spread widely if the owners choose to focus on just one point of view.

Germany

In Germany, the rules for news and media still say that what you see and hear has to be fair and show more than one side. These rules come from the lessons Germany learned after dealing with dangerous propaganda during the Nazi era.

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court requires that TV and radio must support people in forming their own opinions freely. To do this, Germany has a law called the Interstate Media Treaty, which says both public and private broadcasters should have a basic, fair mix of different viewpoints in their programs. Even if a news channel leans one way or publishes opinion pieces, the rules try to keep things from getting too unfair or one-sided.

Additionally, public TV channels, like ARD and ZDF, are further required by law to stay politically balanced. That means they’re not allowed to only show one political opinion all the time. If they did, it would break the rules. Instead, the overall output must reflect a diverse range of viewpoints.

The government can also keep an eye on media outlets that spread ideas identified as dangerous to democracy. For example, Germany banned what it labeled a right‑extremist magazine in 2024, Compact, but a court overturned the ban in June this year, citing constitutional protections for freedom of press and expression. The case brought into focus how the country goes about attempting to balance fighting extreme propaganda with keeping press freedom.

To make sure these rules are followed, each state has a Landesmedienanstalt, which is a media authority that watches over private channels. These groups check to make sure the news is fair, shows different opinions, and follows good journalistic principles. If a TV channel keeps leaving out certain facts or only shows one side of a story, that state media office can sanction them or even take away their license to broadcast.

Germany also has laws to stop just one company or person from owning too many media outlets. This helps make sure that many different voices and ideas are shared, which helps prevent card-stacking.

Finally, some news outlets in both the USA and Germany are mostly owned by the employees and journalists, which further helps to preserve journalists’ independence.

In Germany, giving fair and balanced news is seen as a basic service that broadcasters must provide to help people freely form their own opinions. But in the United States, things work differently. U.S. American rules rely more on the “marketplace of ideas,” meaning they hope that reporters follow good ethics and that, theoretically, having lots of different news sources will help balance things out on their own.

A Tool Against Card-Stacking

While legal protections in Germany offer one kind of defense against card-stacking, in the U.S., your best bet is to be an active reader. That’s where tools like Ground News come in.

Ground News is a website and app that lets you compare how different news outlets report the same story. It shows you when a story is only being talked about by left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, and how different sides are saying very different things about a news story.

For example, if you read an article that sounds too good or too bad to be true, Ground News lets you see how other sources are covering it. It lines up the headlines and stories side-by-side so you can compare. You might find that one side is focused on one fact, while the other side is using more emotional language or skipping something important altogether.

Here’s how Ground News helps fight card-stacking:

• Bias Check: It shows you whether each news outlet leans left, right, or stays in the center.

• Blindspot Alerts: It points out stories that are being ignored by one side or the other.

• Story Comparison: It lets you compare headlines and summaries from lots of different sources.

• Media Ownership Transparency: It tells you who owns each outlet and what groups they’re connected to. Here’s an example:

  

It’s a solid step toward unstacking the deck, and it helps turn you from a passive reader into someone who actively checks for bias.

You can use my non-commissioned, affiliate link for 40% off Ground News’ Unlimited Vantage plan at: groundnews.com/mom

What Else Can You Do?

What else can you do to better identify card-stacking?

• Look for extra info or missing context in other news stories. Of course, you don’t have to agree with every side, but you should know what the sides are.

• Learn when to trust a statistic. Check out Stats and Balances for help with that.

• Use fact-checkers like PolitiFact or AP Fact Check to see how true something is.

• Support and subscribe to news outlets, especially international ones, that try to stay balanced.

And most importantly, teach this to others. The word card-stacking became popular through media literacy efforts. Let’s keep the tradition alive.