The former US under secretary of state in the Obama administration, who was also the managing editor of Time magazine from 2006 to 2013, has made a career of writing about disinformation use. In his time in government, Stengel used a State Department blog to describe Russia Today as operating a “disinformation campaign.”

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In a university workshop organized by the Council On Foreign Relations, a US think tank for journalists, educators and business executives, Stengel now appears to approve of propaganda, which is the dissemination of biased or misleading information with the goal of influencing a certain agenda.

“Basically every country creates their own narrative story,” Stengel said. “My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke [call] the chief propagandist job. I’m not against propaganda, every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

The comment didn’t go down well with one audience member, however, who said that the US media “flipped” on the developing world. “We lived with, for many, many years, a master narrative that was and still is propaganda,” the man said.