Callous and cold blooded murder offends peoples sense of justice. But violently deranged murders are considered an obvious threat to all around them. The latter is a lot more motivating and less likely to arouse debate over justification.As I said before, with the Germans actually trying to be the 'Horrible Hun' in Belgium, why make shit up?
Propagandists job is to present the overall message (often one that is true, or at least believed to be by those writing the propaganda) in a way that invokes peoples emotions and calls them to action. The larger long term effects that their magnification of rumour without context will have is not really in their job description. And in the early part of the war, propaganda efforts were not even all government controlled. A number were put out by private organizations or newspapers without being put through government hands at all, much less a central organization. The Ministry of Information only came into being in 1917.
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