Spin Doctors

As Canada was in the grips of the worst pandemic in a century, Canadian media struggled to tell the story. Newsrooms, already run on threadbare budgets, struggled to make broader connections that could allow their audience to better understand what was really happening, and why. Politicians and public health officials were mostly given the benefit of the doubt that what they said was true and that they acted in good faith. This book documents each month of the first year of the pandemic and examines the issues that emerged, from racialized workers to residential care to policing. It demonstrates how politicians and uncritical media shaped the popular understanding of these issues and helped to justify the maintenance of a status quo that created the worst ravages of the crisis. Spin Doctors argues alternative ways in which Canadians should understand the big themes of the crisis and create the necessary knowledge to demand large-scale change.

A spine-chilling look into the chiropractic industry. Learn how to protect yourself from practice-building tactics and bogus treatments.

Spin doctors are seldom out of the news for long. But who really understands what 'spin' is, or what spin doctors do? The media has moved on from a world where press officers carried piles of newspapers to the office each morning, when Twitter was what birds did and mobile phones were the size of bread loaves. Thank goodness Paul Richards is here to explain spin doctoring in a digital world. Essential reading for anyone who wants a career in communications or is intrigued by what keeps the cogs turning behind Parliament, How to Be a Spin Doctor covers all the essential skills, such as: Snagging positive media coverage Creating eye-catching news releases and photo opportunities Avoiding the endless traps set by journalists Paul Richards challenges the increasingly negative connotations of spin, arguing that it is neither a dishonourable practice nor a new one; it's simply the most practical way to convey information or make a point. The truth of the matter is that the spin doctor's trade secrets can be useful to anyone trying to promote a company, client or cause: to protect reputations, get messages across and win public support. So it's time to start reading and get spinning.

Suggesting that the contention that phonemic awareness must be taught directly and that children need explicit systematic instruction in phonics is less of a scientific "fact" than an exercise in political persuasion, this book presents the story of the political campaign that is taking place to change the minds of Americans about how young children learn to read. The book begins with a close look at the empirical research being used to support a massive shift in the national understandings about language, literacy, and learning and concludes by revealing the ways in which research studies on early reading instruction are being used by the federal and state governments to support a new methodology that has turned early reading instruction into "a massive business of unprecedented commercial worth." The chapters in the book are: (1) In Which We Are Told Training in Phonemic Awareness Is the Key to Reading Success; (2) In Which Phonemic Awareness Research Is Analyzed from an Experimental Psychological Perspective; (3) In Which Phonemic Awareness Research Is Analyzed from a Sociocultural Perspective; (4) In Which We Find Foorman's Research Does Not Support the NICHD [National Institute of Child Health and Human Development] Proposition That "Phonological Processing Is the Primary Area Where Children with Reading Difficulties Differ from Other Children"; (5) In Which Teachers Are Turned into Clerks and We Discuss Power, Privilege, Racism and Hegemony; (6) In Which Governor Bush's Business Council Holds a Pre-Summit Meeting in Texas; (7) In Which We Have an"If-They-Say-It's-So-It-Must-Be-So" Attitude toward Experimental Research; (8) In Which the Kindergarten Children in North Carolina Are No Longer Expected To Try To Read and Write; (9) In Which I Become the Documentation on Which I Build My Case; (10) In Which We Are Told That in America We Are All Equal. Are We or Aren't We?; (11) In Which We Find the Desks and Chairs Are Broken and the Toilets Don't Work; (12) In Which We Ask: Do You Think America Likes Children?; (13) In Which We Consider If We Are Comfortable Mandating Reading Programs based on Neuroimaging Research and Genetic Studies of Reading Disabilities; (14) In Which California Politically Reinvents How Young Children Learn To Read; (15) In Which California Ends Local Control and the State Board of Education Leads the Jihad; and (16) In Which We Enter the Central Chamber of the Hegemonic Labyrinth. (Contains approximately 250 references; an appendix that offers a response to preliminary statistical analyses used to support the nationally publicized findings of the NICHD Houston reading studies, and an appendix that offers "late-breaking" news about the NICHD Houston reading studies are attached.) (RS)

While he worked at Number 10 Downing Street, and then at the Labour party's notorious Millbank Campaign Headquarters, the author kept a detailed diary. Beautifully observed and often humorous, 'The Spin Doctor's Diary' does for the Blair administration what 'Yes, Minister' did for the Thatcher years.

A spine-chilling look into the chiropractic industry. Learn how to protect yourself from practice-building tactics and bogus treatments.

How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracy Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism, Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such “spin dictators,” describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they pose, and how democracies should respond. Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational benefits. The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators—and how they differ from the remaining “fear dictators” such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping. Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time—from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.

"A Strategic Nature shows how public relations has dominated public understanding of the natural environment for over one hundred years. More than spin or misinformation, PR is a social and political force that shapes how we understand and address the environmental crises we now face. Drawing on interviews, ethnography, and archival research, Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza offer an original account of the promotional agents who have influenced public perception of the environment since the beginning of the twentieth century, revealing how professional communicators affect how we think about public knowledge and who can legitimately produce it. Instead of focusing on just the messages or the campaigns, this book provides a conceptual framework for understanding the promotional culture around the meaning of the environment. A Strategic Nature argues that it is not possible to understand the role of the environment in our everyday lives without understanding how something called "the environment" has been invented and communicated to us throughout history. To tell this story properly requires a careful account of the evolution of the institutions, norms and movements that have pushed environmental concerns to the fore of public opinion and political action. But it also demands an examination of the simultaneous evolution of professional communicators and the formation of their institutions, norms and movements. Without this piece of the puzzle, we miss crucial ways that struggles are won, resources allocated, and beliefs fostered about environmental problems"--