The Truth Spinner

Castor Jenkins is a Welshman who tells stories that may (or may not) be true...but no matter how fantastic, no one can prove they never happened! In the tradition of Lord Dunsany's "The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens" and Arthur C. Clarke's "Tales of the White Hart," here is a collection of club stories full of wonder and marvels, as only Rhys Hughes could have told them

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.

We're all familiar with the warning, "Don't believe everything you see or hear." Bill Press, the popular co-host of CNN's Crossfire, will have you wondering whether you should believe anything at all. Spin -- intentional manipulation of the truth -- is everywhere. It's in the White House, in the courtrooms, in headlines and advertising slogans. Even couples on dates -- not to mention book jackets -- are guilty of spin. Now, analyst Bill Press freeze-frames the culture of spin to investigate what exactly spin is, who does it and why, and its impact on American society as a whole. Depending upon who is doing it, spinning can mean anything from portraying a difficult situation in the best possible light to completely disregarding the facts with the intent of averting embarrassment or scandal. Using examples drawn from recent history -- the Clinton presidency, the Florida recount, and the Bush White House -- Press first probes spin's favorite haunt: politics. In addition to surveying the incarnations of spin in the fields of journalism, law, and advertising, Press also chews on the spin of sex and "dating," a word that has become the very embodiment of spin. Perhaps surprisingly, however, Press argues that spin isn't all bad, and that without it the harsh truths of our times might be too tough to swallow. With the same keen sense of humor that helped make CNN's Crossfire television's premier debate show and the limited run of The Spin Room so popular, Press turns the tables on the prime purveyors of spin -- called spin doctors -- noting some of their biggest guffaws and blunders. As Press notes, it has become abundantly clear that the twenty-first century, beginning as it has with a president who was "spun into office," will be a fertile stomping ground for spin.

This book was written to try and answer the question: ‘where and when did political spin originate?’ It deals with the techniques of news management developed and used in those advanced democracies who have laws to protect a free press. such as the United States of America, and to a lesser extent its first cousin, several times removed, the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, or to be more precise, England, who in 1695 became the first country in the world to enshrine a free press into their constitutional law. This joint history of legal protections of press freedom; governmental toleration of free speech; progressive legislation to widen the franchise; vigorous growth in political parties; pluralism and its consequence, the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions and lifestyles; a healthy adherence to Burkean ‘little platoons’ of volunteers; and, most of all, sophisticated developments in mass media technologies and consumer marketing techniques; all of which means that the Anglo-Saxon cousins are, and have always been, in the vanguard of news management. Government and media have been at war from the very beginning. Au fond this is a struggle for allegiance. The media want the allegiance of their readers and viewers, because this brings them the profits they need to remain in business. As Patrick Le Lay, then CEO of the main French private channel TF1 put it: "There are many ways to speak about TV, but in a business perspective, let's be realistic: TF1's job is to help Coca-Cola sell its product. What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time." Government on the other hand wants the allegiance of the voter, to acquire or retain power. The famous Victorian editor of 'The Times', Thomas Barnes, once said that the "newspaper is not an organ through which Government can influence people, but through which people can influence the Government." Politicians would reverse the dictum. And therein lies the causus belli. The politician's strategy for winning this war was stated most succinctly by that arch media manipulator, David Lloyd George: "what you can't square, you squash; and what you can't squash, you square." The media for their part, are determined to be neither squashed nor squared. From 1800 in the US and 1832 in Britain (when Germany and Italy were just a glint in the eye of some petty princes; and France was recovering from yet another pointless 'revolution' leaving behind yet another example of Kafka's bureaucratic slime); competitive, party based elections produced extraordinary outbursts of creativity. Politicians learned that the art of politics is about making and then winning arguments. As each successive cutting edge novelty arrived, the spin doctors quickly adapted and improved their techniques by adroitly exploiting the new medium’s benefits. For two centuries (and even before) the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ have led the world in spin: this is the history of that journey.

All the hard questions about human action are about what to include in a story, what can be left out, and how to characterize what gets included. A narrative selects from all the world's motions which ones are part of or relevant to an act, and so narratives give us what narratives have already shaped: the relation is circular. Many narratives can be told of an act, not all consistent. Some features of human action: - events "off-stage" determine what's happening "on-stage"; - many actions ``pass through'' motions in view; - an act can be changed after the fact; - action presupposes language; - what an act is can be highly ambiguous; - we judge acts (and narratives) because we have a stake in them.