Our weekly look at media spin tactics: let’s dissect the PR that aims to blow one’s own horn, bury one’s errors, resurrect the shambling zombie corpses of well-flogged deceased equines, and ooh look A Big Distracting Thing.
N.B. please stay on topic – this thread is for holding up a mirror to the tactics of the spinning Hollow Men. Breaking news stories are relevant only so far as the subtext of the message they are selling and how it plays to counter opposing messages – discussions of policy detail and implications etc belong on topical threads (if a relevant thread doesn’t exist, please request one in the latest open thread).
A big, big strike in South Africa, recently.
Why no coverage (that I can remember)of that event and its imnplications?
Is it like the Privatisation thing in QLD, where ABC editors avoided coverage because “it wasn’t newsworthy”?
There was quite a bit of coverage for about two days, pw, then something else took it off the TV news. Tsunamis, volcanoes, revolution in France,and the like, if you know what I mean, though it may not have been those particular events.
PB, thanks mate.
It might be OT, but Guy Pearse’s speech last Thursday ‘The Dumb State?: Queensland’s Continuing Carbon Addiction’ exposes QLD Government greenwash.
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http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-bank-that-stopped-a-nation-20101102-17ccl.html?autostart=1
“try to rein in”???
Why doesn’t the government have a “shot at it”, or “give it a whirl”, or “take a chance”, “have a go”.
The result will be the same: zilch.
Hello Tigtog,
Is ‘spin’ when someone takes a situation then wraps it up with a bunch of lies?
Is it only spin when the game is successful or can it still be counted when the game is discovered and some of the intended harm is subsequently prevented?
Here – http://calligulashorse.blogspot.com/2010/11/something-has-to-give.html – is an article about a bit of spin prevention; though timely prevention of the spin did nothing to prevent the harm.
Perhaps more slant than spin, I have noticed over a long period that powerful women in Australia often have “active” candid photos published to illustrate a story about them; mouth open, head tilted, animated, shot from low down and not very flattering. Powerful men here generally have more portrait like, flattering shots published. Just an observation… e.g. Oz shots today: of Gail Kelly & Denise Bradley compared to Ted Baillieu and Tony Abbott.
@CALLIGULA,
‘Spin’ is occurring whenever the news is presented with more than just the facts. The spin, or bias, does not necessarily have to be lies, it just has to be one-sided, highlighting aspects that are positive to one side (or negative to their opponents) or omitting facts that are negative for their own side or positive for their opponents. Spin is often unsuccessful when outmaneouvred by somebody else’s spin.
It is natural for public relations organisations to put a positive spin on their own actions and a negative spin on their rivals’ actions. Journalists are supposed to sift through spin to present their own interpretation of events, but in the brave new world of 24/7 infotainment, that’s not happening as much as it used to.
@drsusancalvin, I like the distinction between slant and spin, although I suspect slant is a subset of spin rather than an entirely separate entity.
I’ve noticed the phenomenon too.
Or is spin actually a subset of slant? I guess slant is the overall trend in any biased coverage, spin is just how the slant is being given its ‘edge’ for that particular story.
A spokesperson for the Airline whose plane scattered an engine wherever [just coming thru' the door and missed the details] said “Our airline’s much safer than the rail as trains lose significantly more engines than our planes.”