What is spin?

According to Isa Basen, writer of the book ‘Media Spin’, is spin similar to bias, although it is slightly subtler than that. He says the definition of spin is:

“the shading of meaning or interpretation of events in favour of a particular point of view, and it is sometimes inadvertent or even unconscious.” (1)

Information can be spun by anyone, such as writers, journalists, editors, or politicians, and if it’s used by a government it is also known as propaganda. Propaganda, however, clearly has a negative meaning, whereas spin seems to be accepted somehow by the general public. It is said that propaganda is used by dictatorial regimes to bludgeon the populace with false information (2), but it is not that simple. Democratic governments also employ propaganda, only use different techniques. Some techniques are described by Arthur Siegel, a social science professor at York University in Toronto, whose 1996 book Radio Canada International examines World War II and Cold War propaganda. He says that,

“No matter how it is spread, propaganda comes in four basic varieties: The first level is the Big Lie, adapted by Hitler and Stalin. The state-controlled Egyptian press has been spreading a Big Lie, saying the World Trade Center was attacked by Israel to embarrass Arabs. The second layer says, ‘It doesn’t have to be the truth, so long as it’s plausible.’ The third strategy is to tell the truth but withhold the other side’s point of view. The fourth and most productive is to tell the truth, the good and the bad, the losses and the gains. Governments in Western society take the last three steps. They avoid the Big Lie, which nobody here will swallow.” 3

So, according to Siegel, avoiding ‘The Big Lie’ is something Democratic governments have to do, but that does not stop them from employing other, more subtle and insidious, methods. As noted above, spin can also occur subconsciously. In fact, the aim of spin is to make information seem natural and as true as possible, and the best way to do this is to have credible sources spin information for you, by means of self-censorship, or by simply having them report what they believe. According to Philip Knightley (3):

“The sad truth is that today government propaganda prepares its citizens for war so skilfully that it is quite likely that they do not want the truthful, objective and balanced reporting that hero war correspondents once did their best to provide.”

To prepare the public for a military campaign there are several key stages to ‘soften up’ public opinion through the media. According to Prof. Ottosen from Oslo University 3 these are:

The Preliminary Stage - during which the country concerned comes to the news, portrayed as a cause for “mounting concern” because of poverty / dictatorship / anarchy;
The Justification Stage - during which big news is produced to lend urgency to the case for armed intervention to bring about a rapid restitution of “normality”;
The Implementation Stage - when pooling and censorship provide control of coverage;
The Aftermath - during which normality is portrayed as returning to the region, before it once again drops down the news agenda.

Spin comes into play when we look at how these stages are implemented. Providing the public with news, molding public opinion, offers a government the possibility to do anything from ignoring or altering basic human rights, to invading other nations. There are several concrete ways of spinning information, and the following methods will be what I will look out for in this study. (from: http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/05/25.html)

The use of emotional words - Using words like ‘terrorist’ and ‘regime’ evokes an emotion within readers. This emotion is then used to shade interpretation of facts, or allegations that appear to be facts. Likewise, this technique can be used to evoke positive feelings as well, or to lessen the impact that some words might have. ‘Abuse’ sounds better than ‘torture’, and ‘collateral damage’ sounds better than ‘dead civilians’. You can recognise emotional words by trying to imagine what the other side might say of the same topic. After all, “One man’s terrorist is the other man’s freedom fighter”. One thing that should be noted here is that Reuters, as one of the world’s leading news agencies, has a policy of not using emotional words, and therefor chooses not to write ‘terrorist’ where other agencies would. This is a very honourable thing for Reuters to do of course, but it does not stop certain news outlets, that buy Reuters’ reports, from altering the words themselves, as CanWes, Canada’s major newspaper chain, has done at the time of the 9/11 attacks (4).

Orwellian misuse of words - This is a fascinating linguistic exercise to do. The Bush administration is (in)famous for this, using words like ‘patriot’, ‘freedom’, and ‘peace’, for things that mean almost the exact opposite. George Orwell used it in his ’1984′, with the by now notorious lines of ‘War is Peace’, ‘Freedom is slavery’, ‘Ignorance is Strength’. It is interesting to see how some military operations have Orwellian codenames such as ‘Enduring Freedom’, ‘Iraqi Freedom’, ‘Just Cause’ and ‘Infinite Justice’ (5). A more subtle way of Orwellian misuse of words is to use improper personification, or generalisation, such as using the name of a country or its people instead of saying “the government of such and such”. Examples of this are everywhere — “Iranians push ahead with nuclear programme” — can be found practically everyday in any newsoutlet.

Self-censorship – What is not reported – This form of spin is the most difficult one to notice, because it takes a lot of background knowledge and critical thinking to find out about information that is missing from articles. At the start of the 2nd Gulf War for instance there was a ban on pictures of coffins and dead US soldiers. While this example is relatively easy to detect and to understand, there are more serious examples to be found. For instance the absence of dead bodies, or horrific images in recent wars, most notably the 1st Gulf War of 1991. This was a lesson learned from the Vietnam war, during which Americans were faced with horrific images from the war. The ‘liberation of Kuwait’ is mostly viewed as having been a clean war, almost like a computer game, without casualties. Secondly, there is the practical aspect too, which is that newspapers select stories that they know will sell well. Impopular stories won’t pass the editor’s desk, even though they might be true or even very important to some people. This form of spin — self-censorship — is related to ‘what is not asked’, since reporters could get into situations of conflicting interests, often risking their job or position. Especially when they’re embedded, ‘pooled’ or picked for press conferences.

The way something is reported – This is about the degree of attention a topic gets by the media and others. Focusing on the brutality of Saddam’s regime distracts the people from the Abu Ghraib scandal. The cartoon demonstrations diverted attention away from the failing war in Iraq, just as the recent bombings of Iraqi mosques is doing. In fact, the War in Iraq distracted attention from Afghanistan and the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden. Of course, I’m not saying that these situations have been consciously created for this purpose, but the Bush administration is not complaining about the role of the media here.

Oversimplification – This is another aspect that’s difficult to recognise in the media. It plays quite an important role though in the overall picture. Media outlets have limited time and space to explain and report about rather complicated matters. This, combined with an oversimplified presentation of the situation by governments, causes the ‘dumbing-down’ of the public’s general knowledge, and hence makes the public more prone to interpret facts in an incomplete, hence wrong, way. Examples of this are ample, for instance the way that Kuwait and Iraq were portrayed before the 1st Gulf War began. There was no attention for the previous lead-up of the conflict, nor was there a correct view given of these nation’s governments. Kuwait was supposedly democratic, and Saddam an aggressor akin to Hitler. More info on this in later chapters.

Not presenting opposing interpretations of the facts - It would seem logical that the media is trained for giving balanced views of things. However, this is not always the case, especially not so in complicated and enduring issues. A journalist reports on a situation. Next to giving a correct and complete view of the issue, it is also interesting for journalists to explain a personal and involved position, and basically take a side. These days investigative journalism, which expands on background and other viewpoints regarding the topic, is on the decline, and reporters are more prone to give short representations of one view at a time. This would be acceptable if there were enough reporters to take care of any opposing views, but this is getting rare. Especially so in war zones, where it is next to impossible to get to meet the insurgents for fear of being killed or kidnapped. In some cases where people have actually had contact with the rebels they have been subsequently arrested and detained for collaborating with the enemy. A Spanish reporter who interviewed Osama Bin Laden has been put in jail on the charge of having Al-Qaeda contacts.

Giving credibility to unidentified and unsubstantiated sources and assuming facts without evidence - This happens all the time, when you read articles that start with “according to US officials”. Most facts about the WMD issue at the start of the Iraq war were based on information by Iraqi defectors. There was no proof of the weapons as we know now, but no one asked for it either. There was on the other hand proof by the CIA of Iraq most probably not having WMD, which was ignored. The sources and the information they pass on is too easily accepted as being true. When these topics are then brought forward repeatedly it uses the reader’s incomplete foreknowledge of this topic, thereby distorting the facts.

Lying - This last and more obvious technique is actually not in the official list of spin techniques, but it is more and more used by the Bush administration regarding issues in the Iraq war. Lying is basically giving false information, or refusing to give an answer. Examples are found consistently in the lead-up to the Iraq war, and during the war. The latest example I can give you is by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld when he was asked about the Pentagon paying Iraqi newsoutlets to report ‘good news’, in order to improve public morale. Rumsfeld then reportedly ordered this practice to stop. When asked about this in February 2006, however, he said: “It was put under review, and I don’t have knowledge as to whether or not it has been stopped. I do have knowledge that it was put under review, and I was correctly informed, and I just misstated the facts.” (6) This seems to me to be a very frank declaration of having lied, combined with the linguistic evasion of actually answering the question. The interesting thing is that it seems to work, counter to Arthur Siegel’s prediction that the public wouldn’t stand for it.