Ahmadinjad lies because we let him

By Tal-Anna Szlenski

I can’t help but despair when reading through this article on “Ahmadinejad, master of spin“. In shedding light on Ahmedinejad’s media approach, it showcases how seasoned journalists fail to address his inane manifestations and lies as being just that.

From Jon Leyne’s BBC piece it is derived that journalists expect to corner the Iranian president and with the right prompt trigger some sort of confession accounting for wrongdoings.

In the article we read that

in an interview on Sunday with Christiane Amanpour on the ABC News programme This Week, he dismissed as “propaganda” the stoning sentence defence lawyers say was imposed on Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

When asked his own opinion on the issue of stoning in general, he simply avoided the question.

Then, he flatly denied the claim that the number of executions in Iran had dramatically increased since he took office, something attested both by human rights organisations and by international news agencies who keep a running tally of executions announced in the Iranian media.

At Columbia University in New York, he stated boldly that there was complete freedom in Iranian universities. Several students who went out to protest against him on his return to Tehran were promptly arrested.

So why is it that our journalists are so concerned with exposing his ‘spin techniques’ rather than calling a spade for a spade and in this case, a lie for a lie? Why is it that it seems that journalists are willfully seeking to be proved wrong by Ahmadinejad? And why is it that this man is weighed against values, principles and morals which he has no intentions of adhering to?

Spinning Football (Soccer) As Communist

By: Nick Rodham Churchill

In the good old US of A, football (from here on out referred to as soccer – it’s name in the good old US of A) has never found an audience like it has in the rest of the world.  We have a slew of our own sports that we play seriously on our own, and we don’t want anyone else to join in, so stay away!  We call our championships things like “The World Series,” despite the fact that the whole world doesn’t participate.

The interesting thing about soccer, however, is that it remains the “most played” game in America for children.  Why is that?  It’s cheap!  There’s no real equipment or uniforms, save for cleats and shin guards.  As more and more people found themselves hard up in the late 80’s and early 90’s, participation skyrocketed.  “Come on little Jimmy, I know you want to play baseball but soccer is just as fun [and way cheaper, which means we can also buy that new TV I had my eye on].”  Needless to say, my generation – early 80’s babies – grew up knowing all the rules and understanding “The World’s Game.”  Now here we are, mind-twenties, and the World Cup is happening!  We’ve probably traveled outside North America, which means we “get” that there are more countries beyond Canada and Mexico, and we LIKE the idea of participating with them.  Imagine that!  To top it off, Team USA is actually quite good!  So we watch, and we watch in HUGE numbers.  In fact, more people watched Soccer than watched the NBA finals!

This seems like a good thing, right?  People coming together, supporting their country, rallying behind something, and engaging with the world.  This is true, of course, unless you’re Fox News.  In fact, Fox News – who aired many of the games on cable – used the newfound popularity of Soccer to launch an anti-Democratic tirade about how Soccer is part of a broader Democratic Communist plot to turn America into a “World Country,” asking poignant questions like “why do we want to play with the rest of the World anyway?”  I know what you’re thinking – HUH?  But it’s true, according to Glen Beck (who has literally millions of viewers every night).  Now THAT is spin.

I’m gonna go with no.  I’m gonna go with the notion that this is good for America, especially in the current context of unemployment, recession, and general sadness.  I don’t know why Glen Beck is so hateful and so wildly angry at the notion of Americans being proud and patriotic, but I’d like to see him watch this clip and tell me he doesn’t feel just the slightest bit of patriotism, pride, and exhilaration.  Well done America.  WELL DONE!

Same Story, Different Storyteller

By: Nick Rodham Churchill

For those of you who don’t [shockingly] follow Australian politics, arguably the biggest political kung fu in years took place one week ago today.  Kevin Rudd, the once most popular Prime Minister (PM) in Australian history was ousted by his Deputy, the brilliant and masterful Julia Gillard.  It was a brilliant execution (the whole thing unfolded in less than 12 hours) and the first of it’s kind; Kevin Rudd was still a first-term Prime Minister and ousted not by the Opposition, but by HIS OWN PARTY.

The reasons given were simple.  K-Rudd, has he was called, had been straying off course.  It was a government that had “lost its way.”  True, the evidence was there.  in 6 months K-Rudd had tanked in the polls faster than almost any PM in history.  A general election loss was at stake against the Liberals, which would have meant a horrific change of course.  A few recent decisions really hadn’t gone over well with the public, and K-Rudd was pretty terrible when it came to dealing with the media.

Okay, so Special K is out, big J Gill is in.  First, history is made.  First female Prime Minister.  Woohoo!  Next, major policy changes, right?  Not so much.  Immediately we heard there would be changes to the mining tax, the most controversial leftover from Mr. Rudd.  Oops, not so fast.  The government is just “swinging open its doors” to negotiation.  Certainly we’d refocus other key issues.  Instead, it’s all about “consultations” and “new approaches,” but not a whole lot of change in terms of real policy (most of which J Gill was central in creating with Captain K).

Regardless, the press and the country seem to be eating up every last word, believing wholeheartedly that this is a “new direction” for the party, the government, and the country.  So then, what changed?  The spin.  The packaging.  The perception of reality is what changed.  All it took was a new face and a thesaurus and BOOM, a “brand new day.”  You do have to take your hat off to Madame Prime Minister though.  In one foul swoop she cut off the past, reinvent the present, spin the futre, and creat a whole new headache for the opposition.  Well done Julia.  Well done.

Photo Courtesy of: http://images.theage.com.au/2009/01/02/338501/gillard-420×0.jpg

Why I Hate: The Fake Mission To Mars

By: Nick Rodham Churchill

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for space programs.  In fact, when President Obama spoke seriously about completely handing over NASA to the private sector (a move that would have promoted the commodification, commercialization, and ownership of space and space exploration) I spent weeks attempting to convince friends that it was a bad idea (their argument being that America is broke, so space should go).  The problem with space exploration is that it’s intangible for most people.  The “real returns” are difficult to see, but the intangible, emotional, subconscious “bang for your buck” is literally invaluable for people and for society.

Having mapped our entire planet and worked tirelessly to make it uninhabitable recently (BP Oil Spill, Climate Change Denial, etc.), space is something that has the potential to leave us inspired, hopeful, and believing there is more to life than what lies before us.  It’s mysterious, adventurous, and unknown.  With an annual price tag of just under $20 Billion (compared to the Defense Department’s $660 Billion), I’m wondering how we can really afford to cut the budget at all.

Still, I’m kind-of hating this fake mission to mars at the minute.  Why?  Because it denigrates the mystery, the adventure, the legitimacy, and the grandeur of space travel.  This may comes as a shock since I am so pro space, but this “project” is not pro-space in the slightest.  Despite every attempt to spin the story to “prep work for a visit to Mars,” the sponsoring countries have neither the finances nor the technology to actually get there.  The real spin is that the applications to participate were sent out globally and anyone could apply (by anyone, I mean MEN ONLY, as women were not allowed to participate).  You did not have to have any special skills.  In fact, the “flight captain” has never flown a plane before.  Good one.

What is the simulation, you ask?  These six men are going to be locked into a small corrugated metal shack with no windows for 519 days somewhere in downtown Moscow.  They won’t experience weightlessness or radiation, which are the two biggest hurdles.  They will, however, be given video games and the internet (which they would obviously have on their way to Mars).  They have to figure out how to ration their food and will be in constant contact with a “control center.”  To be honest, it sounds like a space-themed extended version of “Big Brother.”  In fact, one of the coordinators of the project said the following:

“Imagine them all flying off to Mars together.  At first they are friends, concentrating on the mission. But then one lands on Mars while the others wait … Jealousy and conflicts flare up on the way home.”

I mean, WHAT?  This just sounds like more fodder for celebrity magazines like In Touch and Hello.  “Oh my gosh, did you see last night’s episode of Space Shack: Mars Edition?”  Yeah, Eddie got so mad at Bobby for using the internet longer than his allocated hour so he BROKE one of the Wii remotes.  Now how are they going to exercise?!?!”

I hate it.  I really really hate it.

Spinning Before It’s Been Spun

By Kyle Taylor

Well well, it looks as if a UK election is FINALLY just around the corner. After more than three years, Gordon Brown MUST trot down to Buckingham Palace and ask the Queen to dissolve parliament so the voters can remake it again. The tell-tale signs are there: Weird, confusing, totally unclear maps like the one above are being reproduced everywhere with captions like “breakdown of the UK electorate likely voter turnout by county excluding outlier opinions and small parties were the election to occur tomorrow.” WHAT? Is this it all scientific? Then there’s inevitably some new interactive feature that allows you to “sway the vote and see what happens.” What happens, you ask? You “spin” the dial and the colors change, making a graphic you initially could not understand even more confusing and turning you into a spin doctor in the process. “Look how easy it is to totally convolute the news,” they seem to say.

The other tell-tale sign? Each party begins to spin the election and “what it’s about” before it has even started, meaning they’re spinning before there is even anything to be spun! News reports like this one in the Guardian say thinks like: “the Prime Minister will say” and “the Tory leader will counter this by saying” and “that other guy from that other party will then double back by contradicting the first guy and chastising the second guy before declaring what the election is ‘really about.'”

The media used to be in the business of telling what happened. Now they’re apparently psychics, telling us what the news will be tomorrow! Isn’t that in and of itself – a newspaper that tells the future – a cover story?!?! The reality is that the “will say” is now code for: “We’re not going to wait to convolute, contort, manipulate, and angle our story. We’re going to try and spin it before it’s a story that way when it becomes a story, it won’t appear to be “spun,” it will just appear to be news.” It’s rather brilliant on their side, rather detrimental to get fair information on our side.

Are we to the point where we’re spinning and spinning so much at every stage in the game that it’s impossible to wade out the garbage, or are we as a public so aware of it now that we just simply write it off as “spin” and ignore it all? It’s hard to tell, especially when our base line may have actually been pre-spun for us too.

Stay alert Britain. This is a big one.

The Death of Spin?

by Kyle Taylor

Here with an entire online space dedicated to understanding and analyzing spin, it seems pertinent to raise the question, does spin even exist anymore, or has it just been replaced with flat-out lies?  There is a certain art-form to “spin.”  You’re taking the truth and finding the angle that’s most advantageous to your side of the argument.  Take the health care debate in the USA, for example.  Democrats spin the debate to lowering costs and covering more people.  Republicans spin the debate to big government and Communism.  At least, that’s the way it used to work.

Now, it seems, when most people support something (like health care reform) and your spin isn’t working, you just start lying.  You may argue there is a fine line.  After all, what is truth anyway?  We’ll save that question for a much more philosophical blog.  The difference between perception and reality can be quite enormous and spin attempts to turn reality into your desired perception.  I think politicians do know the difference and recently, when their perception hasn’t really “stuck,” they’ve decided it’s better to just make stuff up.  After all, once it’s on TV, it’s true!  Lets take Sarah Palin and her claim of death panels – this notion that the government will set up boards where old people have to go and essentially defend why the government shouldn’t kill them.  No, seriously, people believed this.  Or that the IRS is going to hire 16,000 new people to tax those who don’t get health care.  Also totally not true.

Entirely unrelated, Senator Scott Brown has started suggesting that Rachel Maddow, a TV commentator, is planning a bid for his Senate seat; a claim she has denied about 100 times in this video.

Does it matter that she has denied it?  Absolutely not, because he already said it!  It’s a tell strategy coming from a party that doesn’t offer new ideas or even new spin on old ideas.  It’s like they had a big meeting to discuss how their ideas are wildly unpopular then some guy in the back shouted, “how about we just make stuff up?” leading to the inevitable group think of nodding heads and big smirks of old white men who are so disconnected with public opinion, the only way they can get something done is to make stuff up.

So then, is spin dead?  Is lying the new spinning, or is there hope that this art form will somehow survive this all to destructive denigration of politics?