Spin Cycle

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted September 7, 2004.

In a market filled with books documenting President Bush's shaky relationship with the truth, there is a new entry: All the President's Spin. Penned by the three young founder-editors of Spinsanity.com, the book meticulously documents just how Bush has been able to deceive the nation – on Iraq, his tax cuts, or stem cell research – and, more importantly, get away with it.

Although Democrats themselves, Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Brendan Nyhan take a non-partisan approach to a man they describe as the "highest profile carrier of a virus infecting our political system." It is a book that takes issue not with the president's policies but the damage he has wreaked on a democracy through his "politics of dishonesty." The authors also argue that the responsibility for the precarious state of our political system, however, is equally shared by the media which prefers to abide by an arid definition of objectivity than serve the public interest.

AlterNet spoke on the phone with the authors who are variously based in Los Angeles, New York City, and Durham, North Carolina.

Why did you decide write this book, given that there are so many other book bashing Bush out there already?

Brendan Nyhan: We felt like the books out there on Bush don't really do justice to what has gone on over the last four years. Bush is the leader in the arms race of political spin. But no one was adequately explaining how he was getting away with it or focusing on how the media has let him get away with it.

Did you feel that the other books were not tough enough on him or is it that they were too shrill in accusing him of lying?

Bryan Keefer: There are a lot of Bush-bashing books out there – for example, David Corn's book is called The Lies of George W. Bush. But the administration is in fact very good at not lying, saying things that have a kernel of truth but when taken as a whole are very misleading. We've got dozens of examples of this type of thing in the book. For example, they'll take a quote out of context.

So they don't lie. It's a very careful strategy because if they say something that is really untrue then the media will get you. If you say something really misleading but there is a grain of truth there then the media won't go after you.

So do you agree with the decision of many in the media to avoid using the word "lie" when it comes to Bush?

Keefer: We do document three things that are lies in the book that are demonstrably untrue.

The problem is that the media doesn't adequately explain what is going on. They won't come out and say, Bush made this misleading claim.

There is a piece in the Washington Post today on Rudy Giuliani's speech attacking John Kerry. The way the article is framed is that he took certain things out of context. But these (statements) were vicious misrepresentations of Kerry's positions. The problem is that the media frames these kinds of things in a very tepid, he said/she said kind of way. They don't explain it adequately because they are constrained by the need to appear balanced. And the way they've interpreted objectivity, to me, is rolling over.

It seems then that the problem is not so much lies as an impoverished notion of truth. Today, the media has decided, as Clinton did, it is really about what your definition of is is – they've bought into this hair-splitting notion of what is true.

Ben Fritz: The media is afraid to impose its interpretation. As a result, they're letting everyone else define what is true. And different sides have different interests in defining what is is, to use that metaphor. What it means for a tax-cut to benefit the middle class, what it means to have a unilateral invasion, or have 60 stem cell lines available for research.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of Alternet.

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