Spinning the news


Listened to the fourth installment of Spin Cycles this morning, the last hour of the Sunday Edition on the CBC. Ira Basen's series on the manipulation of the news by communication experts is fascinating and disturbing.

His web site is worth checking out for the additional material and the audio downloads.

Towards the end I thought Basen engaged in a bit of spin of his own in his description of the Kelly/Gilligan scandal at the BBC. Basen created an image of David Kelly as a whistleblower who might have brought down the Blair government over the issue of Iraq's lack of WMD, if only he had been handled right. Yet Kelly thought the WMD existed. According to Nick Cohen "Before his suicide, David Kelly wrote that the only way to be sure Saddam Hussein had disarmed was to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

Nevertheless I agree wholeheartedly with Basen's conclusion that Kelly and Canada's Maher Arar were the tragic victims of spin masters and the journalists who feed off them.

The final episode of Spin Cycles is on next Sunday. Basen is going to examine how the Canadian military is spinning the mission in Afghanistan. His parting remarks suggest he thinks writers such as the Globe's Christie Blatchford and the Windsor Star's Doug Schmidt have been taken in and made fools of. Could spark a few fires.

Spin had a lot to do with Canada's participation in the overthrow of the Haitian government in 2004. I'm going to return to that subject in my next few posts. (translation: I've been procrastinating on same and should get back to it.)

Posted: Sun - February 11, 2007 at 02:13 PM          

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