Politicians employ a number of spin tactics to try to control the narrative about themselves and their policies, Caroline Fisher, both a former journalist and a former “spin doctor,” told Paul Miller fellows March 7.

“In the social media era, politicians have regained a lot of control. They don’t need you like they used to, they can publish themselves to their own audiences,” said Fisher, a professor at the News & Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra, Australia. “That has completely influenced the spin tactics that they use.” For instance, social media makes it impossible for journalists to fact-check politicians’ statements before they reach a mass audience. Now, “they put the claim out there, it’s very hard to scrutinize it. The horse has vaulted, your job is catch up.”

Fisher and other researchers call an intentional lie that is designed to go viral on social media, “strategic lying.”

“It’s spread through social media. It’s amplified by the mainstream media, it keeps it alive. It’s very hard to scrutinize, very hard to debunk. I mean, the fact-checking really isn’t very effective, and so it just keeps spreading. And the repetition through rebuttal just keeps reinforcing the claim in people’s minds,” Fisher said, citing the false “birther” movement against President Barack Obama as an example. “The media is wedged on this,” Fisher said, because journalists are duty-bound to correct the false information, especially for the dwindling middle ground. (See USA Today Bureau Chief Susan Page’s advice to journalists for combating this with a “truth sandwich.”)

In addition to strategic lying, Fisher broke down another 20 types of spin politicians may use:

• The leak: Releasing information only to a favorite journalist or about a particular issue.
• The freeze: Punishing journalists for negative reporting. “Trump was famous for the banning journalists from press conferences,” Fisher said. But many other presidents froze journalists out more subtly.
• The spray: Bullying and intimidation, trying to punish journalists for negative coverage. “The term ‘fake news,’ the way [Trump] leveled that at the news media, calling them ‘enemy of the people’ is a good example of that.”
• The drip: The act of keeping favorite journalists on a drip of exclusive information.
• Staying on message: “On the face, it doesn’t look like a very sinister type of covert spin tactic. It becomes problematic when the desire to stay on message and the constant petition of that message … becomes a form of obfuscation.”
• Pivoting: “Politicians do it all the time … They’re in an interview. They don’t like the question they’ve been asked, so they pivot the discussion in other directions so that they can talk about the thing they want to talk about and stay on comfortable ground. They get training in how to be masterful at it.”
• The vomit principle: It’s not until they have repeated their message so many times they feel nauseated that they can assume it’s breaking through with the public.
• Playing a dead bat: Not responding to the media.
• The truth, but not the whole truth: Sharing only the most beneficial information or sharing only the least damaging information.
• Throwing out the bodies, taking out the garbage: Using the cover of a major event to get rid of bad news. “Christmas Eve, 10 o’clock on a Friday night, they pick these times where people aren’t paying attention… to sneak out bad information,” Fisher said. “You can’t be accused of having concealed it, you have released the information, just no one paid attention to it.”
• Get rid of it now: Revealing a scandal or negative information all out at once to get it over with, rather than having it continue to develop and “bleed out.”
• Fire-breaking: Staging something to divert people’s attention. (See “Wag the Dog.”)
• Dead cat bounce: An outlandish claim to divert attention and scrutiny. “If someone dropped a dead cat onto the table everyone would go, ‘What?!’” Fisher explained. “It’s completely out of the blue, completely random and designed specifically to divert attention.”
• Kite-flying, testing the waters: Leaking an idea or policy to journalists or on social media to gauge reaction before deciding whether and how to pursue it.
• Being a small target: “If you’re a poor performer, just keep out of the media, just keep your head down. Don’t open yourself up for attack unnecessarily,” Fisher said. “If your opposition is doing a great job of harming themselves, just let them keep doing it. Keep out of the media and just let them kind of hang themselves.”
• Flying under the radar: Not publicizing the work you’re doing, particularly on divisive policy issues.
• Dishing the dirt: Smear campaigns waged by giving journalists negative information about one’s opponent. These can come from inside or outside of the party.
• Dog-whistling: “Using specific, subtle language and messages, symbols, etc., to target a particular section of the community. They’re often racist,” Fisher said.
• Wedging: Raising an issue that’s popular in the electorate, but sensitive to the party you’re opposing. “You try to wedge them on something, to sow division in the party about that and really make it difficult for them to maneuver,” Fisher said, citing gun reform, abortion and race as U.S. wedge issues.
• Mediated authenticity. Using social media to portray normalcy, unlike packaged traditional media. “On Instagram, it’s all photos of politicians shaving or walking their dog or behind-the-scenes stuff,” Fisher said. “Authenticity is really important on social media, but it’s contrived. It is a tactic, it’s a form of social media spin.”

If you suspect your source is trying to spin you, Fisher said emphasize fairness.

“I think you have to work ethically and honestly and say, ‘Look, I get this is difficult. You’ve got two days to get back to me. Please ring me if there are any questions, these are specific things that we’d like to know.’ Just be a human being and try and work with them as much as possible,” she said.

You may also like: Susan Page’s Five Lessons for Journalists, The Truth About Fact-Checking and Scientific Spin.

Speaker:

Caroline Fisher, Deputy Director of the News and Media Research Centre; Associate Professor of Journalism, University of Canberra

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