What do you think?
Rate this book
unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation
The founders of FactCheck.org teach you how to identify and debunk spin, hype, and fake news in this essential guide to informed citizenship in an age of misinformation.
Americans are bombarded daily with mixed messages, half-truths, misleading statements, and out-and-out fabrications masquerading as facts. The news media is often too intimidated, too partisan, or too overworked to keep up with these deceptions.
unSpun is the secret decoder ring for the twenty-first-century world of disinformation. Written by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founders of the acclaimed website FactCheck.org, unSpun reveals the secrets of separating facts from disinformation, such
• the warning signs of spin
• common tricks used to deceive the public
• how to find trustworthy and objective sources of information
Telling fact from fiction shouldn’t be a difficult task. With this book and a healthy dose of skepticism, anyone can cut through the haze of political deception and biased eportage to become a savvier, more responsible citizen.
Praise for unSpun
“Read this book and you will not go unarmed into the political wars ahead of us. Jackson and Jamieson equip us to be our own truth squad, and that just might be the salvation of democracy.” —Bill Moyers
“The definitive B.S. detector—an absolutely invaluable guidebook.” —Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
“ unSpun is an essential guide to cutting through the political fog.” —Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent
“The Internet may be a wildly effective means of communication and an invaluable source of knowledge, but it has also become a new virtual haven for scammers–financial, political, even personal. Better than anything written before, unSpun shows us how to recognize these scams and protect ourselves from them.” —Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist
Americans are bombarded daily with mixed messages, half-truths, misleading statements, and out-and-out fabrications masquerading as facts. The news media is often too intimidated, too partisan, or too overworked to keep up with these deceptions.
unSpun is the secret decoder ring for the twenty-first-century world of disinformation. Written by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founders of the acclaimed website FactCheck.org, unSpun reveals the secrets of separating facts from disinformation, such
• the warning signs of spin
• common tricks used to deceive the public
• how to find trustworthy and objective sources of information
Telling fact from fiction shouldn’t be a difficult task. With this book and a healthy dose of skepticism, anyone can cut through the haze of political deception and biased eportage to become a savvier, more responsible citizen.
Praise for unSpun
“Read this book and you will not go unarmed into the political wars ahead of us. Jackson and Jamieson equip us to be our own truth squad, and that just might be the salvation of democracy.” —Bill Moyers
“The definitive B.S. detector—an absolutely invaluable guidebook.” —Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
“ unSpun is an essential guide to cutting through the political fog.” —Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent
“The Internet may be a wildly effective means of communication and an invaluable source of knowledge, but it has also become a new virtual haven for scammers–financial, political, even personal. Better than anything written before, unSpun shows us how to recognize these scams and protect ourselves from them.” —Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist
195 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
54 people are currently reading
730 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews
September 14, 2019
The Cost of Truth
There is no market price for truth; buying truth would be a contradiction equivalent to seeking it by torture. But there is a cost of truth. Estimating this cost is the subject of what’s called epistemology. UnSpun is a book of practical epistemology, something particularly apt in the age of Trump and Putin. That unSpun is largely worthless as a guide to good epistemology doesn’t detract from the importance of its subject.
The premise of any epistemology is simple: everybody lies. Best friends sometimes, salesmen most of the time and politicians all the time. We all know this no matter if we live in a totalitarian atheist state or a hyper-liberal religious democracy. The value of truth to the speaker or writer of language is precisely nil. Only the hearer and reader has an interest in the truthfulness of a statement.
The central epistemological question therefore is what and whose interest is being communicated in any message. Whether it’s a commercial advertisement or a political appeal, the interests being represented are not ours. This is not cynicism, merely an emotionless principle which is logically and empirically verified universally. And it’s not paranoia since we can live comfortably with the lesser lies, fibs, and misleading hints.
Of course the difficulty is that the messages we are often given suggest interests we didn’t even know existed. Who knows but they might be ours and we hadn’t realized it. Listerine points to bad breath, for example. Apple says creativity is what is most important in life. Daz will give us whiter clothes - even for our colored fabrics. And Trump insists we should worry about Muslims and Mexicans. In the first instance it is these interests, not the product or issue, that is being sold to us. The intention of the message is to establish a criterion of choice, which if accepted will lead to ‘correct’ purchasing or voting behavior.
The first epistemological principle for dealing effectively with these suggestions about interests is simple: if the message provokes fear, inadequacy, lack of personal merit, or looming social inferiority, it is almost certainly false, misleading, or tendentious. This is an emotional not a rational signal and therefore demands a certain degree of emotional rather than intellectual maturity. Sensitivity not education is what counts. It is the emotions which can distinguish between being sold and being informed. Like any other skill, emotional sensitivity to suggestions about what is important and valuable must be learned. It’s called aesthetics.
This first ‘aesthetical’ principle can be obscured by the use of ‘facts’, particularly statistical data, quotes, and phrases like ‘more than’, ‘better than’ either stated or implied. Factual assertions are meant to ‘prove’ interests when they are associated with the interests that are being sold to us. However, what must be kept in mind is that facts do not generate interests; rather interests generate facts. This shouldn’t be controversial. In our daily lives we encounter an infinity of potential facts. Actual facts are those events which have some sort of importance that has already been established.
This then is the second epistemological principle: all factual assertions are relative to the interests they reflect. There simply are no objective facts. Factuality, like its corollary ‘value’, is a conditional not an existential characteristic. It is patently impossible to know the meaning of data presented as factual, much less the methodology by which these data were produced, without understanding the interests they are meant to further.
Some call this second principle ‘relativism’ and criticize it as promoting social and moral chaos. But paradoxically it is the presumption that there are fixed criteria that can be used to identify truth which contributes most to the acceptance of commercial and political absurdities. These absurdities are accepted within a culture because the culture itself believes it has found the ultimate standard of truth - in Scripture perhaps, or scientific method, or logical analysis, or some trustworthy person, or, quelle horreur, technology. Agreement guarantees validity. Except of course when it doesn’t. As both scientists and Adventists have found over centuries.*
It is not incidental therefore that it is American Evangelicals and the other Deplorables, with their insistence on the idea of absolute truth, who are most susceptible to the Trumpian deceptions and Creationist obfuscations that are obvious to the rest of us. Living without fixed criteria of truth is an emotional burden. It’s uncomfortable, an irritant which we’d like to eliminate, and with it the difficulties of conscience which plague those who doubt. Evangelicals are the 21st century bourgeoisie - they are emotionally lazy; they crave stability, which they find in tribal conformance. They don’t necessarily lack intelligence; but they do have uniformly poor taste.
The burden of epistemological uncertainty can be heavy. Belief, faith, loyalty to one’s cultural group is easy. Doubt is hard. Hopeful doubt is even harder. But it is the real cost of truth. And it has a name: Responsibility, specifically the responsibility for choosing the aesthetic criterion by which we view the world, by which we sort the assertions made about by ourselves and others. This criterion can never be final because the choice itself makes learning about other criteria possible. Nor can the criterion be discovered by a fixed procedure since it is logically prior to such procedure. So there is no way to avoid an entirely personal responsibility for truth.
UnSpun doesn’t like this conclusion. Its authors would like to lay down some fixed epistemological rules. While they agree that uncertainty is something we have to live with (Rule#1 “You can’t be completely certain”), they think there is an intellectual criterion called “certain enough” we can use to separate the truthful wheat from the deceptive chaff (Rule#2). The specific advice is: “In the world of practical reality weighing the facts is a matter of choosing the right standard of proof to give us the degree of certainty we need under the circumstances.”.
Read that sentence again. It is somewhat awkward. Allow me to present it a bit more clearly: ‘Compare competing facts in order to determine the correct criterion for comparing the competing facts.’ The circular nonsense is obvious. Even if it weren’t, the question of how much is ‘enough’ is something the authors steer well clear of.**
UnSpun’s further suggestions are equally specious. Its Rule #3 says “Look for general agreement among experts.” One wonders where there is such a list of experts for the multitude of advertising and political claims that are made to us daily. And, not incidentally, what criteria are used to designate one as ‘expert?’ The authors don’t seem to have heard of the problem of infinite regression. Bucking the issue of truth up a notch isn’t helpful.
Rule#4 is “Check primary sources.” Absolutely first class advice when your preparing for your doctoral thesis in sociology. Not so helpful when checking the claim that brand A analgesic relieves pain twice as fast as brand B. Oh and by the way, the competing claims to being primary sources are not trivial. Ask any biblical scholar how many hundreds of ‘original’ versions of the Hebrew testaments there are.
Rule #5 “Know what counts” and Rule #6 “Know who’s talking” are unexceptionable. They are merely equivalent to saying that facts are relative to interests, although elsewhere the authors have difficulty with this principle.
Rule #7 “Seeing shouldn’t necessarily be believing.” This is indeed informative. But it is really only a restatement of the fundamental premise of epistemology: Everybody lies, including oneself, to oneself. Nonetheless its specificity is a useful reinforcement.
Rule #8 “Crosscheck everything that matters.” This is certainly a fine piece of advice for either an investigative reporter or a trial lawyer. But it is largely irrelevant for the average consumer or man at the polling booth. The authors obviously included it as an afterthought to appear professional. After all the wealth of anecdotal material they present in the rest of the book depends on doing just that.
So while unSpun has a noble objective and reads like an entertaining episode of ‘Hilarious Television Bloopers,’ it doesn’t offer much usable insight or advice about the process of finding the truth about anything. Give it a miss. That might marginally reduce the cost of truth.
*To me it is one 0f the wonders of bad thought that people who should know better suggest more epistemological poison as an antidote for the untruths being peddled. See for example: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I have discovered that I am not alone in this opinion: https://www.thenation.com/article/dav...
**The glib reference to the category ‘facts’ in unSpun reminds me of the importance of the philosopher, Edgar Singer’s, definition of a fact. ‘A fact,’ he pointed out, ‘is that which is not contradicted by any other fact.’ Circularity does have its uses. UnSpun just uses it in the wrong way.
There is no market price for truth; buying truth would be a contradiction equivalent to seeking it by torture. But there is a cost of truth. Estimating this cost is the subject of what’s called epistemology. UnSpun is a book of practical epistemology, something particularly apt in the age of Trump and Putin. That unSpun is largely worthless as a guide to good epistemology doesn’t detract from the importance of its subject.
The premise of any epistemology is simple: everybody lies. Best friends sometimes, salesmen most of the time and politicians all the time. We all know this no matter if we live in a totalitarian atheist state or a hyper-liberal religious democracy. The value of truth to the speaker or writer of language is precisely nil. Only the hearer and reader has an interest in the truthfulness of a statement.
The central epistemological question therefore is what and whose interest is being communicated in any message. Whether it’s a commercial advertisement or a political appeal, the interests being represented are not ours. This is not cynicism, merely an emotionless principle which is logically and empirically verified universally. And it’s not paranoia since we can live comfortably with the lesser lies, fibs, and misleading hints.
Of course the difficulty is that the messages we are often given suggest interests we didn’t even know existed. Who knows but they might be ours and we hadn’t realized it. Listerine points to bad breath, for example. Apple says creativity is what is most important in life. Daz will give us whiter clothes - even for our colored fabrics. And Trump insists we should worry about Muslims and Mexicans. In the first instance it is these interests, not the product or issue, that is being sold to us. The intention of the message is to establish a criterion of choice, which if accepted will lead to ‘correct’ purchasing or voting behavior.
The first epistemological principle for dealing effectively with these suggestions about interests is simple: if the message provokes fear, inadequacy, lack of personal merit, or looming social inferiority, it is almost certainly false, misleading, or tendentious. This is an emotional not a rational signal and therefore demands a certain degree of emotional rather than intellectual maturity. Sensitivity not education is what counts. It is the emotions which can distinguish between being sold and being informed. Like any other skill, emotional sensitivity to suggestions about what is important and valuable must be learned. It’s called aesthetics.
This first ‘aesthetical’ principle can be obscured by the use of ‘facts’, particularly statistical data, quotes, and phrases like ‘more than’, ‘better than’ either stated or implied. Factual assertions are meant to ‘prove’ interests when they are associated with the interests that are being sold to us. However, what must be kept in mind is that facts do not generate interests; rather interests generate facts. This shouldn’t be controversial. In our daily lives we encounter an infinity of potential facts. Actual facts are those events which have some sort of importance that has already been established.
This then is the second epistemological principle: all factual assertions are relative to the interests they reflect. There simply are no objective facts. Factuality, like its corollary ‘value’, is a conditional not an existential characteristic. It is patently impossible to know the meaning of data presented as factual, much less the methodology by which these data were produced, without understanding the interests they are meant to further.
Some call this second principle ‘relativism’ and criticize it as promoting social and moral chaos. But paradoxically it is the presumption that there are fixed criteria that can be used to identify truth which contributes most to the acceptance of commercial and political absurdities. These absurdities are accepted within a culture because the culture itself believes it has found the ultimate standard of truth - in Scripture perhaps, or scientific method, or logical analysis, or some trustworthy person, or, quelle horreur, technology. Agreement guarantees validity. Except of course when it doesn’t. As both scientists and Adventists have found over centuries.*
It is not incidental therefore that it is American Evangelicals and the other Deplorables, with their insistence on the idea of absolute truth, who are most susceptible to the Trumpian deceptions and Creationist obfuscations that are obvious to the rest of us. Living without fixed criteria of truth is an emotional burden. It’s uncomfortable, an irritant which we’d like to eliminate, and with it the difficulties of conscience which plague those who doubt. Evangelicals are the 21st century bourgeoisie - they are emotionally lazy; they crave stability, which they find in tribal conformance. They don’t necessarily lack intelligence; but they do have uniformly poor taste.
The burden of epistemological uncertainty can be heavy. Belief, faith, loyalty to one’s cultural group is easy. Doubt is hard. Hopeful doubt is even harder. But it is the real cost of truth. And it has a name: Responsibility, specifically the responsibility for choosing the aesthetic criterion by which we view the world, by which we sort the assertions made about by ourselves and others. This criterion can never be final because the choice itself makes learning about other criteria possible. Nor can the criterion be discovered by a fixed procedure since it is logically prior to such procedure. So there is no way to avoid an entirely personal responsibility for truth.
UnSpun doesn’t like this conclusion. Its authors would like to lay down some fixed epistemological rules. While they agree that uncertainty is something we have to live with (Rule#1 “You can’t be completely certain”), they think there is an intellectual criterion called “certain enough” we can use to separate the truthful wheat from the deceptive chaff (Rule#2). The specific advice is: “In the world of practical reality weighing the facts is a matter of choosing the right standard of proof to give us the degree of certainty we need under the circumstances.”.
Read that sentence again. It is somewhat awkward. Allow me to present it a bit more clearly: ‘Compare competing facts in order to determine the correct criterion for comparing the competing facts.’ The circular nonsense is obvious. Even if it weren’t, the question of how much is ‘enough’ is something the authors steer well clear of.**
UnSpun’s further suggestions are equally specious. Its Rule #3 says “Look for general agreement among experts.” One wonders where there is such a list of experts for the multitude of advertising and political claims that are made to us daily. And, not incidentally, what criteria are used to designate one as ‘expert?’ The authors don’t seem to have heard of the problem of infinite regression. Bucking the issue of truth up a notch isn’t helpful.
Rule#4 is “Check primary sources.” Absolutely first class advice when your preparing for your doctoral thesis in sociology. Not so helpful when checking the claim that brand A analgesic relieves pain twice as fast as brand B. Oh and by the way, the competing claims to being primary sources are not trivial. Ask any biblical scholar how many hundreds of ‘original’ versions of the Hebrew testaments there are.
Rule #5 “Know what counts” and Rule #6 “Know who’s talking” are unexceptionable. They are merely equivalent to saying that facts are relative to interests, although elsewhere the authors have difficulty with this principle.
Rule #7 “Seeing shouldn’t necessarily be believing.” This is indeed informative. But it is really only a restatement of the fundamental premise of epistemology: Everybody lies, including oneself, to oneself. Nonetheless its specificity is a useful reinforcement.
Rule #8 “Crosscheck everything that matters.” This is certainly a fine piece of advice for either an investigative reporter or a trial lawyer. But it is largely irrelevant for the average consumer or man at the polling booth. The authors obviously included it as an afterthought to appear professional. After all the wealth of anecdotal material they present in the rest of the book depends on doing just that.
So while unSpun has a noble objective and reads like an entertaining episode of ‘Hilarious Television Bloopers,’ it doesn’t offer much usable insight or advice about the process of finding the truth about anything. Give it a miss. That might marginally reduce the cost of truth.
*To me it is one 0f the wonders of bad thought that people who should know better suggest more epistemological poison as an antidote for the untruths being peddled. See for example: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I have discovered that I am not alone in this opinion: https://www.thenation.com/article/dav...
**The glib reference to the category ‘facts’ in unSpun reminds me of the importance of the philosopher, Edgar Singer’s, definition of a fact. ‘A fact,’ he pointed out, ‘is that which is not contradicted by any other fact.’ Circularity does have its uses. UnSpun just uses it in the wrong way.
June 13, 2013
I read this book because it was on the "recommended reading" list of the old syllabus of a Media Literacy class I'm going to be teaching in the fall. The authors start off by purporting to have written a book that will save us hapless consumers from falling prey to the hype that we're subjected to by the media, advertising, and politics. However, instead of addressing their topic with sane, logical, well-researched arguments - the antidote of "spin" - they instead opt to fight fire with fire. The book starts out with over-the-top, hyperbolic rants against anything that doesn't seem to conform to their world-view. There are even sections entitled "Prescription Strength Malarky" and "Bin Laden Baloney." How very scientific, guys. At one point they criticize pharmaceutical ads (so ripe for critique on SO many levels) for focusing on the benefits of a drug and not giving equal time to the side effects. This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the very purpose of advertising (hint: it's not to emphasize the negatives of your product). As much as I may agree with their ultimate conclusions, the antidote to spin isn't more spin.
I ended up reluctantly giving the book three stars because, once you get past the authors' baffling presentation choices, there is actually a lot of good information about how the media disseminates misinformation and what we can do to keep ourselves for falling into its traps (Ironically, their last 'rule' is "Be skeptical but not cynical.") In fact, I plan on using some of the tools from the book, with full attribution, in my class. I won't, however, be including it on my "recommended reading" list, unless it's to demonstrate how "spin" can come from anywhere, and often when you're least expecting it.
I ended up reluctantly giving the book three stars because, once you get past the authors' baffling presentation choices, there is actually a lot of good information about how the media disseminates misinformation and what we can do to keep ourselves for falling into its traps (Ironically, their last 'rule' is "Be skeptical but not cynical.") In fact, I plan on using some of the tools from the book, with full attribution, in my class. I won't, however, be including it on my "recommended reading" list, unless it's to demonstrate how "spin" can come from anywhere, and often when you're least expecting it.
March 13, 2008
I got this book because I'd seen the author as a regular on Bill Moyers' show and I really liked what she had to say about politics and spin.
Unfortunately, this book wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. The book catalogs the ways that "spin" works in advertising and politics, and although I can't fault their suggestions or methodology, nothing in the book was earthshattering. I would like to think that any reasonably skeptical adult would already know most of what this book has to offer.
I kept reading it because I think this book *could* be a good teaching resource. Although I probably didn't need this book to tell me to be skeptical in the various specific ways it catalogs, or to be wary of the various kinds of common advertising and political half-truths and misleading statistical claims that it documents, I would find the book to be useful if I were trying to teach basic critical thinking and skepticism, because they have done a careful job thoughtfully walking you through how to be a thoughtful, skeptical, engaged thinker.
And I do think that the kind of thinking this book promotes is something worth teaching -- I especially think about this as I work with 9th graders this year.
Too often, students are either completely skeptical (you can't believe anything they say) or overly credulous (I love Obama, so everything he says is right). This book is a nice way to introduce skepticism and critical thinking while making it clear that it *is* possible to check up on what somebody says and to get real information from unbiased sources or at least from sources whose biases you can understand and evaluate.
Unfortunately, this book wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. The book catalogs the ways that "spin" works in advertising and politics, and although I can't fault their suggestions or methodology, nothing in the book was earthshattering. I would like to think that any reasonably skeptical adult would already know most of what this book has to offer.
I kept reading it because I think this book *could* be a good teaching resource. Although I probably didn't need this book to tell me to be skeptical in the various specific ways it catalogs, or to be wary of the various kinds of common advertising and political half-truths and misleading statistical claims that it documents, I would find the book to be useful if I were trying to teach basic critical thinking and skepticism, because they have done a careful job thoughtfully walking you through how to be a thoughtful, skeptical, engaged thinker.
And I do think that the kind of thinking this book promotes is something worth teaching -- I especially think about this as I work with 9th graders this year.
Too often, students are either completely skeptical (you can't believe anything they say) or overly credulous (I love Obama, so everything he says is right). This book is a nice way to introduce skepticism and critical thinking while making it clear that it *is* possible to check up on what somebody says and to get real information from unbiased sources or at least from sources whose biases you can understand and evaluate.
February 20, 2018
Yeah, there's nothing earth-shattering in this book, but I don't think there needs to be. It's built around things to watch for and things to do to avoid getting spun, and it's chock full of both advertising and political examples to help you see the ideas in action. It's a very helpful and easy to read book.
July 26, 2016
Huckster marketing and spin has been around since the days of snake oil—which was a real product that didn’t actually contain snake oil and didn’t actually cure anything. That didn’t stop its creator Clark Stanley, from making a mint on the stuff before finally being shut down. The author tells us:
To promote his pricey cure-all, Stanley publicly slaughtered rattlesnakes at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
In the new millennium, another questionable product made from dead exotic animals-- emu oil --has supplanted snake oil. Like old Clark Stanley, emu oil peddlers have made outrageous claims about the near-magical power of their lotions, balms, and pills. Methinks the emu oil scam is simply the last gasp of ratite farmers who learned the hard way that America wasn’t going to turn en mass from beef to large flightless bird meat.
UnSpun isn’t the type of book to read if you are a rabid partisan who can’t stand to hear anything criticizing your own side. Right, left, and middle all get their dues here, when they decide to stretch the truth for PR purposes.
One major way partisans control the debate is to control the language used. Think “partial birth abortion.” Think “assault weapon.” Both highly emotional terms that get the sort of reaction the spinners want. Regarding the latter term,
The so-called “assault weapon ban” signed by President Clinton in 1994 didn’t really ban assault weapons…fully automatic weapons of all kinds were outlawed around the time of George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Bonnie and Clyde. … In fact, all that the assault weapon law “banned” was the manufacture and import of certain semiautomatic weapons, which can’t be fired any faster than an ordinary pistol or rifle despite their military-style looks.
Despite the reality, the text notes that that over half of Americans polled believe the “assault weapons ban” outlawed both fully- and semiautomatic weapons.
Food, particularly of the unhealthy variety, is also advertised by some master spinners. KFC dipped to new ethical lows when they tried to spin their greasy fried chicken as a diet food:
KFC used the same sort of “literally true falsehood” in an attempt to palm off fried chicken as health food. One of its ads showed a woman putting a bucket of KFC fried chicken down in front of her husband and saying, “Remember how we talked about eating better? Well, it starts today!” The narrator then said: the secret’s out: two Original Recipe chicken breasts have less fat than a BK Whopper.”
That was literally true, but barely. The fried chicken breast had 38 grams of total fat, just slightly less than the 43 grams in a Burger King Whopper. However the chicken breast also had three times more cholesterol…more than twice as much sodium…and slightly more calories. … Not to mention that saying something has less fat than a Whopper is like calling a plot of ground les polluted than your local landfill.
The FTC charged KFC with false advertising. Speaking of fast food hucksters, unSpun appropriately mentions “Dr. Evil” himself, Washington lobbyist Richard Berman and his various mouthpiece groups. Berman is perhaps the king of deceptively-named organization, and that should tell you something about his anticipated public response should he be entirely truthful.
Things are not often as they are described. … The Montana-based Evergreen Foundation is supported by companies that cut down trees, and the Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom isn’t run by consumers but was set up by a lobbyist for the booze and tobacco businesses.
The CCF and its even more deceptively-named offshoots (like the Humane Society for Shelter Pets and Humane Watch ) are now on the attack against animal welfare groups on behalf of Berman’s clients in industrial agribusiness. Animals aren’t his only targets. Berman also has his crosshairs on low-wage workers who would like to unionize, via his anti-union Employment Policies Institute.
[T]he group’s executive director is Richard Berman, who (we can discover by plugging his name into our search engine) is a Washington public relations man who was once an executive vice president of the Pillsbury Restaurant Group, owner of the Burger King chain, which employs thousands of low-wage workers.
Classy. Clearly, getting both sides of the story is especially prudent any time Berman gets involved.
To promote his pricey cure-all, Stanley publicly slaughtered rattlesnakes at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
In the new millennium, another questionable product made from dead exotic animals-- emu oil --has supplanted snake oil. Like old Clark Stanley, emu oil peddlers have made outrageous claims about the near-magical power of their lotions, balms, and pills. Methinks the emu oil scam is simply the last gasp of ratite farmers who learned the hard way that America wasn’t going to turn en mass from beef to large flightless bird meat.
UnSpun isn’t the type of book to read if you are a rabid partisan who can’t stand to hear anything criticizing your own side. Right, left, and middle all get their dues here, when they decide to stretch the truth for PR purposes.
One major way partisans control the debate is to control the language used. Think “partial birth abortion.” Think “assault weapon.” Both highly emotional terms that get the sort of reaction the spinners want. Regarding the latter term,
The so-called “assault weapon ban” signed by President Clinton in 1994 didn’t really ban assault weapons…fully automatic weapons of all kinds were outlawed around the time of George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Bonnie and Clyde. … In fact, all that the assault weapon law “banned” was the manufacture and import of certain semiautomatic weapons, which can’t be fired any faster than an ordinary pistol or rifle despite their military-style looks.
Despite the reality, the text notes that that over half of Americans polled believe the “assault weapons ban” outlawed both fully- and semiautomatic weapons.
Food, particularly of the unhealthy variety, is also advertised by some master spinners. KFC dipped to new ethical lows when they tried to spin their greasy fried chicken as a diet food:
KFC used the same sort of “literally true falsehood” in an attempt to palm off fried chicken as health food. One of its ads showed a woman putting a bucket of KFC fried chicken down in front of her husband and saying, “Remember how we talked about eating better? Well, it starts today!” The narrator then said: the secret’s out: two Original Recipe chicken breasts have less fat than a BK Whopper.”
That was literally true, but barely. The fried chicken breast had 38 grams of total fat, just slightly less than the 43 grams in a Burger King Whopper. However the chicken breast also had three times more cholesterol…more than twice as much sodium…and slightly more calories. … Not to mention that saying something has less fat than a Whopper is like calling a plot of ground les polluted than your local landfill.
The FTC charged KFC with false advertising. Speaking of fast food hucksters, unSpun appropriately mentions “Dr. Evil” himself, Washington lobbyist Richard Berman and his various mouthpiece groups. Berman is perhaps the king of deceptively-named organization, and that should tell you something about his anticipated public response should he be entirely truthful.
Things are not often as they are described. … The Montana-based Evergreen Foundation is supported by companies that cut down trees, and the Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom isn’t run by consumers but was set up by a lobbyist for the booze and tobacco businesses.
The CCF and its even more deceptively-named offshoots (like the Humane Society for Shelter Pets and Humane Watch ) are now on the attack against animal welfare groups on behalf of Berman’s clients in industrial agribusiness. Animals aren’t his only targets. Berman also has his crosshairs on low-wage workers who would like to unionize, via his anti-union Employment Policies Institute.
[T]he group’s executive director is Richard Berman, who (we can discover by plugging his name into our search engine) is a Washington public relations man who was once an executive vice president of the Pillsbury Restaurant Group, owner of the Burger King chain, which employs thousands of low-wage workers.
Classy. Clearly, getting both sides of the story is especially prudent any time Berman gets involved.
November 16, 2023
easy to read and not the worst book i’ve ever been assigned to read for a class
March 15, 2018
The book offers a look at logical fallacies that are used in public discourse and particularly by popular media, such as cable news outlets, advertisements, and even academic studies. The time span is during the George W. Bush presidency, which then gives a very particular tone to the way the authors speak and some of the main anecdotes produced. UnSpun offers an anti-Bush, partisan tone that becomes more crystallized as the years progress but still relatable to the passions embedded in that tone - fear. It's not simply "liberal" but rather a tone (syntax, word choice - style) that is palpable and foundational.
I use this book for my English composition courses. Part of the "fun" is the now-dated language which offers insight to our current situation as well as a distance. I use this to give students examples of different perspectives, ways they've been "tricked" by rhetorical strategies, logical fallacies, and particular people using them (salespersons, politicians, news media, social media, family/friends, etc). The book offers an uncomfortable, but familiar, gray space that students can parse through their own experiences with a different phenomena of "fake news," Twitter, and "social justice warriors."
I use this book for my English composition courses. Part of the "fun" is the now-dated language which offers insight to our current situation as well as a distance. I use this to give students examples of different perspectives, ways they've been "tricked" by rhetorical strategies, logical fallacies, and particular people using them (salespersons, politicians, news media, social media, family/friends, etc). The book offers an uncomfortable, but familiar, gray space that students can parse through their own experiences with a different phenomena of "fake news," Twitter, and "social justice warriors."
September 20, 2008
Everyone should read this book right now! A lot of this you might know... yet we tend to forget to practice skepticism as we are bombarded daily with misleading and untruthful information. We have a desire to believe and disbelieve the things that support our opinion or tap into our fears or desires. It was written in 2007, so doesn't cover current presidential election (does talk about 2004 and earlier plus some interesting historical notes). You'll learn a lot more than you might currently know about how you are constantly misled and lied to, in politics, advertising, etc., plus good tips on how to improve your skills in finding the truth. Very even handed approach...politically all sides are guilty, and the authors give examples from each. Improve your skepticism, and it will serve you well! As I said, I wish everyone would read this and pay attention (After spending some time recently looking at comments on various news websites, I'm shocked at the gullability, anger, fear, and hatred being displayed.)
January 14, 2008
About: How to analyze the things you see and hear in terms of bias, accuracy and fudging.
Pros: A great primer on tricky stuff politicians, advertisers and others throw at you and how to realize it. Includes where to look to have a better chance at finding good info
Cons: One can't help but wonder in a book like this, if all of the presented info is accurate :)
Grade: A-
Pros: A great primer on tricky stuff politicians, advertisers and others throw at you and how to realize it. Includes where to look to have a better chance at finding good info
Cons: One can't help but wonder in a book like this, if all of the presented info is accurate :)
Grade: A-
November 22, 2018
Slightly outdated, but it does have some interesting lesser-known facts that are still important. I think it’s a great resource for teachers to use in helping students with their research, or just for your father/aunt/cousin/friend etc. who believe everything they read on the internet.
August 17, 2007
Very well written and entertaining. Chock full of useful info al conveniently laid out like lesson plans in deconstructing media. I may borrow some of their outlines for zine classes.
June 28, 2016
Prep for AP Lang
August 24, 2020
This book is probably the most infuriating text I’ve ever READ. I had to read U****n for my summer HW fo AP Lang., and if I’m going to have to SUFFER through books like this all year.....I’m dropping the class.
I usually don’t read/like non-fiction (unless it’s true crime), but nonetheless, I went into this book with a open mind. 30 minutes in.....I had no clue what I had just been reading and was bored to DEATH.
It feels like there’s absolutely no effort at making a connection between different facts the overly opinionated author, (who never fails to mention they’re from fAcTchEck.cOm, 5 BILLION times a chapter) brings up. Sure all of the scenarios the author brings up DO have to do with fact checking, but 20 examples in.......I think I get the point. Most of the fact checking examples have to do with Osama Bin Laden or false advertising for products (Occasionally some Vietnam war scenarios are also squeezed in).
By the time the scenario is explained and connected with “spin” my eyelids are dropping and the point is completely MISSED. You may be thinking “oh she’s just young and has a short attention span!” No!!! I have sat through reading 300 pages in one sitting and STILL absorbed most if not all of the info provided!!! I can not say the same for this monstrosity...
Overall, if you like numbing your mind and slowly drifting off to sleep every time you start reading, this book is for you!! If not...AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS!
I usually don’t read/like non-fiction (unless it’s true crime), but nonetheless, I went into this book with a open mind. 30 minutes in.....I had no clue what I had just been reading and was bored to DEATH.
It feels like there’s absolutely no effort at making a connection between different facts the overly opinionated author, (who never fails to mention they’re from fAcTchEck.cOm, 5 BILLION times a chapter) brings up. Sure all of the scenarios the author brings up DO have to do with fact checking, but 20 examples in.......I think I get the point. Most of the fact checking examples have to do with Osama Bin Laden or false advertising for products (Occasionally some Vietnam war scenarios are also squeezed in).
By the time the scenario is explained and connected with “spin” my eyelids are dropping and the point is completely MISSED. You may be thinking “oh she’s just young and has a short attention span!” No!!! I have sat through reading 300 pages in one sitting and STILL absorbed most if not all of the info provided!!! I can not say the same for this monstrosity...
Overall, if you like numbing your mind and slowly drifting off to sleep every time you start reading, this book is for you!! If not...AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS!
December 10, 2016
Unspun provided some fascinating case studies and looks at the ways information can be manipulated. The authors, who helped start up FactCheck.org, want to help readers see through misleading advertising by an array of entities. Writing this could have been another public service of sorts, alerting people (particular the target audience, which seemed to be older teens to young adults) to the manner in which naivete is preyed upon in modern society (and has been for generations). Considering that I studied advertising at UT Arlington UTA in college, this book held a particular interest for me; despite this, there just seemed to something be missing from it. Yes, there were good examples from the world of commercialism and politics, but the writing wasn't crisp and the authors seemed to repeat themselves quite a bit. Maybe this could have been done for effectiveness, but it looked like it was more a result of poor editing.
There was a feeling of "Been there before" when it came to most of the text. Again, there were some good elements to it, as paying attention to deceit in the public sphere is especially important in light of recent elections swung by low information voters in Great Britain and the United States. This book might be appropriate for a freshman college course and is a nice resource to shine a light on critical thinking building, but it felt like the authors left plenty on the table.
Andrew Canfield UT Arlington UTA Centenary College Shreveport, La.
There was a feeling of "Been there before" when it came to most of the text. Again, there were some good elements to it, as paying attention to deceit in the public sphere is especially important in light of recent elections swung by low information voters in Great Britain and the United States. This book might be appropriate for a freshman college course and is a nice resource to shine a light on critical thinking building, but it felt like the authors left plenty on the table.
Andrew Canfield UT Arlington UTA Centenary College Shreveport, La.
April 24, 2008
I've been looking at a lot of books about fact checking and information/media literacy and was thrilled to find this one. Thrilled mainly from the outset that it was current, addressed bias in the media in a seemingly straightforward way and was broken down into manageable mouthfuls. And it ended up to be true to what I had hoped for. A perfect book to teach from, and to gather tricks and tips for the sadly ubiquitous handout. My main problem, and it really is a problem, is that they decided, in order "to make this book as easy to read as possible" to omit "formal footnotes, end notes and appendixes giving full details on the source of each fact or quote". Seriously!? Isn't that the point? Very disappointing and I am going to write them a letter to tell them so. Four stars, because even though they were preaching to the saved--I do think this will be useful in the classroom.
September 19, 2008
I expected more from this book; really, it was more basic than my foundation-level reference class in library school. For nonlibrarians, or maybe people who just haven't thought about spin much before, this book would probably be good. Also, I wish they'd concentrated a bit more on finding information about political candidates and issues, rather than talking so much about consumer products. That said, I'd still make it required reading in high schools across America, if I had any kind of authority.
My favorite piece of advice came near the end: be skeptical, but not cynical. Cynicism, the authors say, is just another form of gullibility. There are just as many people who will try to get you to believe something based on claims like "the government doesn't want you to know about xyz issue - but I'LL tell you!"
My favorite piece of advice came near the end: be skeptical, but not cynical. Cynicism, the authors say, is just another form of gullibility. There are just as many people who will try to get you to believe something based on claims like "the government doesn't want you to know about xyz issue - but I'LL tell you!"
August 25, 2011
I was bored to tears. This book gives insight into the world of the "spinners" and challenges the reader to consider both the said and the unsaid in making decisions in today's world. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone my age, as i'm a teenager. Unfortunately, I have yet to gain in interest in the political world and I already understand the constant "spinning" in the advertisment industry.
However, this book was incredibly well researched from page one and gives the readers newfound abbilities to analyze the things they see and hear in terms of bias, accuracy, and "spinning".
I'm sure that many others would appreciate this book more than I did.
However, this book was incredibly well researched from page one and gives the readers newfound abbilities to analyze the things they see and hear in terms of bias, accuracy, and "spinning".
I'm sure that many others would appreciate this book more than I did.
July 21, 2012
This was a very informative book that came at a convenient time for this year's presidential election. All of the tips and pieces of advice are very useful and will help to clear up the mess that is the political ad war. However, the tips got repetitive towards the last third of the book. Basically they started boiling down to "don't assume facts are true; research them to prove them right or wrong". However, many of the examples were entertaining and relevant to today's society, even if politics dominated the examples. Overall it is a good book that will change the way one looks at advertising and persuasion.
July 7, 2015
This was published in 2006 and I read it in 2015, which means two election cycles have passed and social media has become much more ingrained in our day-to-day life. It was fascinating and helpful to read but I would love to see an updated version that takes social media into account. Frankly, with the 2016 election already begun, it's worth a re-read, if only to make me take a look at myself and how I respond to political posturing and advertising.
This book should actually be required reading for the American public...if only so that we don't find ourselves duped by people who know how to twist facts and manipulate ideas.
This book should actually be required reading for the American public...if only so that we don't find ourselves duped by people who know how to twist facts and manipulate ideas.
March 14, 2009
The anecdotes and examples are fascinating but the hidden message of this book is that Americans, by and large, have stopped thinking. We've come to accept anything that comes out of the TV, internet and news media in all it's forms as the truth largely because we can't be bothered to take the time to think and search for the facts behind the spin, half-truths and out 'n' out lies. If nothing else, this books points out the need for a return to common sense and healthy skepticism without cynicism.
March 1, 2012
Critical thinking is such a rarity that I believe everyone should read this book. Not only does it review some of the common mental fallacies that influence our thinking, but it also delves into different techniques and sources one can use to help mitigate their effects. Written by the Factcheck.org founders, I felt that this books did a great job at remaining relatively unbiased, looking at how both Republicans and Democrats lie in campaigns. It also covers different scams and common techniques used by marketers. Highly recommended.
May 29, 2014
This would be a good textbook for an intro to media studies class, or, for the most fortunate of librarians, a one credit information literacy course. The writing style is very journalistic, and universally accessible, despite the heavy Penn influence (which I love, obvs). Sadly, however, this book had the misfortune of talking a good deal about the economy, and being published in 2007, which pretty much immediately made it outdated. A second edition would be incredibly welcome. The ideas are there. It's almost, almost, a really good book.
March 4, 2016
This is one of the most important books a citizen can read, an indispensible guide for voters trying to cut through the bullshit of campaign stump speeches, political adds and candidate "debates". Read it with a critical eye, towards your own party as well as the opposition, because both sides will contort the truth and even lie, "advancing" their cause to the detriment of an honest public dialouge that is essential to good governance. This book will teach you how to recognize spin, then how to get beyond it to the truth you need to make an informed decision.
February 17, 2010
While not earth shatteringly informative, this is a good reminder to keep our minds open and our skepticism healthy as we consume information. I especially appreciated the section about considering sources. Just because a source has a bias doesn't mean it's inaccurate, but you should always be aware that the information could be candy coated, skewed or cherry picked so a smart consumer will beware.
October 21, 2010
Even though I already doubt damn near every thing I hear this was still an interesting read. If nothing else I did learn how to "spin" my own stories to convince people to beleive me. It totally reinforced my theory that most people are mindless sheep and will go along with whatever someone else tells them. I so want to control the world! If only I had the perfect pair of shoes to wear while I was doing it.
August 13, 2016
This book has lots of helpful info, especially during an election year, but it was a bit repetitive. I read it with a class, and by the end, I was ready for it to be over. You definitely get the main point, though, so I guess the authors do a nice job of making a clear argument with lots of interesting examples. If you're going to read it, I would say you can skim most of it and easily get the gist.
March 15, 2012
This slim book provides good instruction of how to recognize spin and how to think logically in a world filled with misinformation and obfuscation. I was impressed with how bipartisan it was in its examples. :-) I would have liked for these authors to look with as close an eye at their own organization, Fact Check to clarify how immune they are from spin. Overall a solid instructional book.
April 2, 2012
I feel this is a such a great find: a book that helps make us aware of everyone's propensity to choose the facts that support their position. Everyone needs to critically examine data, especially with the decline in the quality of journalism and corporate fraud.
Its very user friendly, could be read by a someone as young as 11 or 12. Its not a long read..I really think everyone should read it!
Its very user friendly, could be read by a someone as young as 11 or 12. Its not a long read..I really think everyone should read it!
August 9, 2012
Some of the techniques that were brought up were kind of interesting but i think a lot of them were no-duh. Now i can't watch an infomercial or campaign add without thinking of all of the different types of spin. And this book made me think: Is Kathleen Jameison a reliable source and should i trust her? or is she spinning information on spinning information. haha.
August 14, 2012
From page one the book pulled me in with interesting and intriguing facts that made me want to keep reading. I really enjoyed some of the things i learned during this book about advertisements and the government and it also helped me a lot to learn how to "unspin" myself as a voter and to realize when things people say are true or false.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews