 In public relation and politics, it is form of propaganda ,achieved through

knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to

influence public opinion.
 One of the dimensions of mass democratic politics is hype making. Just as
magicians use smoke and mirrors to distract their audiences and conjure
up illusions, so too does the political machine and its media staffers. In
today’s Western democracies, television is the primary (but not exclusive)
vehicle for this smoke-and-mirrors show. This show involves four sets of
players:
• Politicians as performers;
• The spin industry;
• Media workers (journalists, presenters/hosts and researchers);
• Media audiences
A fifth set of players are:
• Policy makers. But these policy makers remain deliberately back stage,
shielded from as much scrutiny as possible by the smoke-and-mirrors
 In reality, journalists and voters are equally complicit in the
smoke-and-mirrors game, and the spin industry simply
services the needs of the mass democratic machine. It is also
worth noting that political deceit has a long history – as far
back as 1625, the classic Western legal text by Hugo de
Grotius (1922) said that planned and deliberate lying and
secrecy were legitimate vehicles for achieving political ends.
The twentieth century has simply seen the ‘arts of deceit’
become more sophisticated and institutionalized, as America’s
PR industry grew to meet the US power elites’ needs to try and
control and steer their enfranchised masses (Ewen, 1996). The
resultant PRization of politics subsequently spread from the
USA to other Western liberal democracies.
 In the 1920s, Walter Lippmann described the emergence of a new
professional class of ‘publicists’ and ‘press agents’ standing between US
politicians and The Media and Political Process
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the media (McNair, 1999: xi).
 Sabato (1981: 11) traces the first consultants engaging in today’s genre of
political PR back to 1930s’ Californian politics. However, the PR-ization of
politics really took off in 1950s’ USA (1981: 12).
 Jamieson (1984: 59) agrees: the Democrat Adlai Stevenson’s defeat at the
hands of Eisenhower/Nixon in 1952 and 1956 occurred
because Stevenson, as the last of the old pre-television politicians, could not
adjust to the requirements of televisualized politics.
 political consultants emerged as public actors in their own right,
rather than merely behind-the-scenes advisors. It is now clear that a spin
industry (spin-doctors, minders, plus specialists in crafting visual-media
appearances and advertising) undergirds the political processes of mass
democracies.
 In fact, to be taken seriously, politicians must now possess communication
campaign machines – i.e. consultants have become status symbols (and media
stars), performing alongside politicians-as-performers and alongside
celebrity journalists (see Sabato, 1981: 19–20).
 As Boorstin says: ‘most true celebrities have press agents. And these press
agents sometimes themselves become celebrities.
 The PR/spin industry is geared to planting stories in the media by using
journalists to disseminate stories serving the spin-doctors’ agenda (i.e.
agenda setting). Good journalists resist being used, and do their best to
turn the tables on spin-doctors by using PR machines as resources that
can serve their own agendas.
 For example, journalists can use the fact that all serious politicians now have PR
machines that are in competition with each other. Good journalists can potentially
use this competition to play the various PR machineries off against each other in
their search for stories.
 This is one reason why the PR/spin industry is not always successful. The PR/spin
industry has a particular problem when ruling elites
are deeply divided over policy options. Not surprisingly, during periods
when elite consensus breaks down, journalists are more likely to unearth
‘damaging stories’ (e.g. the USA’s torturing of Iraqi prisoners) than during periods
of policy consensus (e.g. 2001 Afghan War).
 To some extent, each country has been impacted
differently because of the different political cultures in
each, and because PR-ization was launched at different
dates in each country. The country that has moved farthest
down the PR-ization route is the USA. Because the US has
been (and remains) the trendsetter in developing spin
techniques, it will be focused upon when examining the
changes wrought by PR-ization – on the assumption other
liberal democracies will probably eventually follow the US
lead.
 Firstly, PR-ization has changed political parties, as power shifted away
from party bosses and hacks towards consultants and spin-doctors
(Newman, 1994: 15). Party machines once fulfilled the role of delivering
voters – i.e. party bosses cajoling the grassroots party faithful to work so
as to ensure voters turned up on election day.
 Secondly, political leaders now require different attributes to be selected
as candidates – they need to be credible (convincing) television
performers, be visually appealing to voters, and be able to speak in
soundbites. They must also be able to follow scripts designed by spin-
doctors.
Leaders possessing these skills can (with the help of spin-doctors) jump
over the heads of party hierarchies to appeal directly to voters. Hence,
aspirant leaders with televisual charisma, backed by good spin-doctors,
can force the hand of party nominating processes.
 Thirdly, PR-ization has made politics a very expensive business because
of the cost of the spin industry and opinion pollsters, plus media production costs
(e.g. direct mail, TV spots, Web Pages, video media releases and so on). This has
placed an enormous burden on political parties to raise money. The result, in the
USA, was a professionalized fund-raising industry of Political Action Committees
(PACs) (see Sabato, 1989: 145–51). The cost of running this PAC industry is also
high. There has been considerable concern in the USA that the resultant drive for
funds has distorted the political process by forcing politicians to ‘sell themselves’
to large campaign donors. Attempts to regulate PACs have not altered these
underlying financial pressures – pressures evident in all liberal democracies that
have gone down the PR-ization path.
 Fourthly, PRs learned to systematically mobilize popular culture to reach voters
(see Street, 1997). This generated a new genre of scripted politics, requiring
politicians to step outside the ‘normal’ genre of political performance and adopt a
new range of (popular and populist) faces, e.g.
Bill Clinton playing saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show (Newman, 1994:135).
Among those displaying a real flair for this televisualized populism are President
Clinton, Prime Minister Blair and Queensland’s Premier
Peter Beattie.
 Fifthly, since television can reach mass publics and
stir emotions (by
presenting audiences with simplified and idealized
presentations), it is
well suited to deflecting voter attention away from
policy problems by:
• Mobilizing support for a person or position;
• Demonizing people;
• Creating pariah groups;
• Building selective outrage, indignation and hostility.
 Sixthly, the combination of PR-ization and televisualized politics
undermined local political meetings where voters were
addressed face to face. The arts of oratory, making policy
speeches, and question-and answer formats of discussion and
debate, do not mesh easily with the techniques of spinning
sound bites and slick images (designed for passive mass
audiences). So politicians skilled in ‘working a meeting’ are no
longer required, and have been replaced by politicians skilled in
‘working’ mass television audiences. Television has pushed
politicians away from engaging in debate, discussion and selling
policies,
 Seventhly, the press’ power within the political process has
declined. As Selnow notes, PR-ized politics now reaches
voters either via television or by deploying marketing
techniques using individualized media like direct mail. The
latter is becoming especially important and, as Selnow (1994:
147) notes, falls beneath journalists’ radar screen.
Consequently, print journalists (who used to be so influential
within the political process) are increasingly bypassed.
Essentially, the press can no longer monitor the multitude of
political messages generated, because of the complexity of
the spin industry’s communication activities
 Lastly, PR-ization produces a ‘politics of avoidance’ (1994: 178) because
the new process is governed by on-going opinion polls. PR-ized politics
involves running a permanent campaign (1994: 177). Building
legitimacy requires not just manufacturing consent, but maintaining it.
This translates into trying to avoid any issue that might destabilize
‘consent’. The spin industry not only constantly tests and monitors public
opinion shifts, but also runs focus groups to test the ‘acceptability’ of
issues before publicly flighting them. Issues that look too contentious, or
which focus groups reveal may ‘cause problems’ with important sections
of the electorate, are avoided.
 Political PR involves a multi-prong set of strategies and tactics geared
towards putting a positive spin on the politician one works for and a
negative spin on the opposition. Different factions of the political elite are
in competition with each other, and spin-doctors work for all the
competing politicians and factions. As political PR has become
professionalized, spin-doctors increasingly change teams, working for
whoever pays the most – after all it makes no difference which political
faction they work for, given they are not employed on the basis of party
loyalty/commitment but for their professional communication skills.
Spin lies at the heart of PR-ized politics.
 The ability to spin a story means:
[The ability] to manipulate not only what administration officials are
saying but also what the media are saying about them.
Spinning a story involves twisting it to one’s advantage, using surrogates,
press releases, radio actualities, and other friendly sources to deliver the
line from an angle that puts the story in the best possible light. Successful
spin often involves getting the media to ‘play along’, by convincing them
– through briefings, backgrounders, or other methods of persuasion – that
a particular spin to the story is the correct one. Sometimes the spinner can
accomplish the same result not by persuading reporters but simply by
making life easy for them: that is … [by doing the] reporters’ work for
them. Press releases, radio actualities, satellite feeds, fact sheets, and the
like provide a torrent of easy news for the media to relay to their
audience.
 Briefing and press conferences serve as a
watering hole for packs of journalists in search of
news. Well-choreographed photo opportunities
provide striking visual images that reinforce the
messages White House officials want to convey,
but they give the producers of television news
ready-made opportunities to get exactly what
they need most: good pictures. (Maltese, 1994:
215–16)
 A key PR tool is knowledge of journalistic practices because much PR is
about two-step communication – getting journalists to run one’s story
(with as few changes as possible). When PRs are successful at this they
help to set the agenda for what people talk about. Agenda setting via the
media involves knowing what journalists regard as newsworthy, and
understanding the institutional and time constraints faced by journalists.
Effectively, spin-doctors have to be able to:
• Write press releases meeting the needs of different news organizations.
Good PRs know the different newsroom styles;
• Produce good quality photographs and/or video releases meeting the
media’s image requirements;
• Provide good photo opportunities;
 Organize, manage and script events (e.g. political party conventions)
in order to maximize the control one has over images and stories flowing
out of these events;
• Provide a good and reliable background research service for journalists,
so that one becomes a dependable source of (free) information;
• Be reliable contacts for journalists so as to make their job as easy
as possible – i.e. be available 24 hours a day to deliver good soundbite
‘quotes’. This involves developing a symbiotic relationship with
journalists;
• Plant leaks (see Negrine, 1996: 29–30). ‘Leaking’ can actually become
institutionalized, as is the case with the British Lobby system (Cockerell
et al., 1984)