The Politics of Spin

Although lagging behind the excesses of current US and British spin doctors, Australia’s spin industry is growing rapidly, raising questions about the impact of media management on effective scrutiny by journalists of polit-ical processes and issues. Political leaders can appear more visible but in fact be less accessible to detailed questioning by informed interviewers, and election cam-paigns are now dominated by sophisticated levels of me-dia management by governments and oppositions. The rise of spin has had a negative impact on journalism, distorting news processes and encouraging more passive forms of journalism. B eing a good spinner can get you a very long way. In Tony Blair’s mid-1998 reshuffle, Peter Mandelson was elevated from Minister without Portfolio to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and put into Cabinet. Mandelson was head of the publicity machine that was a key in the highly successful Blair campaign. A confidant to Blair, he used news management ruth-lessly for purposes within and outside the party. One account of the rise of Blair and New Labour reported that Mandelson “had no hesitation in making use of his many contacts among political journalists to generate unfavourable coverage for anyone who sought to impede the path of Blair’s supporters or was critical of the direction being taken by those who regarded them-selves as Labour’s modernisers. ” (Jones, 1997, p.15) An article i