UnSpun Summery
Chapter 1
Teresa Troyer
June 27, 2008
• From Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil in 1906 to Emu Oil in 2006, one hundred years and the deception on baseless claims are as underhanded now as they were back in the day.
• Spin pervades both commerce and politics.
• Whole companies have been built on marketing with false of deceptive advertising.
• Heinz H. Eiermann, a former cosmetics chemist and head of the FDA, told The Washington Post , in 1982, “All the cosmetics companies use basically the same chemicals, it’s all the same quality stuff.” His conclusion: “Much of what you pay for is make-believe.”
• Whether the spin is political, commercial, or ideological, and whether the stakes are trivial or life and death, the ways by which we are deceived are consistent and not so hard to recognize.
• Political Snake Oil, where politicians will tell you pretty much anything to sway your vote or support. One such example is George W. Bush speaking to the voters about becoming “energy independent.” To achieve this goal would require huge changes that he nor his opponent John Kerry cared to propose.
• Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Jamieson say, “Candidates want to avoid discussing politically painful solutions during an election year, or ever. But there’s real harm in pretending that there are easy solutions to big problems, or that the problems don’t exist.
• Deception is highly profitable. “Dr.” Alex Buerrero appeared on infomercials claiming tht his “natural” herbal remedy Supreme Greens could cure or prevent cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, heart disease, diabetes, heartburn, fatigue, or even “the everyday ravages of aging”, all while promoting weight loss of up to four pounds per week and up to eighty pounds in eight months. The Federal Trade Commission hauled his into court and he had to halt his claims and pay a fine of $65,000 or give up his flashy SUV.
• According to the FTC, “consumers may be spending billions of dollars a year on unproven, fraudulently marketed, often useless health-related products, devices and treatments.”
• Deception can be bad for your health. This can be anything from false advertising of something like Listerine, or as serious as Discreet, a home test for HIV. As with Discreet, the U.S. Centers for Disease control and Prevention for that 59.3% of the tested kits provided inaccurate results. The FTC offered no estimate of how many HIV-infected persons might have been lulled into a false sense of security by an erroneous negative reading.
• Politicians deliver even bigger doses of prescription strength deception, deliberately filling voters’ heads with disinformation about their opponents and about their own policies.
• Voters are not the only ones deceived by candidates false claims, even members of their own parties are deceived.
• Political deceivers don’t always state their falsehoods outright; sometimes they merely imply them. But the effect can be just as bad.
• Politicians are not the only ones that can sway the public’s view of political issues. Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 left many viewers with the impression that President Bush has approved a special flight to allow relatives of Osama bin Laden, who lived in the US, to get out of the country without being questioned, while US airspace was closed in the days immediately following 9/11. While 9/11 commission found that not to be true. The FBI gathered the bin Laden family members together and questioned many of them and then flew them out a full week after the airspace was reopened.
• The political deception is nonstop. It doesn’t end when the elections are over. The interest groups spend tens of millions of dollars on deceptive ads even in non-election years.
• Respect for facts isn’t a major concern in the advertising industry, and is far too rare in politics. David Ogilvy, a legendary adman, said he was “continuously guilty of suppression veri.” Translated from the Latin as “suppression of truth.”
• Truth-in-advertising laws give some protection from false claim in commercial advertisements but a lot still get through. It could be months before regulators can get it off the air. Many advertisers have learned to weasel-word their commercials so that their claims are literally accurate yet still misleading.
• Politicians have the legal right to lie in their ads. There is no federal law requiring through in political ads at.