The Art of Spin

democrates

Had an interesting conversation with a reporter down the pub on the use of spin and how the language is engineered. I thought it might make an amusing thread for boardsies to share our observations. Here are my two favourite bug-bears:

"There's no evidence for that"
Popular with ministers on the defence. It sounds like a sound legal/scientific argument but the truth is it's usually an admission of ignorance. If you know the facts and someone makes an invalid assertion you're in a position to refute it as wrong. If you don't know what's going on in your department though you use the above response and hope the accuser doesn't have solid evidence aside from what someone told them, which you can easily dismiss as rumour on Q&A or what not. It's the innocent until proven guilty approach, fine in court, but not in public office as it most likely reveals a reactive management style where things must cross their desk in writing to elicit a response as opposed to a pro-active style of finding out the facts and seeking improvements which is what we elect them for.

"Top-up"
EG1. UK students don't get free third-level eduction any more, so 'top-up fees' is invented to imply that government funding is at a level decided by the laws of physics or something and that someone else therefore has to step in and make up the difference, ie students.
EG2. Corporate senior managers who want to extract a fortune from a company regardless of performance often reveal a 'pension top-up' in the annual report, the implication being that their pension would be short of some magical natural level without the extra cash.