How to Expose Spin

This section examines how to expose the activity of shaping public opinion through the
sophisticated use of public relations – otherwise known as spin. Used since before World War
One, by politicians and political parties in need of burnishing their image in the public eye, spin
has increasingly been associated with government and corporate campaigns. Like political spin,
the use of PR by business dates back to the early years of the twentieth century in the UK,
burgeoning whenever public acceptance of corporate dominance has dipped.See David Miller and William Dinan, A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power (London: Pluto Press, 2008).
Spin’s evil twin is lobbying. The right to lobby government is every citizen’s prerogative in a
functioning democracy, but in Britain the practice is dominated by a £1.9 billion industry which
mainly lobbies on behalf of big business interests. This has doubled in size since the early 1990s
and, until the May 2010 proposals by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government to create a
lobbying register, was largely unregulated. People involved in the profession today range from
consultant lobbyists – many of whom are employed by large PR firms, law firms or management
consultancies – to in-house corporate lobbyists, business associations, trade unions, NGOs and
think tanks. The majority of successful lobbyists have political experience and contacts inside
government, with many professional lobbyists being former politicians or staffers. Based on US
figures, the estimated pay-offs are staggering: for every $1 spent on lobbying, a business can expect
a return of $100.‘Study: Paying for lobbyists - pays off Even as Obama Vows to Curb their Influence, the Industry is Booming’, Associated Press, updated 4 September 2009, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30113628/ Since the success of a particular lobby usually depends on resources and access, which often translates into influence, it becomes imperative for citizens to understand the linkages between lobbyists and officials and potential conflicts of interest.
As spin and lobbying are largely conducted behind closed doors, detailed investigative methods are
required. You will, therefore, need to use any or all of the previously-described methods in clever
combinations, looking at both individuals and organisations and the connections between them.
This kind of research usually begins with a simple internet search for an individual PR guru or
lobbyist or an agency with which they are affiliated. Follow all the links that come up and, if
relevant information is available on a website of dubious credibility, you will need to look for an
alternative source to verify it. If you suspect that pages from a particular website have been
modified or removed, use the Way Back Machine at archive.org to retrieve older versions. If you
would like to capture a current web page for posterity, use the Firefox extension, at screengrab.org.
If you are researching an individual, you can use published volumes, such as Who’s Who or
Debrett’s Peerage, to establish the basic family history and affiliations of the great and the good.
For a more thorough search, especially on issues of historical relevance, you might use Nexis UK
(available digitally through the website of the university library), which will bring up lists of press
and publications involving the subject of your research. You will also need to deploy some of the
methods outlined in the sections on How to be a Web Detective and How to Find People Online to
track down individuals.
If you are looking at a company, refer to the chapters of this manual dealing with Companies House
and corporate accounting; if you are investigating an organisation with charitable status, the
various Charity Commissions of the UK keep registers that are available online. In the battle to
control public and political opinion, the use of think tanks, front groups and fake grassroots (or
astroturf) organisations has become established practice, and information available at Companies
House might provide important insight into the powerful funders behind a particular organisation.
You may wish to explore the links of company directors and charity trustees in order to establish a
pattern of inter-connectedness. You can use social network analysis to visually map out the linkages
between various groups and individuals, using graphical software such as Y-ed. Some interesting
experiments in this area have been conducted, with Exxon Secrets,
showing how Exxon Mobil funds attempts to disrupt the scientific consensus on global warming.
In order to expose junctures at which corporations have used spin to massage the figures, you will
often need to compare the message they want you to read with the actual facts, which may involve
consulting annual reports and empirical research from the same field. If you are researching
lobbying, you may wish to consult Hansard, the daily record of debates in the House of Commons, to determine when a particular issue was brought before parliament and by whom.
If you are investigating a website, look for registration information, as outlined in the Web
Detective chapter, while bearing in mind that, in recent years, some actors have taken to using
domain-anonymising services to conceal their identities. Similar searches may also be carried out
for IP addresses; sometimes all it takes to expose a front group is to put its address into Google and
check whether another organisation shares the same address.
Something as mundane as a phone call might also help to establish a link. In 2009, a call to the
London offices of Réalité EU – a web-based project with a newsletter that pushes alarmist claims on
Iran – was redirected to voicemail in the US. Taking down the number given in the voicemail and
typing it into Google showed it to be a number in the offices of The Israel Project, a hard-line Israel
lobby group based in Washington DC. Subsequent emails received from Réalité EU revealed that
they were sent from a mail server registered to the Washington offices of B’nai B’rith International,
a leading national Israel lobby institution, which shared a mail server and office with The Israel
Project.
You can also make extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act (see the first chapter of this
manual) to obtain information from public bodies which is not generally available. Although private
companies are not vulnerable to FoI, their communications with public bodies are and this can be a
key resource for investigating corporate lobbying. Be prepared to persist to obtain the information
you need. It took Spinwatch researchers two years to force the House of Commons to release the
names of former MPs with pass access to the House of Commons, which showed that at least
twenty-five of them were working as lobbyists and were able to use their passes to gain access for
their clients. Freedom of Information also operates at a European level, providing access to
important documents dictating policy to member states.
A useful forum for collating and publishing your research into spin and lobbying, with feedback
from editors, is provided by Powerbase. The site focuses on power networks, on how they are
organised and on associated issues such as spin and propaganda in politics, the corporate world and
elsewhere. It includes significant resources on neoconservative networks, terrorism expertise,
policing and intelligence agencies. The project aims to serve as a resource for journalists, activists
and academics and as an educational, campaigning or knowledge transfer tool. By laying bare the
professed or hidden affiliations of powerful actors, it seeks to highlight conflicts of interest and
hidden agendas in order to promote transparency in public life. Powerbase operates as a Wiki which
requires you to register in your own name in order to begin editing pages.
The golden rule when researching spin and lobbying is to remember that things are not always
as they seem; beneath a seemingly benign, grassroots organisation, with a message which seems
to favour the public interest, may lurk more cynical motives.
Based on a presentation by David Miller
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==Notes==
Category:Investigative ResearchCategory:Research Methods