Counter-spin: A Response to Boyd Neil

Abstract

Boyd Neil writes that I have become something of a “bete noir” in the public relations industry since the initial broadcast of my “Spin Cycles” series in 2007. Actually, my experience has been quite the opposite. I have been both gratified and surprised by the enthusiasm and interest shown in the series by public relations professionals in Canada and elsewhere. This leaves me to wonder: why have so many in PR embraced the series and Mr. Neil has not? Judging by the review presented above, I can offer one possible answer. They listened closely to what I was actually saying, and Mr. Neil did not. I am happy that Mr. Neil found some merit to the series, including his recommendation that parts of it should be required material for students of PR; but I am mystified by many of his criticisms. In almost all cases, the complaints he raises are already addressed by various voices within the series. Take, for example, his defense of media training. He is correct that I lay out the standard journalistic complaint over people who are taught the fine art of message tracking, and Mr. Neil presents the standard PR defense of the practice. But in reading his review, you would never know that the prominent American PR practitioner Jim Lukaszewski has already advanced the same defense in the series. In a long and lively exchange in the second program, Lukaszewski criticizes my position using precisely the same arguments that Boyd Neil uses in his review. Mr. Neil’s criticism of my use of the word “spin” suffers from a similar problem. He may object to the definition I use (“deliberate shading of news perception”), but the definition he prefers (“willful distortion of facts to create a more persuasive or one-sided story”) was offered up early in the first program by PR author Fraser Seitel, who goes on to say “it should be antithetical to people who care about the practice of PR, to engage in spin.” Readers of this review would never guess that the case for PR is expressed forcefully and prominently throughout this series by many of its leading practitioners. In other words, Mr. Neil is well within his rights to disagree with my take on “spin” (as he is with my assessment of media training)—but he is wrong to suggest that my series advances only a singular definition. And then there is the infamous “incubator baby” story in the months preceding the first Gulf War in 1991. Mr. Neil’s company, Hill and Knowlton, working