Spin Cycle

One of the reasons fake news works and real news can be accused of being fake is that everybody is always spinning information hoping to make it more favorable.

Of course this is nothing new, it just seems that we get more spinning than we ever did before.

The way to do a successful spin is to find something that supports your position, no matter how insignificant and make it seem like the most important element.

Take the Affordable Care Act. While it clearly extended health coverage to additional millions, a small number of people had to change health plans and in some cases pay more.

Well the opponents couldn't stop talking about those people to the point that news coverage was often more about the few thousand than about the many millions.

In fact, a lot of the coverage was when people got cancellations in the mail, so what was the actual outcome is uncertain.

This was spin and in fact one way to recognize spin is when people use anecdotes to make a point.

They do this when the statistics are so against them they need to point to poor old Nell who had to change doctors because of the evils of obamacare.

Of course statistics can be spun also, especially when you have blip or a correction.  Take something like climate change.  While there is a very convincing and conclusive multi year trend that the earth is warming, there will be periods, generally short ones where whether shows a temporary increase.  Deniers can seize upon events like that to spin an alternate story.

There are many people, who normally are driven by market forces who don't want the public to be well informed.  We saw this during the tobacco denials where special interests tried to "debunk" the link between tobacco and health problems.  Of course they wanted to keep selling tobacco and they did, but millions got ill and died.

Why wasn't this mass murder? 

People who are denying others health care or refusing to address climate change are also going to kill people.  We have freedom of speech, but at what point do they have to pay for the lies they tell?

Free speech isn't the right to yell fire in a crowded theatre.  Why are blatant lies protected?

People will be spun to death.