Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine [Hardcover]

Howard Kurtz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 1998

Bill Clinton is the most investigated president since Richard Nixon-- facing inquiries into Whitewater, campaign fundraising abuses, and sexual misconduct-- and yet he improbably began 1998 with approval ratings as high as those of Ronald Reagan. But the new year has brought a barrage of new allegations, and the president and his advisers face once again the challenge of spinning the news to their advantage, a challenge they have mastered many times before.

In "Spin Cycle", award-winning Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz reveals the inside workings of Clinton's well-oiled propaganda machine-- arguably the most successful team of White House spin doctors in history. He takes the reader into closed-door meetings where Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Mike McCurry, Lanny Davis, and other top officials plot strategy to beat back the scandals and neutralize a hostile press corps through stonewalling, stage managing, and outright intimidation. He depicts a White House obsessed with spin and pulls back the curtain on events and tactics that the administration would prefer to keep hidden, including:

The secret report that Hillary Clinton ordered on a reporter investigating the Whitewater affair as part of a plan to discredit her.

A tense, almost paranoid White House atmosphere in which the spinmeisters do not question the President about the various scandals because they don't want to learn information they might have to reveal to prosecutors or the press.

The secret meeting between a Clinton operative and the editor of The New York Times that led to a presidential interview in which Clinton knew the questions in advance.

Bill Clinton's success in reaping favorable publicity by secretly courting selected reporters and columnists in off-the-record White House meetings.

Al Gore's feelings of betrayal as the scandal-hungry press turned on him and jeopardized his presidential candidacy in 2000.

"Spin Cycle" is an all-too-human drama in which political operatives wrestle with their consciences as they struggle to protect the boss. As the scandal drums beat louder and louder, Kurtz shows what it takes for the president and his people to survive, and what happens to the truth along the way.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With a slew of simultaneous scandals to his credit and numerous ongoing investigations pending, President Clinton has been bombarded by the media in a fashion not seen since the last days of the Nixon administration. Despite this unwanted attention, Clinton has managed to maintain lofty approval ratings and successfully deflect even the most ardent attacks. How does he do it? This question is answered in full in Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine, an engrossing, backroom look at how news is created and packaged in the White House and the methods used to distribute it to the public. In painting a detailed picture of the hand-to-hand combat known as a press conference, Kurtz shows how the use of controlled leaks, meticulously worded briefs, and the outright avoidance of certain questions allows the White House to control the scope and content of the stories that make it to the front page and the nightly network news. As Kurtz makes clear, the president and First Lady are convinced that the media are out to get them, while the journalists covering the White House are constantly frustrated at the stonewalling and the lack of cooperation they encounter while trying to do their jobs. In the middle is White House press secretary Mike McCurry, a master at defusing volatile situations and walking the fine line with the press. Though less paranoid and cynical of the media than Clinton, he often finds himself on both ends of personal attacks and vendettas that veer far outside the arena of objective reporting. The anecdotes and carefully buried information Kurtz has uncovered give Spin Cycle a brisk pace, along with ample invaluable information that cuts to the core of this age of media overkill. The author of Hot Air and Media Circus and a longtime media reporter for the Washington Post, Kurtz is uniquely qualified to report on the status of news dissemination in the United States.

From Library Journal

In his own reading, author Kurtz (Hot Air: All Talk, All the Time, Random, 1996), Washington Post media reporter and magazine writer, reveals details about President Clinton's front-line spokespersons' struggle to put a positive "spin" on the many Clinton administration scandals, including Whitewater, the Paula Jones allegations, "filegate," "FBIgate," and the latest involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Kurtz opens the curtain on the continual back-office tactics of Clinton's spin doctors to steer the press back to national and international issues of import, only to find themselves constantly bombarded by intense focus on allegations of misdoings by the President as well as the First Lady. This detailed, inside look at these alleged sordid shenanigans and embarrassing behaviors of public officials also reveals the difficult inner personal conflict faced by Clinton's cronies as they struggle with these distasteful "nonissues." In time, either with a premature end to the presidency or a naturally evolving new administration, this time-sensitive work will be relegated to the remainder shelves, replaced by solid works by professional historians and biographers. Recommended only for larger public libraries.?Dale Farris, Groves, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (March 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684852314
• ISBN-13: 978-0684852317
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #443,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #29 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > Mass Media

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE book on modern Presidental PR, July 28, 2001

By 

Eric G (Northeast US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News (Revised and Updated) (Paperback)

Howard Kurtz, a sage media critic for the Washington Post, has crafted the modern masterpiece on how the spin game is played in Washington. As we all know, political success comes from developing a carefully constructed image, fed to the American public via the mass media. The staff in the President's press office work dilligently to dominate the news cycle and to present the calculated images and soundbytes that will help increase the President's public opinion numbers.

Kurtz could not have found a better case study, as Clinton's press staff (led by the brilliant Mike McCurry) help the boss survive one scandal and damaging revelation after another, from Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky and Impeachment. Ever wonder how Clinton survived those eight years intact? Read this book and it will all make sense. This book will soon be a must-read in both history and political science, where it will help future generations understand the Presidency, c. 2000.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars and this was just the dress rehearsal (so to speak), November 12, 2001

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News (Revised and Updated) (Paperback)

The presidential flacks had done their job. For 1997, at least, their spin had carried the day.
-Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle

In a story that is utterly devoid of edifying moments and chock full of quite depressing ones, these
final lines of the book are the most shocking. For it is only as you read them that the full realization
hits home that Howard Kurtz's justifiably jaded and cynical look at the way the Clinton administration
manipulated the press and the public in order to cover up or blunt scandal was written before the
Lewinsky scandal broke. Commingled with the shock though is the sudden comprehension that the
Clinton Administration was uniquely well prepared to deal with such a scandal, having spent the prior
seven years honing their obfuscatory skills on a whole series of equally disturbing and potentially
damaging scandals.

In fact, as Kurtz notes in a hastily tacked on Epilogue, one that subsequent events were to wholly
outpace, in the deposition that Bill Clinton gave in the Jones case, on the weekend that Matt Drudge
broke the Monica story, he revealed that he had in fact had sex with Gennifer Flowers. In other
words, on the very first occasion that most Americans saw Clinton, the infamous Super Bowl night 60
Minutes appearance, he lied to us all, with Hillary at his side, and it worked.

What Howard Kurtz really ends up detailing for us is just the long dress rehearsal before the big show,
in which the Clintons and their spin machine worked out all the kinks in their act. By the time the
Lewinsky scandal broke, they understood that all they had to do was deny initially, demonize liberally
(both accusers and investigators), leak pre-emptively, and acknowledge belatedly and they would be
able to so desensitize the press and the people that Bill Clinton would ultimately survive. And so, as
the tawdry mess reached its foreordained conclusion, we had the hitherto unimaginable situation of a
credible rape charge (by Juanita Broaddrick) against the President of the United States, which he did
not even deny, but which the press chose not to hound him with. He had finally just beaten them
down to the point where they didn't have the heart to pursue another scandal.

Then, in a moment which nearly redeems him, Clinton left office in a blizzard of bartered pardons and
other final acts of contempt for the staffers, supporters, and voters who had excused everything he'd
ever done. It was the final (...) gesture of a man who clearly understood that he had so implicated a
nation in his treachery that he had become untouchable. To judge Bill Clinton at that late date would
have required people to face all of the excuses and allowances that they'd made for him in the
preceding eight years, and that was not going to happen. It was all just so brazen that it was hard not
to admire the in-your-face flourish with which he departed. Howard Kurtz does a fine job of charting
the early years of the Clinton scandals, but there was so much more yet to come.

GRADE : B+

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Inside Look at Clinton and the Media, September 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News (Revised and Updated) (Paperback)

Howard Kurtz, aside from being a perceptive media critic, is a very luck man. <i>Spin Cycle<i> went to press just as the Lewinsky scandal broke. Now updated and in paperback, it is a must-read for anyone watching current coverage of the Clinton presidency and wondering how the heck we got here. Kurtz shows that the tensions between the Clintons and the White House press corps go back to the beginning of his presidency. For all his political savvy, Bill Clinton has never mastered media relations, and now, in crisis, he has no good will to call upon. Also central to Kurtz's story is outgoing press secretary Mike McCurry, a man who should receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his work in the trenches.