unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation [Paperback]

Brooks Jackson (Author), Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 24, 2007

Americans are bombarded daily with mixed messages, half-truths, misleading statements, and out-and-out fabrications masquerading as facts. The news media–once the vaunted watchdogs of our republic–are often too timid or distracted to identify these deceptions.

unSpun is the secret decoder ring for the twenty-first-century world of disinformation. Written by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founders of the acclaimed website FactCheck.org, unSpun reveals the secrets of separating facts from disinformation, such as:

• the warning signs of spin, hype, and bogus news
• common tricks used to deceive us
• how to find trustworthy and objective sources of information

Telling fact from fiction shouldn’t be a difficult task. With this book and a healthy dose of skepticism, anyone can cut through the haze of biased media reportage to be a savvier consumer and a better-informed citizen.

“Read this book and you will not go unarmed into the political wars ahead of us. Jackson and Jamieson equip us to be our own truth squad, and that just might be the salvation of democracy.”
–Bill Moyers

“THE DEFINITIVE B.S. DETECTOR–AN ABSOLUTELY INVALUABLE GUIDEBOOK.”
–Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

“unSpun is an essential guide to cutting through the political fog. Just in time for the 2008 campaign, Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have written a citizen’s guide to avoiding the malarkey of partisan politics.”
–Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent

“The Internet may be a wildly effective means of communication and an invaluable source of knowledge, but it has also become a new virtual haven for scammers–financial, political, even personal. Better than anything written before, unSpun shows us how to recognize these scams and protect ourselves from them.”
–Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist.org

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Jamieson and Jackson, both of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, "spin is a polite word for deception," and deception is everywhere. As a remedy, they offer this media literacy crash course. The authors explore spin's warning signs ("If it's scary, be wary") and the tricks used to bring people around to a certain point of view ("The implied falsehood," "Frame it and claim it"), as well as the lessons to call on when confronted with conflicting or suspect stories ("Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence"). Although they tackle the checkered history of product pitches (from snake oil to Cold-Eeze), what stands out is their keen insight into Washington politics, where "deception is a bipartisan enterprise," as illustrated by Bush and Kerry in the 2004 presidential election (in which both fudged the facts of unemployment and taxation). September 11 and the run-up to Gulf War II give the authors their most convincing talking points, debunking myths and chronicling Washington's use of "fear, uncertainty, and doubt"-cited so often it gets the acronym "FUD"-to generate public support for the 2003 invasion. However, the rules to avoid these and other carefully enumerated tricks range from commonsensical ("You can't be completely certain") to labor intensive ("Check primary sources"), leaving one to wonder whether the spin doctors have already won out over energy- and time-deficient Americans.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Read this book and you will not go unarmed into the political wars ahead of us. Jackson and Jamieson equip us to be our own truth squad, and that just might be the salvation of democracy.”
–Bill Moyers

“THE DEFINITIVE B.S. DETECTOR–AN ABSOLUTELY INVALUABLE GUIDEBOOK.”
–Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

“unSpun is an essential guide to cutting through the political fog. Just in time for the 2008 campaign, Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have written a citizen’s guide to avoiding the malarkey of partisan politics.”
–Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent

“The Internet may be a wildly effective means of communication and an invaluable source of knowledge, but it has also become a new virtual haven for scammers–financial, political, even personal. Better than anything written before, unSpun shows us how to recognize these scams and protect ourselves from them.”
–Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist.org


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (April 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400065666
• ISBN-13: 978-1400065660
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Elections & Political Process > General

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 110 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A True No-Spin Zone --- I Think November 13, 2007

By Edwin C. Pauzer VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

At least I think it's a great book, but now I'm not so sure. The authors, Brooks Jackson, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have done such an outstanding job of showing me why I bought the electric scissors I didn't need and how I was focusing so much on watching the healthy people on the television doing Tai Chi in the park, I completely overlooked the possible side effects of the drug the commercial was pedaling. Now that I've listened and found out that it may lead to complete loss of body hair, tailbone growth, swelling of the lips and tongue, excessive weight gain, webbed feet, tooth loss, emesis and leprosy, I've stopped taking the drug.

Starting out with the first snake oil salesman making outrageous claims, to political advertisements by republicans and democrats, by Bush and Kerry, we learn that virtually none of them can be trusted because they appeal to our biases, our perception, our experiences, and cynicism with words that are open to interpretation such as clinically tested, larger, better, more people trust or use..., on average, and other caveats that deserve closer scrutiny. (I've also added to the list: "Read with an open mind," and "Only for those who can be objective").

If that isn't bad enough, the authors show us how our personal experiences and eyewitness accounts can be manipulated by others and by our own biases. For example, when subjects were shown two lines of differing lengths, they often reported that the shorter one was longer, once they learned that everyone else (supposedly) had selected the shorter line. An even better one is the neighboring review: One, who has made his conservative feelings clear, felt that there was more "left favoring" bias to this book. A commenter said that he felt there was more "right-favoring" bias. This is a classic recommendation for the book.

The most fascinating thing I took from this short paperback is that people will cling to their beliefs more tenaciously in the face of overwhelming evidence that reveals their position is incorrect or invalid, that people will short-circuit their own brains and readily accept as fact that which conforms to their own beliefs, and that we must learn to question bias, sources, evidence, and our cynicism before parting with our money or accepting information as knowledge or fact.

So, I can guarantee that you will be 100% satisfied as were the people in my survey who read this book compared with another. Two out of three found this not only a better read, but reported that it killed the germs that cause bad breath, took inches off their waistline, and removed wrinkles. So, what are you waiting for? Get started today. Start reading. After all, you have everything to lose!

Guaranteed! Or, my name isn't Axel Schnookenhoffer!

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book April 24, 2007

By Dr. Fred Coles

Format:Paperback

This is an excellent book for the person who wants to understand how they are being lied to. It is difficult to make sure our biases don't creep in unless we label our comments as opinion. They did a scholarly job here. Nevertheless, their political bias came through. In my opinion this is one of the basic books we all should read.

47 of 55 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Intermediate B.S. Detection December 17, 2007

By doomsdayer520 HALL OF FAME

Format:Paperback

As a lifelong skeptic I can get with books like this, in which you can learn the best uses of skepticism against an epidemic of misinformation. This one starts out with some recent scientific evidence on why people believe spin and stick to their beliefs so doggedly when contradictory information is ripe for the plucking. That's basically the most useful aspect of the book, and the rest is a parade of obvious examples of spin and some fairly useful prescriptions for immunizing yourself. The examples given of spin, unleashed by everyone from marketers to academics to politicians (big surprise), are likely to irk the thinking American. But the problem is that the authors assume that all types of public disinformation are equally harmful, from cheesy and harmless marketing like "new and improved" to the worst of political fearmongering. In one ridiculous example, a British commander ploy to keep secret some minor battle plans in the Falklands War is conflated to the same level of distaste as lies about the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq. Ironically, the thinking skeptics that the authors are trying to train would be able to parse the world of disinformation more usefully than this book does.

The authors also think that "bipartisanship" is the simple act of critiquing both major political parties, when it would be more useful to critique the system that creates partisanship altogether; while they often recommend that you look at "both" sides of a story, displaying the same systematic tendency of assuming that there are only two ways (left wing vs. right wing) of looking at any complex issue.. Also annoying is the specific recommendation not to assume that one example of spin is a widespread trend. This of course is a very good point, but the authors basically do the same thing in many of their examples, and appear unable to get around this simple logistical difficulty. In the end, the recommendations for immunizing yourself against disinformation are pretty reasonable, though predictable and a bit inconsistent (particularly regarding use of the Internet), and mostly amount to an endorsement of the authors' FactCheck.org service. Now that's a little bit of "spin" in itself. [~doomsdayer520~]