Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News

Being a fan of President Clinton I always read a book on his administration with a bit of a bias view. At times this book upset me and other times I was shouting "right on", given these duel responses I have come to the conclusion that, no matter that I did not agree with a number of items, the book is an overall fair look at the Clinton scandal fest. I thought the author did a great job in weaving together the pertinent facts about each of the scandals / issues with the response from the White House. I was very interested in the inside info on how the White House tried to either spin or deflect each of the stories. The author had a great deal of direct quotes of conversations, which really made the book come alive. The information about the White House briefing is worth the price of the book alone. You can actually see this type of activity at work today with the current briefings that are televised. I also was interested in the additional comments on the way that the Clinton's themselves viewed the media and their knee jerk reaction to clam up at every question. You almost got the feeling that if the Clinton's would have always listened to the media people on their staffs that some of the overall negative and nasty press they received may have been decreased to some degree. The last bit of the book that surprised me was the, at times, rude, disrespectful and almost violent way the media and the White House staff dealt with each other. You just got to wonder what the White House staff was thinking to beat up on the people with the loudest voice in the country. My only complaint was that the book ended too soon, missing the Super Bowl of the spin, the Starr Report and the impeachment. It would have been nice for the author to have held out a year or so for the full story in the paperback. Overall I found this book well written, very interesting and quite enjoyable. It is required reading for anyone that is interested in the Clinton years or the media.

When reading this book, which focuses on the Clinton Presidency, you must put your biases aside. If you can't get beyond your personal feelings about Bill Clinton, you will fail to grasp the very thing that made his presidency as successful as it was. Reviewers that claim Clinton demeaned the Presidency through his constant campaigning, are naive. The truth is Clinton showed how the modern President must function, in order to be successful in this era of gotcha-jounalism in Washington. The Clinton press and communications office show political proffesionals the way to manage scandal. Strategies include the document dump, the timing of news releases, and possibly the most important strategy, communicating to the electorate through the media. If journalists want to learn to anticipate the various ways politicians in the future will attempt to avoid being caught in a scandal, then they must study Kurtz' Spin Cycle if they ever hope to realize their dream of being the next Bob Wooward.

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.

The media and the White House are the players. The country and its people are the pawns. "Spin Cycle" is a revealing and highly disturbing report on the game people responsible for truthful and unbiased guidance of this country play. Howard Kurtz digs deep into the Clintonian bureaucracy to show how presidential aides, especially Mike McCurry, the White House spokesman, juggle the news while the media vultures scavenge for sound bites. Kurtz shows how "the Press Party" sometimes takes the extra step when it comes to acting the role of gatekeepers. They are the ones who decide what will be the next morning's front headline. And if they do not have one that can sell enough copies, they create one. Kurtz points out the traditional measures by which the president should be evaluated, instead of scandals and issues not related to the presidency. "Now the increasingly opinionated mass media had somehow become the arbiter of the political success and the distiller of the conventional wisdom. A president's words were endlessly sliced and diced by the self-appointed pundits, his every move filtered through someone else's ideological lens," he writes. This manipulation and intimidation, however, works both ways. The Clintonites are deciding what their policy on an issue is depending on the mood of the press. The author concludes with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The journalists decided to draw the line. After numerous obscure press conferences, interviews and tip-offs, they demanded a blockbuster headline. And they got several. How and why was not important. At the end of all the "lovers quarrels," the public was exhausted. It seems that the only outcome of this "game of smoke and mirrors" was an increased distrust in the leadership of the country. "Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News" should be a mandatory reading for everyone concerned with constitutional rights and moral guidance of this country.

Howard Kurtz, aside from being a perceptive media critic, is a very luck man. Spin Cycle 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.