Worzels World - Spin: let the buyer beware

 

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We are cynically aware of the exaggerated claims and mislead-ing hype inherent in advertising. Since cavemen traded tiger teeth, salesmen, horse traders and snake oil merchants have been saddled with a reputation for unscrupulous behaviour. H.G. Wells remarked that “Advertising is legalised lying” and Edgar Shoaff concluded that “Advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half truths.” In the market place “let the buyer beware” has long been a guiding precept.

The revolution in in-formation technology and the consequent expanding global com-munications network has taken the market-place from the village green, or the shopping mall, and placed it in our cars, our workplac-es and our homes. The market is open all hours. The hawker no longer has to face the mob. He now plies his trade from the comfort of an office. He’s an advertising executive or a public relations consultant, his soapbox a computer terminal or a television studio. Corporations have their advertising agencies, celebrities have agents or publicists, and politicians have press secretaries, speech writers and PR personnel. Salesman all, they flog whatever their client wishes to peddle – a brand, a record, a personality or a policy.

The general public, now with access to more information than at any time in history, have come to depend on media to supply the information needed to form views of world events, politics, current affairs, etc. If false or misleading information is generated by political spin doctors, or from any source that has a vested interest in manufacturing a percep-tion in the public mind, no matter how objective and unbiased the reporting is the information remains unreliable.

Media too, often add their own spin to events. Ratings driven, and knowing the public’s pre-dilection for juicy gossip, news items are sensa-tionalised or emotionalised. An interesting lie enjoys greater popularity than a boring truth. The modern self-censorship of political correctness, apart from being paradoxical in a society that defends the right to freedom of speech, further precludes the possibility of an unbiased presentation.

Poet and satirist, Jonathon Swift wrote “False-hood flies and the truth comes limping after; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late: the jest is over and the tale has had its effect.” Swift wrote this in the seventeenth century, long before the advent of television or the internet. If falsehood flew then, it's now traveling at the speed of light. And as Einstein would testify, relatively speaking, that's pretty bloody quick. Very little of the information with which we are flooded daily comes to us free of ‘spin’ in some form or other.

The extraction of fact from the salesmen’s rhetoric has become a task beyond most of us. Among so many gilded lilies, how do we find ones of an authentic colour?

To what degree does this undermine democracy? To what extent does it foster a general mistrust as people in-creasingly become aware that most of what they are fed is intended to manipulate rather than inform. Without access to reliable data, we can-

not make informed deci-sions based on any clear understanding of the is-sues involved.

If public consent is gained by selling a perception, that does not correspond with reality. What advantage is there in democratically elected government over monarchy, dictatorship, or an-archy?

American President Abraham Lincoln said “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” In accordance with American tradition he was, like many other wise US presidents, assassinated.

If we are to be amongst those who are not always fooled we must learn to be sceptical of spin that would sell us anything from steak knives and abdominal exercisers to political parties espousing 'brighter futures'. The additional problem with the latter is that after you've made the purchase and found out that you bought a lemon, it is more diffi-cult to lock them up in a cupboard and forget you ever bought such rubbish in the first place.

So before we all “rush in while stocks last” it may be wise to remember that some goods are costly at any price, and despite the Consumer Guarantees Act the principle “caveat emptor” still applies. „ prof_worzel@hotmail.com

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