Spindoctor

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The term Spindoctor is a term taken from English for a media, image or political advisor and person responsible for public relations . The term is used by the mass media , especially in the area of policy used and has a negative connotation because it indicates that the called "Spin Doctor" Person Events "with the right rotary ( English spin ) Feathers" by a subliminally manipulated representation in the media. In English, in addition to spin doctor , the term spinmeister or spinnster is also used.

In contrast to political propagandists , a spin doctor is less concerned with conveying a certain general point of view, but rather with presenting his client , his or her politics or other people or events in the most positive or negative light possible and in the best possible public way in every situation To get attention. He works with images, staging (for example photo sessions, events for the cameras of the press) as well as with PR and uses the media for his goals, for example through agenda setting . He usually stays in the background and rarely appears in the media himself.

Not all of these means are frowned upon, as public relations means can make complex relationships more understandable for a lay public. However, the “staging policy”, “theatricalization of politics” and the increasing focus on personification in the election campaign instead of arguments with political content are often viewed critically, among other things . Modified from this, a particularly PR-oriented political style is known as spin doctoring .

historical development

In 1977 the American author Saul Bellow first used the term in a lecture . It found its way into the media on October 21, 1984 through an editorial by journalist William Safire ( New York Times ) , who analyzed a television duel between presidential candidate Walter Mondale and incumbent Ronald Reagan . The campaign advisors were referred to as spindoctors because they tried to give the journalists a positive interpretation of their respective candidate behind the stage in the spin alley . Spin doctoring initially developed particularly in countries with majority voting rights , which is attributed to the greater importance of individual politicians there.

development
  • 1920 - Edward Bernays studies mass psychological phenomena and develops methods now known as public relations .
  • From the mid-1960s - Josef von Ferenczy advises the chairman of the board of the German BP Hellmuth Buddenberg and the management of the AEG politicians from various parties, including Hans-Dietrich Genscher , Theo Waigel , Peter Glotz , Willy Brandt and Helmut Haussmann , as well as the Flick concern.
  • 1960 - Joe Napolitan uses the spread of television for political marketing and stages the first television duel (also known as TV duel). This is crucial for the election victory of his "client" John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon .
  • 1964 - Tony Schwartz creates the negative commercial "Daisy", which was directed against the presidential candidate Barry Goldwater , although his name was not mentioned in the commercial itself. This widespread commercial helps Lyndon B. Johnson win the election.
  • 1977 - John Gormann and Pat Cadell help Jimmy Carter into the White House .
  • From 1980 - The influence of the spin doctors increases enormously: Jean-Luc Aubert supports François Mitterrand , Lord Bell advises Jacques Chirac , Tim Bell invents New Labor and brings Tony Blair to power. Despite a heart attack in the middle of the election campaign, the Russian spin doctors help Boris Yeltsin to win the election thanks to tricks, manipulations and misinformation.
  • 1996 - Joe Lockhart, Dick Morris and George Stephanopoulos are in charge of communications management in Bill Clinton's election campaign .
  • 1997 - Joe Lockhart , Head of Communications in the White House from 1997 to 2000, exploits the information technology revolution under Bill Clinton and turns the government into a news agency. Now the news topics are determined by the government. From the government's point of view, it becomes important to “occupy” a topic and to determine how a matter is thought about and how it is to be interpreted. So-called perception management is all about perceptions and evaluations .
  • 1997 - Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell develop concepts from the "War Room", actually the command center of British warfare (here the campaign center, titled by "New Labor") to support Tony Blair in his election campaign. Alastair Campbell, for example, had the BBC film her at work for days
  • 1998 - During the federal election campaign, the press turned its attention to the "Kampa", which was the SPD's control center for supporting Gerhard Schröder . Uwe-Karsten Heye , Bodo Hombach , and Matthias Machnig took center stage. Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) hired Hans-Hermann Tiedje (former Bild editor-in-chief) as a spin doctor. The topic of "Spin Doctors" was also taken up in the German media (particularly critical of Bodo Hombach's work as "Chancellor Whisperer" for Schröder) and the SPD "Kampa" sometimes spoke of an "Americanization" of the election campaign.
  • 1999 - Jamie Shea , NATO spokesman, comments on the Kosovo war with the help of spin doctors.
  • 2003 - Charlie Black , advisor to George W. Bush , oversees the Iraqi government-in-exile PR project . The justification of the Iraq war with the alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction is also a spin (see Downing Street Memo ).
  • 2007 - Clarence Mitchell , was Director of MMU, a government agency that does public relations for the UK Foreign Office. Since May 2007 he has been government PR advisor to Kate and Gerry McCann in the case of the missing Madeleine McCann . On September 18, 2007, he gave up the office to continue the media campaign for Kate and Gerry McCann as a private person.

Well-known Spindoctors

Edward Bernays , a nephew of Sigmund Freud , is considered to be the first American Spindoctor .

The title became particularly well-known as a designation for Alastair Campbell , longtime PR manager of Tony Blair , and Karl Rove , the Republican party strategist and presidential adviser who helped George W. Bush in 1994 in the election for governor of Texas and in 2000 advised the presidential election . Bush named Rove the architect of his victory in his speech after the 2004 election victory.

Klaus-Peter Schmidt-Deguelle became known when he advised Federal Labor Minister Walter Riester and the Federal Chancellery from 1999 to 2000 and the Federal Ministry of Finance under Hans Eichel from 1999 to 2005 .

In the federal election campaign of 2002, the Union engaged Michael Spreng as advisor to the candidate for Chancellor Edmund Stoiber ; Matthias Machnig advised the SPD and the re-elected Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder .

In the 2005 German federal election campaign, observers saw Kajo Wasserhövel in the SPD and Willi Hausmann in the CDU as the respective spindoctors, and officially they acted as campaign managers.

For Barack Obama , David Axelrod was primarily the spin doctor .

In the media dispute between the actress Uschi Glas and the Stiftung Warentest because of the rating “poor” for her cream, Marcus Johst acted as a spindoctor on the actress's side.

In the election campaign for the National Council election in Austria in 2017 , the Israeli SPÖ adviser Tal Silberstein became well known through the Silberstein affair and the dirty campaigning practiced in it . He had already worked for various parties and companies in the past. He described the special form of this campaign method in the US documentary Our Brand Is Crisis (2005) using the example of the Bolivian election campaign in 2002:

“We have to change the dynamics. We have to start negative campaigns against him [note: the political competitor]. We need to change him from a clean candidate to a dirty one. That is our task. [...] Everything you do must in no way be associated with us. "

- Tal Silberstein, 2005

In Europe, spin doctors from over 18 countries have organized themselves in the EAPC (European Association of Political Consultants). At the international level, spin doctors from all over the world have come together in the IAPC (International Association of Political Consultants). The IAPC was founded in November 1968 by Joseph Napolitan (campaign advisor to John F. Kennedy, USA) and Michel Bongrand (campaign advisor to Charles de Gaulle, France). Since then, both sister organizations have held a conference once a year at which the world's best specialists from political and election campaign consulting meet and discuss current trends in the industry.

Feature films

The activity of the Spindoctor is satirically portrayed in films such as Wag the Dog or Thank You for Smoking and the series Chaos City , The good wife or The Thick of It (and its offshoot Kabinett out of control ). The campaigner ( Our Brand Is Crisis ) with Sandra Bullock is based on the American documentary of the same name about the Bolivian presidential election campaign of 2002. Kasper Juul ( Pilou Asbæk ) embodies the Prime Minister's Spindoctor in the Danish political series Borgen , a current French counterpart is the series Spin - Paris in the Shadow of Power and a current Spindoctor is Olivia Pope ( Kerry Washington ) in the US - American series Scandal .

Examples of strategic communication in politics and business

PR agencies ( Public Relation ) in the US are for example the agency Hill & Knowlton , which staged a false testimony with the Kuwait woman Nijirah al-Sabah before the US Congress about alleged Iraqi atrocities during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and with it successfully set the mood for the Second Gulf War .

Agencies operating in Germany include Weber Shandwick , Deekeling Arndt Advisors , Ketchum Pleon , fischerAppelt , Hering Schuppener and Johanssen + Kretschmer . The aim here is, for example, to “sell” a certain policy well, ie to present it as positive and desirable. The means are resorted to if one sees a problem of mediation towards the citizens (or in companies and interest groups towards the public) in politics, but considers one's own politics to be right and necessary.

Professional election counseling has existed in Germany for a long time, but elements of spin doctoring are increasing. As before, however, the federal election campaign is largely planned in the party headquarters, which means that the campaigns are less planned with the means of spin doctoring such as central communication control with agencies than is the case in the USA or Great Britain. An example of political PR can also be the approach of two politicians from one party when they make a secret agreement to discuss a controversial topic for a while and then to end the discussion. This staged debate can sharpen the profile of both opponents, give a topic more exposure to the public and / or give supporters of different positions the opportunity to “let off steam”.

In autumn 2011, the daily newspaper published up to then secret documents of the consulting firm Deekeling Arndt Advisors about the preparation of the "exit from the nuclear phase-out" of the SPD / The Greens predecessor government ( Schröder II cabinet ), by the CDU-CSU / FDP- led federal government in October 2010 ( Merkel II cabinet ) through communicative measures and strategic lobbyism . An alleged "success" in the specific case was the postponement of a planned publication by the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the connection between childhood cancer and nuclear power plants to a point in time after the 2009 federal election . When asked , Heribert Prantl , a member of the chief editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, denied that there was such influence.

Can be seen also as a spin doctoring the media's portrayal of the labor struggle of the GDL and its chairman Claus Weselsky a notorious "trouble maker" in the context of parallel, prepared by the federal government bargaining unit law since mid-2014.

Zoltán Kovacs, who has been the Hungarian State Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Relations since 2010, is commonly referred to as the spin doctor behind the poster campaigns criticized as conspiracy theories in the course of the refugee situation in 2015 and other campaigns by Viktor Orbán's government .

literature

  • Cerstin Gammelin, Götz Hamann: The pullers. Managers, ministers, media - how Germany is governed . Ullstein, 2006, ISBN 3-548-36896-4 .
  • Thomas Hofer : Spin Doctors in Austria. The Practice of American Campaign Advisors. What they can do, whom they advise, how they work . 1st edition. LIT , Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8645-X .
  • Judith Barben: Spin doctors in the Bundeshaus. Threats to direct democracy through manipulation and propaganda . Eikos, Baden / Switzerland 2009, ISBN 978-3-03301916-4 .
  • Andreas Elter : The war sellers. History of US Propaganda 1917–2005 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-12415-3 .
  • Frank Esser, Carsten Reinemann, David P. Fan: Spin Doctors in the United States, Great Britain and Germany. Metacommunication about Media Manipulation . In: Harvard International Journal of Press / Politics . tape 6 , no. 1 , 2001, p. 16-45 .
  • Matthias Hochstätter: Germany communicates - politics, lobbyism, media and public opinion . Saarbrücken 2008, ISBN 978-3-639-11457-7 .
  • Peter Husen: Professional lobby / public affairs agencies: New forms of interest representation at EU level . Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-640-31900-8 .
  • Christian Mihr: Who's crazy there? Spin Doctoring in the USA and Germany: A Comparative Study on Political PR Outsourcing . LIT-Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-7351-X .
  • John Stauber , Sheldon Rampton: Toxic waste makes you slim. Media professionals, spin doctors, PR wizards. The truth about the public relations industry . orange-press, Freiburg 2006, ISBN 3-936086-28-1 .
  • Jens Tenscher: Professionalization of Political Communication? Political mediation experts in the field of tension between politics and mass media . Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-531-14078-7 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Spindoktor  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Klaus Kamps: Political communication management: Basics and professionalization of modern policy communication. VS Verlag, 2007, pp. 186-187.
  2. ↑ Thomas Meyer: The theatricality of politics in media democracy - staging politics today. In: From Politics and Contemporary History . 53/2003.
  3. ↑ Thomas Meyer: The theatricality of politics in the media democracy - The theatricalization of politics. In: From Politics and Contemporary History . 53/2003.
  4. ^ A b Klaus Kamps: Political Communication Management: Basics and Professionalization of Modern Political Communication. VS Verlag, 2007, p. 185.
  5. ^ Herbert Riehl-Heyse: Götterdämmerung. The masters of public opinion . 1999, p. 120.
  6. ^ Thomas Tuma: Public Relations - Finale furioso. In: Der Spiegel . 35/2001, August 27, 2001, online at spiegel.de .
  7. ↑ Klaus Kamps: Political Communication Management: Basics and Professionalization of Modern Political Communication. VS Verlag, 2007, pp. 184-185.
  8. ↑ Madeleine case: government spokesman mutates into “family friend”. ( Memento from October 7, 2007 in the web archive archive.today ) at: medienhure.de
  9. ↑ Biography ( Memento of the original from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Klaus Peter Schmidt-Deguelle at WMP Eurocom AG. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wmp-ag.de
  10. ↑ Christian Mihr: Spin Doctors - Who's crazy there? FAZ.net August 20, 2002.
  11. ↑ Marcus Jauer: Trial of celebrity skin cream - Uschi is guaranteed to work. on: sueddeutsche.de , March 10, 2005.
  12. ^ Israeli Spin Doctor Rocks Austria With 'anti-Semitic' Chancellor Campaign , Ha-Aretz on October 6, 2017
  13. ↑ Silberstein's strategy for negative campaigns. In: The Standard . October 5, 2017. Retrieved October 5, 2017 . Juan Forero: The (American) Selling of the (Bolivian) President, 2002 , New York Times, February 26, 2006 Tal Silberstein on Dirty Campaigning. (Video; 38 seconds) YouTube , 2005, accessed on October 8, 2017 (English).

  14. ^ Deception on Capitol Hill. In: The New York Times. January 15, 1992. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
  15. ↑ How the nuclear lobby prepared for the exit from the exit. In: Spiegel online. October 29, 2011.
  16. ^ Klaus Kamps: Political Communication Management. Basics and professionalization of modern policy communication. VS-Verlag, 2007, p. 188.
  17. ^ S. Heiser, M. Kaul: The secret papers of the atomic lobby. In: taz.de, politics, Germany, focus on anti-nuclear power plants. October 29, 2011.
  18. ↑ The secret papers of the atomic lobby: Part 2 from autumn 2009. (PDF; 3.5 MB) In: die tageszeitung . October 28, 2011, accessed October 30, 2011 .
  19. ↑ Nuclear energy: How the nuclear lobby prepared for the exit from the exit. In: Der Spiegel . October 29, 2011, accessed October 30, 2011 .
  20. ↑ Martin Kaul, Sebastian Heiser: The Süddeutsche Zeitung and the children's cancer study. (No longer available online.) In: die tageszeitung . October 30, 2011, archived from the original on November 1, 2011 ; Retrieved October 30, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blogs.taz.de
  21. ↑ Jens Wernicke: Spin Doctoring in the GDL labor dispute. In: Telepolis. May 23, 2015, last accessed May 23, 2015.
  22. ↑ Steffen Dobbert: Zoltán Kovács: "You think racist!" In: Zeit Online. Zeit Online GmbH, July 24, 2017, accessed December 15, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Lili Bayer: Orbán's (big) mouth In Hungary. Zoltán Kovács defends the government with slick, ruthless virtuosity. In: Politico. May 18, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2018 .
  24. ↑ Andrea Tarquini: Orbán fa paura alla Ue: la carica dei sovranisti da Berlino a Stoccolma. In: La Repubblica. April 9, 2018, accessed December 15, 2018 .

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