Spinwars


Book Description

Today's media world is dominated by a legion of spin doctors whose job it is to feed you, the news consumer, a package labelled "the truth." Spin doctors abound in today's media world, from the pundits whose interpretations you read with your morning coffee to the lobbyists whose voices preach on the evening's 11:00 o'clock news. In a world where the facts are manipulated in order to fit a pre-set corporate agenda, where does the truth stand Spinwars.ca is the story of how the spin doctors got out of control. By tracing the delicate relationship between media and politics over the last 50 years, Fox identifies key events that have radically affected the balance between the third and fourth estates. From corporatization to television, from pundits to celebrity journalism, spinwars.ca reveals the truth about the spin doctors who have broken free of their boundaries and overturned the system. Spinwars.ca, however, is not a bad news story because a solution is at hand. New media is currently emerging that, Fox predicts, will rectify the balance between politics and journalism - the Internet. The largely anarchic force of the world wide web is presently revolutionizing the way news is presented, by creating, in effect, a fifth estate - a digital estate, the implications of which we are only now beginning to realize. spinwars.ca is a fascinating journey through the last 50 years of press and politics in North America, as well as an important examination into what the future will hold.




Spin Wars and Spy Games


Book Description

As most long-standing news outlets have shuttered their foreign bureaus and print operations, the role of GNNs as information collectors and policy influencers has changed in tandem. Western GNNs are honored for being untethered to government entities and their ability to produce accurate yet critical situational analyses. However, with the emergence of non-Western GNNs and their direct relationships to the state, the independent nature of our global news cycle has been vastly manipulated. In Spin Wars and Spy Games, Kounalakis uses his interviews with an expansive and diverse set of GNN professionals to deliver a vivid depiction of the momentous sea change in mass media production. He traces the evolution of global news networks from the twentieth century to now, revealing today's drastically altered news business model that places precedence on networks leveraging global power. This eye-opening narrative transforms our understanding of why countries like Russia and China invest heavily in their news media, and how the GNN framework operates in conjunction with state strategy and diplomatic sensitivity. Profoundly meticulous and insightful, this seminal work on the current state of transnational journalism gives readers a first-hand look at how global media powers shape policy and morph the public's consumption of information.




Original Spin


Book Description

Secret lunches, off-the-record briefings, the leaking of confidential information and tightly-organised media launches - the well-known world of modern political spin. But is this really a new phenomenon or have politicians been manipulating the press for as long as newspapers have existed? In this important new book, Paul Brighton shows that spin is not something dreamed up by modern, media-savvy politicians. In fact, it was one of the best-kept political secrets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From Peel and Palmerston to Gladstone and Disraeli, Prime Ministers have all tried to manipulate the press to a greater or lesser extent. Brighton uncovers the covert contacts between Westminster and Fleet Street and reveals how the Victorian occupants of 10 Downing Street secretly conveyed their viewpoints via the newspapers. For the first time, "Original Spin" tells the whole, unvarnished, story.




Keywords in the Press: The New Labour Years


Book Description

Building on Raymond Williams' iconic "Keywords" released in 1975, Jeffries and Walker show how some pivotal words significantly increased in use and evolved in meaning during the years of the 'New Labour' project. Focussing on print news media, this book establishes a set of socio-political keywords for the 'Blair Years', and demonstrates how their evolving meanings are indicative of the ideological landscape in Britain at that time, and the extent to which the cultural hegemony of the New Labour project influenced the language of the commentariat. Combining corpus linguistic approaches with critical stylistics the authors conduct an analysis of two newspaper corpora using computational tools. Looking closely at textually-constructed meanings within the data, their investigation of the keywords has a qualitative focus, and sets out a clear methodology for combining corpus approaches with systematic co-textual analysis.




Advice and Dissent


Book Description

A bestselling economist tells us what both politicians and economists must learn to fix America's failing economic policies American economic policy ranks as something between bad and disgraceful. As leading economist Alan S. Blinder argues, a crucial cultural divide separates economic and political civilizations. Economists and politicians often talk -- and act -- at cross purposes: politicians typically seek economists' "advice" only to support preconceived notions, not to learn what economists actually know or believe. Politicians naturally worry about keeping constituents happy and winning elections. Some are devoted to an ideology. Economists sometimes overlook the real human costs of what may seem to be the obviously best policy -- to a calculating machine. In Advice and Dissent, Blinder shows how both sides can shrink the yawning gap between good politics and good economics and encourage the hardheaded but softhearted policies our country so desperately needs.




Mother Jones Magazine


Book Description

Mother Jones is an award-winning national magazine widely respected for its groundbreaking investigative reporting and coverage of sustainability and environmental issues.




The Effective Citizen


Book Description

One of Canada’s most compelling political writers reveals how government really works—and how ordinary citizens can make it work for them. A lawyer, analyst, and former Nova Scotia cabinet minister, Graham Steele shared a candid chronicle of his experiences in Canadian government with his acclaimed memoir What I Learned About Politics. Now he presents an insiders’ guide to modern Canadians politics, answering elusive questions such as: Who really runs the parties? What does a backbencher do? And how does a citizen effectively navigate the system to achieve change? A primer for anyone who wants to become a politician or influence one, The Effective Citizen explains how politicians think and what factors influence that thinking; how to interpret the “non-answer” in political speech; and acknowledges that in politics, “bland is safe.”




Axis


Book Description

The sequel to the Hugo Award-winning SF epic Spin




Sources


Book Description




Governing


Book Description

To honour the distinguished career of Donald Savoie, Governing brings together an accomplished group of international scholars who have concerned themselves with the challenges of governance, accountability, public management reform, and regional policy. Governing delves into the two primary fields of interest in Savoie's work - regional development and the nature of executive power in public administration. The majority of chapters deal with issues of democratic governance, particularly the changing relationship over the past thirty years between politicians and public servants. A second set of essays addresses the history of regional development, examining the politics of regional inequalities and the promises and pitfalls of approaches adopted by governments to resolve the most vexing policy problems. Contributors provide readers with a valuable primer on the key issues that have provoked debate among practitioners and students of government alike, while reflecting on government initiatives meant to address inadequacies. Showcasing the practical experience and scholarly engagement of its authors, this collection is a valuable addition to the fields of public administration, public policy, political governance, and regional policy. Contributors include Peter Aucoin (Dalhousie University), Herman Bakvis (University of Victoria), James Bickerton (St Francis Xavier University), Jacques Bourgault (École nationale d'administration publique/UQAM), Thomas Courchene (Queen's University), Ralph Heintzman (University of Ottawa), Mark D. Jarvis (University of Victoria), Lowell Murray (Senate of Canada, retired), B. Guy Peters (University of Pittsburgh), Jon Pierre (University of Gothenburg) Mario Polèse (INRS-UCS), Christopher Pollitt (Leuven University), Donald J. Savoie (Université de Moncton), and Paul G. Thomas (University of Manitoba).