Canadians Are Suckers

Easy on the eyesight
Compere collar hair
Mass appealing tonsils
Poisoning the air - no fair

Clap hands for the media man
He always know what to do
Clap hands for the media man
But does he think when he has to read the news
Media man - that's right he's a media man

Media Man - Flash and the Pan, “Lights in the Night (1980)

When I wrote my article on avian flu, I knew I would be revisiting the subject of spin, I just didn’t think it would be this soon. Unfortunately, there is so much spin on the news anymore that it is hard to avoid.

As I pointed out in my previous article, so much of what you read and hear in the news is designed to grab your attention and make it exciting. The problem is so much of it is spun, in one form or another, it becomes extremely difficult to tell what the real story actually is.

Many stories are spun by the people involved. George W. Bush and Condolezza Rice have been giving us wonderful examples of spin for the last few years. One has only to look at how the White House has managed to intertwine Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein together to see spin at it’s finest. Even though there is no evidence of a connection, (in fact, the exact opposite appears to be true) the Bush administration has been so successful in spinning the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq that a majority of Americans still believe the connection.

Recently, there was a story on CTV news that caught my eye. The content of the story itself was not of huge interest to me it was the way the story itself was spun by the media. The anchor of the news introduced the story by saying that a new spending scandal had been discovered. The federal government, she went on to say, had spent $90 million dollars on land in Vancouver that had never been used, more than the entire Gomery inquiry had cost.

The very fact that the anchor referenced the Gomery inquiry is, in itself, telling. The attempt here was to place the so-called scandal in the same category as the whole advertising scandal in Quebec. It is in the meat of the story where the real details become apparent but only if you pay attention and actually think about it, something the news hopes no one will do.

The story goes that the federal government leased land in Vancouver to build a new Pacific Centre for Environment Canada. The land itself is being used by various rail companies and is now contaminated so that the government is on the hook to clean it up before anything can be done with the land. Where the spin comes in is in the accounting used by the news. You see, this $90 million dollars is spread over 30 years, compared to Gomery, which cost approximately $80 million in one year. They also did not bother to report how much the government was leasing the land to the rail companies for.

It is difficult to separate the spin out of the stories, as everyone seems to have their own agenda. Perhaps it is an attempt to make the government look bad (like they need help), it may be someone’s personal bias or it could be a good old-fashioned attempt to create a need where there isn’t one, often called marketing.

Just look at Listerine.

Listerine was invented in the nineteenth century as a surgical antiseptic. Later it was sold, in a distilled form, as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhoea. It wasn’t a huge success until the 1920’s when they came upon a condition called “chronic halitosis”, more commonly known as bad breath. Until this point, bad breath was not considered to be that big of deal but Listerine changed that. According to James B. Twitchell, Professor of English and Advertising at the University of Florida, “Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis.” The revenues of Listerine went from $115,000 to more than $8 million in just seven years.

The same could be said for Head and Shoulders shampoo. How many of you were afraid to even scratch your head in public during their ad campaigns in the 70’s and 80’s showing people worrying about dandruff if they did? Now we have to worry about wearing dark clothes because of flakes.

Politicians are the experts of spin. They like to do tiny things that really do not have much affect on our lives, or may be totally useless activities, and then tell us how wonderful they are. A good example of this is the recent implementation of the child booster seat law in Ontario.

Although the goal behind this law is laudable - the idea of saving children’s lives - the reality has to be put into perspective. A recent study found a child was four times more likely to suffer serious injury when wearing a seat belt alone than if they had been using a booster seat. This sounds like a no-brainer but is it really such a priority?

Statistics for the year 2002 show that there were 203,704 injuries and deaths in Canada due to motor vehicle collisions. Of that amount, 16,021, or just under 7%, were children aged 0-14. How many of these deaths and injuries could have been prevented by the use of a booster seat is unknown but even if only one child’s life were saved the law would be worthwhile. The question becomes whether the triumphant pronouncements by the government on how much they are saving our lives are justified?

A lot can be extrapolated from other safety initiatives that have taken place in the United States over the years. Much has been made about how child safety seats have saved out children over the years. The designs, say the manufacturers, are allowing more and more children to survive. But is it the $200 car seat or the fact that they are now placing their children in the back seat, facing backwards and belted in as opposed to carrying the child in the parent’s lap where they become a projectile in a car accident?

Recent innovations give us some clues. Child-resistant packaging saves approximately 50 lives per year, flame-retardant pyjamas 10 lives, air bags in cars five children and safety drawstrings on children’s clothing two lives. When you consider that nearly five million car seats are sold each year, one cannot help but be suspicious. It is a case of creating an outrage greater than the actual hazard. The recent Pit Bull ban in Ontario is another example.

Which is why we should all take these stories with grain of salt and try to keep it all in perspective. After all, it would nice to prove PT Barnum wrong when he said “there is a sucker born ever minute,” wouldn’t it?