Bush is the king of spin, book claims

GEORGE Bush, not Tony Blair, is the king of spin and news management, a new study into the effects of propaganda claimed yesterday.

But the research, conducted by university professors in Leicester, Kent and Louisiana details a series of embarrassing gaffes made by the United States at the start of its war on terror campaign.

Propaganda and Mass Persuasion, A Historical Encyclopaedia 1500 to the Present, has been written by Professor Nicholas Cull, of the University of Leicester, Professor David Culbert, of Louisiana State University and Professor David Welch, of the University of Kent.

It concludes that the US is “a country owing its origins to propaganda” and heralds it as “the largest disseminator of propaganda and persuasion in history”.

The 479-page study features 250 entries, including studies of news management and spin techniques under Mr Blair.

But researchers said they believe that British political propaganda lags far behind techniques employed in America.

“The US would not have come into being without propaganda, nor would its society exist as currently constituted,” states the book.

“Yet the average American continues to take comfort in the notion that propaganda is something one associates with Nazi Germany, neatly distinguishing between propaganda and advertising.

“Defining the latter as dealing with information or persuasion and the former as a form of deception.

“Collective amnesia is too strong a way to characterise this curious state of affairs, but it seems to take some doing to live in a society that is the world’s greatest consumer of propaganda while at the same time convincing oneself this is not so.”

But researchers claim that propaganda errors were made by the Bush administration in the early stages of its campaign against international terrorism.

“They referred to the action as a ‘crusade’, which had negative historical echoes in the Islamic world,” claim the researchers.

The academics also suggest that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US were, in effect, also a form of propaganda.

“The terrorists selected their targets with an eye to their symbolic value and cultural resonance,” states the book.

The book includes geographic entries examining propaganda in specific countries and also includes case studies on abortion, Zionism, Osama bin Laden, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

Experts from Israel, India, Germany, Canada, Italy, and New Zealand have contributed to the study in addition to the British and American editors.