NPSC Blog

Investigative journalist Bob Burton’s book Inside Spin, subtitled The dark underbelly of the PR industry, is an impressively researched look at the machinations of (principally Australian) PR practitioners – or, based upon the appallingly unethical behaviour he chronicles, what you would hope to be a very small subset thereof…

Fellow journalist, and onetime collaborator, New Zealander Nicky Hager describes the book as:

…an outstanding guide to how PR is conducted, the harm it can cause and what journalists and the public can do about it. It’s a book that needed to be written.
Sunday Star Times, 26-8-07

I would qualify Hager’s description; suggesting that it is more properly described as an outstanding guide to how PR can be conducted. That aside, Hager is right. This sort of professional behaviour does need to be exposed and Burton, in terms of his dogged research and unflinching documentation, has done a terrific job.

Unfortunately, like most books that arrive on the market these days, it seems to have avoided the ministrations of an editor en route. The result is 260 pages (not including extensive endnotes) of unremittingly lumpen prose and a cadence as monotonous as the drone of an overladen gooney bird. Burton has an important story to tell, and he approaches it with the grimly stoic resolve of a constipated marathoner.

The effect on the reader (well, this one) was like being frogmarched through Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell; instructive, but not much fun.

All that aside, what does emerge with an intense clarity is the perfidy, the hypocrisy and gall of the PR people involved in the cases Burton covers. From multinationals and think tanks to the PR agencies spruiking pharmaceuticals, junk food and tobacco; all are exposed as duplicitous, venal and obviously unfamiliar with either the concept or the reality of ethical behaviour.

For a public affairs professional, this is a depressing read. About the only consolation is the fact that, with some notable Australian Federal Government examples, public sector communicators have escaped Burton’s attentions. I would like to think that is because the behaviors Burton is detailing are anathema to the majority of public servants, both here and in Australia.

One area where I felt the book could have been stronger was on social media. There have been enough well documented examples of similarly egregious new media strategies in the last couple of years to suggest fertile ground for Burton. He does mention Trevor Cook and Paull Young’s anti-astroturfing campaign, but doesn’t pursue the implications of new technology on ‘black hat’ PR with the same zeal.

Irrespective of the book’s shortcomings, I would still recommend it to public sector communicators. Setting aside your views about the ethical famework of these specific strategies, the bigger picture of the relationship between PR and the media that Burton describes is an important one for us to be mindful of; it is, after all, the environment we all work in.