Spin Cycle HOW THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE MEDIA MANIPULATE THE NEWS [Paperback]

Spin Cycleis the first behind-the-scenes account of the White House political operation as it packages and shapes the news by manipulating, misleading, and in some cases, intimidating the press. It is also the tale of how some of the nation's top journalists buy into these efforts and, often, put their own spin on the news.
Compelling, infuriating, often devastatingly funny, this is the story you should read before you pick up the newspaper tomorrow morning.From the Introduction

On the afternoon of January 21, 1998, a year and a day after Bill Clinton's second inauguration, a grim-faced Mike McCurry walked into the White House Briefing Room to face the music.

The news, McCurry knew, was bad, so undeniably awful that any attempt at spin would be ludicrous. The canny press secretary had bobbed and weaved and jabbed and scolded his way through all manner of Clinton scandals, from the arcane Whitewater land dealings to the crass campaign fundraising excesses to the tawdry tale of Paula Jones. But this one was different. The banner headline in that morning'sWashington Postmade clear that this was a crisis that could spell the end of the Clinton presidency. The Big Guy, as the staffers called him, had been accused of having sex with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, in the executive mansion for more than a year, from the time that she was twenty-one years old. Even worse, Clinton was being accused of lying under oath about the affair—committing perjury—and urging the young woman to lie as well.

The reporters, McCurry believed, would be poised to pummel him. That was his job, of course, to stand at the podium and take whatever abuse the fourth estate wanted to dish out, hoping to score a few points in the process and convey what he could of the president's agenda. But the White House correspondents had been supremely frustrated for the past year as Clinton kept slip-sliding his way through the scandalous mul3#