It would seem that my posting In defense of the Defense Minister’s Blog on the spin doctors who try to pass themselves off as experts has found some resonance with Indonesian readers.
Martin Manurung has written in to say he cannot understand why they hire the said expert in UGM as a lecturer. Well, I don’t know except to pass on the observation that some people are good at creating a mystique about themselves which then the Press accepts uncritically their authority (for a hilarious version of this spin doctoring read the latest issue of Fortune where columnist Bing talks about Monetizing your name).
I think we are all at the mercy of these Spin Doctors because we are all victims of an uncritical and even gullible Press that feeds cling on to the words of these charlattans. Most of the time the reporters are all so lazy or uncritical that all they do is let them speak and then quote them verbatim.
Well, thanks to blogs there is now something we can all do about it. Enda Nasution has posted a comment on What is there for AJI to celebrate on its 12th anniversary? floating the idea of reviving the mediawatch.go.id project.
His thinking is that the media in Indonesia is so free that bloggers do not, like say in malaysia, have to be the ones providing new information and perspectives to the readers out there. Rather, the role of bloggers in Indonesia, if they want to be useful to society, is to point out the weaknesses of the media. I agree and I think if we bloggers get together we could collectively help shame them into improving themselves.
So here’s my attempt to start the ball rolling by opening up the Expert Spin Doctor Award. If I spot any Spin Doctor trying to pass him or herself as an expert, I’ll unspin their efforts in this blog. If any of you should spot the same thing, send me an e-mail or post a comment on this blog. It can be in English or Bahasa Indonesia. By the end of this year I’ll call for comments and we can all select the Unspun Spin Doctor Expert of the Year.
I’ll even spring a bottle of wine for the blogger that sends in the most entertaining unspin of the Spin Doctors. if you can’t have alcohol, I’ll substitute it for grape juice. Any takers?
Unspun 
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