Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine.

By Howard Kurtz / Free Press, 1998, pp. 324, $25.00

Reviewed by RAYMOND L. FISCHER Mass Media Editor, USA Today, and Professor of Communication, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks

*** Spin Cycle is Howard Kurtz's third book about the media. In Hot Air, he took aim at talk radio; in Media Circus, he exposed the trouble with America's newspapers; now he looks at how the media react to the White House's attempts to launder the scandal news surrounding the Clinton Administration.

Writing in a style reminiscent of Theodore White's Making of the President series, Kurtz, a longtime media reporter for The Washington Post, has accomplished what White did so well--getting the inside information. It is surprising that Pres. Clinton did not fire everyone around him after publication of Spin Cycle. Kurtz, who seems to have had access every memo written and to know what took place in every meeting, has re-created entire conversations, even those between only two people. As the book's subtitle intimates, it is likely that the information leaks must have originated deep "Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine."

Kurtz describes press secretary Mike McCurry as the "spinmeister extraordinaire," his task to orchestrate what Americans see on the TV evening news and read in the headlines detailing various Clinton scandals. When hard-pressed, he directed the scandal questions to the lawyers, especially to Robert Bennett, Clinton's friend and personal attorney. Although McCurry and Bennett both worked on damage control, they openly disliked each other. McCurry blamed Bennett for several public relations disasters.

When McCurry took over in 1995, he quickly assessed what was going on, laid down the rhetorical law on dozens of issues, and said things the President wanted said, but could not say himself. A year and a half into his job, McCurry found himself misleading the press. His job was to spin the negative stories without confirming facts that would tarnish Clinton. As press secretary, he learned to avoid flat categorical statements and to serve what he termed "gray mush" to the media. The daunting thing about McCurry's job was that he found the White House always was just a phone call away from disaster. This July, he announced that he would be resigning come fall.

McCurry had to explain the way the media worked to the Clintons, who hated and feared the press. The President resented reporters and often vented his anger in public outbursts. He viewed reporters as nitpickers, naysayers, and political handicappers who thrived on building themselves up and knocking him down. Aware that the Clintons and their colleagues played fast and loose with the truth, journalists viewed themselves as the cavalry--the last line of defense against a corrupt White House that had perfected the art of the cover-up.

Spin can contain damage, minimize scandal, and relegate bad news to the fringes of the media world, but further embarrassments for the Administration keep cropping up. Kurtz's book, distinctly anti-Clinton, gleefully turns over every rock en route to exposing the efforts to prevent the litany of scandals from overtaking the President.