Authenticity is dead, long live spin

“Authenticity” was a bit of a political buzzword just a few months ago. No matter what you thought about politicians like Nigel Farage or Jeremy Corbyn – there could be no doubting their authenticity. They were straight talkers with no real filters. The age of spin was dead.

But not for too long. Spin is back and with a vengeance. Perhaps the most aggressive sign of political spin demonstrated by both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May not making themselves available for last week’s live television debate.

Yes – their non-appearance did open them both up for attack – but by not attending they actually made the “leaders” who did commit appear smaller and less significant.

Essentially they were asking: Why would we want to debate these issues with these people who are not even on the same level as us?

A recent article on the Press Gazette website suggests that today’s politicians are taking spin to much greater extremes than their processors.

The piece focuses on comments by Micheal Crick, Channel 4’s political correspondent, who complains that Conservative PR pros are pre-selecting which journalists get to ask questions at very tightly controlled press conferences.

Crick said: “Crick added: “Margaret Thatcher would pick hands at random really and everybody got to ask something, and indeed I recall a couple of occasions where we ran out of questions.

He continued: “She didn’t feel the need to know in advance who was going to ask the questions, she didn’t feel the need to know what the question was. I imagine she would have been pretty annoyed if she thought that members of her party were trying to filter questions.”

To balance the argument, it has been suggested that Jeremy Corbyn treats the press with a similar degree of cynicism and has been equally evasive when it comes to fielding questions by the press.

Undoubtedly, successful PR is often more about what is not said, not published and not broadcast. With this said, as professional communicators, political PR teams are taking the right to remain silent very seriously.

Where does this leave authenticity? Sadly, it was just another “buzzword” and far from authentic.