unSpun (17 page)

 

^*1
Famous people often are misquoted (see “False Quotes” box on chapter 7), but this quote is genuine. Tversky's collaborator, Nobel Prize–winning Princeton professor Daniel Kahneman, told us that both he and Tversky often repeated the remark in conversation and that Tversky probably came up with it first.
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^*2
There's a scholarly argument to be made that everybody has some sort of bias, and therefore there's no possibility of a neutral viewpoint. In a philosophical sense that may well be so, but it's not relevant here. As a practical matter we find we're more likely to get trustworthy information from disinterested sources than from advocates.
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^*3
In 2006, it was estimated that only 0.3 percent of those who died that year would be subject to the estate tax, because the first $2 million of each estate was excluded from taxation. In 1999, only the first $600,000 was excluded, and the richest 1.3 percent paid tax, as noted in Chapter 3.
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Acknowledgments

A jointly authored book is invariably written in the voice of one of its authors. In academic circles, at least, that person's name appears first on the title page. The lead author is usually the one who has done the heavy lifting on the project, as well. Both are the case with
unSpun.
As the second author, I can certify both of those statements as fact.

Although not unheard-of, collaboration between an academic and a veteran of a wire service (The Associated Press), a major newspaper (
The Wall Street Journal
), and cable news (CNN) is a bit unusual. We are not sure how it works, and on most days are at least somewhat surprised that it does. Reducing the collaboration to its essence, Brooks brings to this book (and to FactCheck.org, which he directs) a nose for news, a talent for crafting fluent prose on deadline, and a desire to write on or near the Chesapeake Bay; I bring bibliographies of scholarly studies, a passing knowledge of how ads deceive, and an eagerness to add cryptic notes to anything Brooks has written. And we share the belief that Signe Wilkinson is an editorial cartoonist par excellence.

Brooks and I cooked up the idea of FactCheck.org out of our common concern about the seeming demise of fact in politics and out of respect for the deadlines and day-to-day pressures of journalism that make it difficult for reporters in already overstretched and understaffed media outlets to take on the task. We decided to write
unSpun
because we both believe that smart, informed citizens know some important things about detecting deception that can be captured in book form.

The third person on our team is Signe Wilkinson, who not only created the cartoons that you see throughout the book but also acted as our designated critic-in-chief. The fourth is our Random House editor, Tim Bartlett. Tim, who edited an earlier book of Kathleen's, both broadened the scope of
unSpun
and pruned its length. And he summoned more patience that any author can reasonably expect of an editor as we slowed the march of the book toward publication by pleading for the time to put it through an additional revision.

We are grateful as well to the FactCheck.org team in D.C., including Justin Bank, James Ficaro (who migrated to Philadelphia for law school), and Emi Kolawole, and to Miriam White, Jeff Gottfried, and Josh Gesell at the Annenberg Policy Center office in Philadelphia for sourcing and giving everything a second and sometimes third check. Emi in particular deserves our thanks for the endless hours she spent reviewing each word of the book for factual accuracy. Her work kept a number of errors from making their way into print. Any that remain are our responsbility alone. We also thank Jolanta Benal, whose uncommon attention to detail demonstrated that good copy editing is not a lost art after all.

Finally, we couldn't have written this book without the indulgence of the two to whom we dedicate it: Bev, who has put up with Brooks for nearly thirty-four years, and Bob, who has done the same with me for just over thirty-eight. And in a world of competing claims, that one is a certain fact.

K
ATHLEEN
H
ALL
J
AMIESON

Philadelphia

October 2006

 

To what Kathleen says I would add this: I am grateful to her for allowing me the honor of being “lead” author on this book, but it has been a true collaboration. The words here are mostly mine, but the thoughts and ideas expressed here come from many months of talking and messaging between the two of us. Many of them, and perhaps most, would never have occurred to me working alone.

B
ROOKS
J
ACKSON

California, Maryland

January 2007

 

S
OURCES

To make this book as easy to read as possible, we've mostly omitted formal footnotes, end notes, and appendixes giving full details on the source of each fact or quote. We believe most of our sources are clearly stated in the text of the book. For those wishing more formal, academic sourcing, however, a full set of footnotes may be found at www.FactCheck.org/unSpun. We will also attempt to post on that site any relevant updates, clarifications, or (should the need arise) corrections.

About the Authors

B
ROOKS
J
ACKSON
runs the Annenberg Public Policy Center's award-winning website FactCheck.org and was an investigative reporter for The Associated Press,
The Wall Street Journal,
and CNN. He is the author of
Honest Graft: Big Money and the American Political Process
and
Broken Promise: Why the Federal Election Commission Failed.
He lives in Washington, D.C.

 

K
ATHLEEN
H
ALL
J
AMIESON
is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author or coauthor of eleven books, including
Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy, Packaging the Presidency,
and
The Press Effect.

A Random House Trade Paperback Original

Copyright © 2007 by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
T
RADE
P
APERBACKS
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jackson, Brooks.

unSpun : finding facts in a world of disinformation / by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

p. cm.

1. Deception—United States. 2. Deceptive advertising—United States. 3. Communication in politics—United States. 4. Truthfulness and falsehood—United States. I. Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. II. Title. III. Title: Finding facts in a world of disinformation.

BF637.D42J33 2007

177'.3—dc22      2006050437

www.atrandom.com

eISBN: 978-1-58836-582-8

v3.0