The truth rarely hides beneath nuance

Spinning bad or inconvenient news is a practice that is often done badly: Badly when the spin is an obvious groaner.

Worse when it indicates something that seems like a certainty at first glance, but which — on further examination — really says nothing at all. Thus offering the casual reader the indication of a factual statement while dodging the issue entirely.

This is called “nuance.”

Developing a solid BS detector

As a journalist (Gannett, Dow-Jones, Washington Post, Jack Anderson and more) I developed a fairly defined BS detector. As a journalism faculty member at Cornell and UCLA, I managed to open student eyes to the  muck below the surface.

 

As a marketing & PR practitioner (Managing Director, MSL Group/Publicis) I often crossed swords with Fortune Global 1000 clients and was almost always successful in re-writing clever bullshit into a factual statement.

 

So, getting the spin from the PR folks at Duckhorn Portfolio was disappointing, but but not entirely unexpected.

“A lie of omission is still a lie”

As my long-deceased parents hammered into me: “Just because everybody does it, does not make it ethical.”

 

The corollary to that is: “A lie of omission is still a lie.”