Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Spin Doctors

The term, spin doctor -- originally a 'DJ' or 'MC' who selects, edits, and distorts the music for an event -- seems more frequently now to be applied to newscasters and journalists and/or their managers and editors, who it is said, are not unlike the sophist rhetoricians and poets, whom Plato regarded as dangerous enemies of civilization and truth.

This Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy essay is, I feel, helpful in lending us some understanding of the classical roots of this phenomenon:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/

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