Spin Hunters

As you probably have already heard, Barack Obama recently launched a brand new sub-domain, aiming to tackle false information throughout the Web. As far as I know, this is the one of the first mature attempts in the field of politics to wage an official war against political smear campaigns. Unfortunately, the release of the site was a bit late, since the Internet is already stuffed with numerous negative allegations and rumors about both presidential candidates. Furthermore, it seems that both teams have been underestimating the potentials of destructive identity attacks and instead of sensibly investing in reputation security, now they are forced to spend some precious time (and even more money) in crisis management activities. And when it comes to this , usually the situation is already out of control.

I was really tempted to write about all these election affairs a long time ago, but somehow I have always refused to do so, waiting for more details to come out. I didn’t want to repeat all of the news you already know or comment over something that I do not have a personal access to investigate. Anyway, things have changed and I am quite annoyed for several reason, which I am going to outline bellow:

First of all, I am annoyed of the common attitude towards slander technologies. As I’ve already stated in my previous post there is a huge difference when you deal with false information and the truth. I believe that Obama’s team puts too much effort in refuting the fabricated facts and failed to detect the other types of reputation attacks.

Secondly, it is the way election race is presented in the media. It’s funny how Americans always tend to simplify the political situation by dividing the groups of black-hats and white-hats. I know this is a regular approach in public affairs , but come on, in US this is way too overused. My point here is that political smear campaigns are not necessarily related to the opposition of the affected party. I know that it is easier and quite handy to blame the competition , but most of the time behind the deliberate Black PR attacks stay many other financial interests, which could be coming even form your own political group ( remember the case with Hilary Clinton) . Whatever the source is, it it extremely important to have a substantial proof, before accusing someone of intentional defamation. Fight the smears indeed provides many names, but if you have a closer look you will realize that none of them are actually related to the posted allegations.

The last other thing which I am annoyed of is that there are many negative stories that have appeared online and still haven’t been considered as smear attacks. Take Lary Sinclair for instance. This is the man, who is claiming that he had a sexual relationship with Obama not so long time ago. Just the fact that his name is missing form the actual list on the website is a silent confirmation that this information could possibly be true. So , if you are trying to clean your name, just make sure to tackle all of the discrediting rumors that someone could possibly find about you . This means that Obama’s reputation advisers should also spend some more time on refuting claims about his drug addiction, the allegations that he will be a weak lider during a potential war, racism and the Jewish whispering affair.