After several years of playing watchdog to politicians, Bryan Keefer, ’00, found a larger audience in August with the publication of All the President’s Spin, a book alleging that deceptive public relations tactics by the Bush White House have usurped policy debate.
Spin was co-written by Keefer and two friends—reporter Ben Fritz and Duke political science graduate student Brendan Nyhan—who founded spinsanity.org, a website that flags attempts to distort the truth in political dialogue. They also produce a weekly column for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Assistant managing editor of Campaign Desk at Columbia Journalism Review, Keefer has been showing up in scores of national and international media outlets talking about spin. “Bush has figured out how to game the system,” he told Congressional Quarterly’s Justin Rood. Keefer regularly debunks Democrats’ spin as well. “The media need to understand that pointing out the truth isn’t the same as taking sides.”
