Spin

Found this outstanding little documentary, called Spin.

The BitTorrent link (recommended) is here.

A straight web-download (lower quality?) is here.

It covers the 1992 elections and features some great footage of Pat Robertson's efforts to take over the Repug party, and his strongarm tactics and use of his CBN media network to get anti-abortion planks in the Repug platform.

It also-- in 1992-- covers the controversy over "video news releases", also known as "fake news". Apparently the Bush campaign was using them back then, and nobody other than this guy was raising a fuss over them.

It includes some interesting footage of Larry King talking to Bush The First about Halcion. Also of Bush The First doing some interesting scrambled-language hypnosis on Larry King-- which closely mirrored a more direct hypnosis Shrub did with David Letterman in the 2000 campaign (and for which he got boo'ed by the audience, too).

Also interesting is the ghost candidacy of Larry Egren in 1992, and his proposals for fixing America's cities-- largely ignored by the media, the other candidates, and both parties.

He also points out some interesting right-wing media bias against Native Americans too, which came up during the 500th anniversary of Columbus's conquest of America.

What I found most interesting is its coverage of the Clinton campaign's clever use of technology and satellite feeds for coordination, intra-campaign communication, and gathering competitive campaign intelligence, and for using more populist innovations (at the time) such as call-in shows and "sattellite tours" as a competitive advantage for reaching out to people and winning the election. I see a parallel here in the Dean campaign's (and now the entire DNC's) use of the Internet, blogs, MeetUp, and email in 2004, 2006, and beyond.