Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Noun Phrase 143. The noun phrase today is
smear campaign. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone organizes a
smear campaign against another person or company or some organization , they do it
by spreading false and unpleasant rumors about them or accusing them of things in
order to damage their reputation. This is often used in politics and is especially
mentioned in news reports. So you know it's not like you hear regular people
saying the word a smear campaign a lot, but on the news you hear smear campaign
very, very often. So especially if one news network
you know, favors one they might say that the other political party is smearing
the one they like or vice versa. Okay. Let's continue. Smear by itself can have
the meaning of to try to damage one's reputation by telling lies. So if you just
smear someone. So smear campaign means they have the whole campaign doing this
way , so they have a number of planned events in order to try to hurt their
opponents reputation. All right. Let's continue. They say the term has been around since
1936 or at least that's as early as they can find it. And it's simply part of
politics as usual today. You can always find it in politics. It's very, very rare
once in a while somebody will try to pretend that they're above it but that's
only if they're really way, way ahead. They usually do this. They usually do
mudslinging and smear tactics very often because you know, if they don't do
it , you know they have to attack each other. Just to try to stay even. If one
side does is constantly attack and they don't respond to it, then you know,
sometimes people will actually believe all they're not responding maybe maybe
there's some truth to it. Yeah. All right. Anyway, let's continue. However the
practice of this behavior has always been around.
Yeah, especially in politics and it's not limited to politics though. They , you can
find it in the business world and some other areas of society. All right. Lt's continue.
Smear campaigns often include rumors. that cannot be verified. Yeah. That's
that's, that's, that's one of the main parts. You don't want it to be verified
too easily , because then you can just get rid of it. So it's it's ones where the
question. There's a question mark there. Distortions you know, they kind of
change whatever the truth is and you know skew it to make it look bad or
something like that. Half-truths. Yeah. Well some of the best
lines are half-truths because you know there's some truth to it and people say
well you know, this part is true. So that might make it more believable. And
complete lies. Complete lies. This is total lies. They just made the whole thing up.
No truth to it at all. All right. anyway we got out three examples here.
Here's example number one. That political party orchestrated a smear campaign
against their rivals . Yeah. We will use orchestrate a lot. Run is a common one.
You can run because we often say to run a campaign. So you could run a smear
campaign or or get straight organize, anything like that. Any sort of verb in
that sense. All right number two here. In the 1960s when Ralph Nader was
campaigning for car safety, some say General Motors hired PIs, you know
private investigators to find dirt on him. So they could run a smear campaign
against him. This is one where it's not directly politics . I's more business you
know, if they're if they don't like what somebody's doing if against that maybe
they could try to you know damage the reputation of that person. So people
don't listen to him as much and the last one here of course political parties
often use smear campaigns because many have proven to be successful yeah if
they didn't work they probably wouldn't do it. But unfortunately since they do
work The Woody' often repeated. It's one of the main tactics to use. Anyway I hope you got it it. I hope was clear.
That was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.