Half-truths, “spin” and “doctoring” are all forms of lying. Which is not to say that that makes them evil, or even that lying itself is evil. And I mean telling out and out falsehoods—is not necessarily always a bad thing.
Context is the key.
If you tell a half-truth or white lie (“I love your apple pie!”, when you actually hate it), then that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. Perhaps a better thing would be to offer a criticism that is constructively helpful: “Did you substitute salt for sugar in this recipe? I’m not sure that this taste completely agrees with me.”
On the other hand, sometimes lying is a necessary and positive good thing. To make an extreme example: When the SS knocks on your door in the middle of the night to ask if there are any Jews in the neighborhood and you lie through your teeth and say, “Nein! Never!” when in fact you have two Jewish families hiding in your attic, that’s a lie that is such a good thing that movies and songs will be written in praise of you someday. That lie may actually be damaging to the SS officer. If you think the SS is a good thing, then you probably wouldn’t be hiding Jews in your attic, would you?
And a good card player (all kinds of gamblers, in fact) lies all the time by bluffing up or downplaying his hand.
So to restate what I said about context: It depends on the game that you’re playing.