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March 04, 2008
Tuesday
 
 
Techniques for promoting liberty
Alex Singleton (London)  Activism

I have always been fascinated about the techniques of promoting ideas. I remember reading the Libertarian Alliance's tactical notes as a student and finding them a thought-provoking read. Organisations, it seems to me, that really do well at promoting ideas have worked out a relatively simple technique, or series of them. They repeat the technique and receive political wins over and over again.

So I was very interested to read this BBC News feature. It explains a technique used repeatedly by the prolific TaxPayers' Alliance. According to the article (which quotes TPA supremo Matthew Elliott):

[The TaxPayers' Alliance] specialises in using the government's own data and Freedom of Information requests to winkle out examples of public sector waste; packaging it up into brief, media-friendly research papers, complete with an eye-catching headline figure to give reporters a ready-made "top line".

"Journalists' budgets have been cut back massively and yet they have to produce much more content. They haven't got time to do a lot of the investigative stuff they used to do in the past.

"So when we present them with some primary source material, it's guaranteed to be a good story."

Simple but effective.

Comments

This seems to be the bog standard PR approach of all pressure groups, with the exception that these guys actually dig out some facts, as opposed to the usual approach of making up the 'facts' to fit the 'eye-catching headline figure'.


Posted by Kevin B at March 4, 2008 08:19 PM

Christopher Booker (of the Sunday Telegraph) has long complained that journalists no longer bother to do any research - they just tart up hand outs from the powers that be.

Not just on the European Union - or just about anything.

It is not lack of "resources" - it is journalists who are "educated" (by school and university) into a certain state of mind.

A state of mind where they think they are "radical" and "rebels" when, in fact, they are the most conformist and brain dead body of journalists that the Western World has ever had.


Posted by Paul Marks at March 5, 2008 03:57 PM
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