Advocacy spin
Paz, Octavio
audience | media | religious frame | six steps | message model | Press | pitching
Spinning for our rights
– Proactive, prescient or just prejudicial?
So spin has various meanings but for media, spin doctors are people that put a particular "spin" on what has been said--often, with little concern for its truth. By "spin" on what has been said, the term refers to "loose interpretation," or a revision of the original statement to redefine, often, its meaning.
Word Spy says:
"spin
A verb. To convey information or cast another person's remarks or actions in a biased or slanted way so as to favorably influence public opinion; information provided in such a fashion."
"Spin is the perspective that newsmakers and their minions put on a story to minimize any damage it might cause. As defined by political columnist and word maven William Safire in his New Political Dictionary, spin is 'deliberate shading of news perception; attempted control of political reaction.' "
—Jill Lawrence, "Spin: Behind the walkout that wasn't," USA Today
Spin's effectiveness depends on:
- Consider the role of media on and for members in your community
- Engage the community via multiple media
- Educate the media and the audience members on what must be done
Digital media
Digitalia, Main fields of applications started with one-way vertical media available then (radio, television, big screen and paper), evolving to bidirectional and multidirectional horizontal media − in the meanwhile that they were invented − as digital media, the Internet and the so-called Social Networks.
Community relations:
Involving the community in your educational effort:
Adopt a manatee (1980s)
Habitat for Humanity (1980s)
Apopka framworkers (1970s)
How do you personalize your issue for motivated people?
Neil Postman's warnings about media: Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Media plans to fit a community's needs
Have a message that is clear and easy to hear and connects to existing, familiar and understood values.
Stay on message, focus, bring extraneous remarks back to your issue.
Keep it as simple as you can without insulting the audience's intelligence.
Consider the best timing in the news-cycle and early in the day for coverage in evening news.
Training spokes-people
- speak clearly and enunciate.
- make eye contact.
- put people at ease.
- ask them if they understand what you have said.
- "Does that answer your question," is a phrase that can buy you time.
- Think through your answers.
media briefings
have talking points or briefing points
brief people about the facts and the issues
focus on two or three points and
hook the audience with a clear image and return to that when needed.
Foreign Press
audience | media | religious frame | six steps | message model | Press | pitching
Six successful steps to media coverage:
- Establish your goals: the intent & outcome.
- Identify your news: So what's significant?
- Target your audiences: the words they use and the frame they can recognize.
- Frame for maximum media coverage
- Discipline the message: stay on point–emphasize the focus, core matters–not side details.
- Create a media plan: sell your ideas.
Model for messages:
- The solution, What needs to be addressed?
- A call to action, motivating the grass roots to
- eradicate the problem, why it needs attention.
Press is the investigative conscience of the community
98
Ellen Degeneres
lessons on turning a story around.
freedom versus family values
106-107
flip it
Are lesbians not a family member too?
And if women who prefer lesbian company are a family member they --of curse–deserve the same privileges and immunities of other family members.
The case of Dick and Lynn Cheney's daughter, for example is a good lesson on the limitations that family matters place on the discussion of personal choices in political life; despite the official messages of either party, or political platform.
Sexual expression is not the issue unless you let it distract you from the real matters of concern such as privacy, freedom from coercion, or fair access to public services and the peripheral matter becomes the main issue.
This confusion of important with unimportant matters.
The confusion of side-details that pull us away from from the important core matters happens frequently in the 24-7 news cycle, where personal peculiarities of a prurient character displace more important news.
