American Abroad

Successful Media Campaigning

Two years ago the charity War on Want released a report revealing that UK firms employed sweatshop workers in Bangladesh, and something unusual happened. ‘Supermarkets’ Sweatshop Shame’ emblazoned the front page of METRO, the suffering of Bangladeshi women in the garment industry took up a spread in the Guardian, and BBC News issued a story on the exploitation of factory workers employed by Tesco, Asda and Primark.

Follow-up articles appeared in the Daily Mail, the India Times and the Scotsman, among others. In June this year the story made another comeback on the front page of the Evening Standard, and inside the Independent, the Guardian, and the Herald. This coverage came in response to a War on Want protest outside Primark scheduled to coincide with the release of a BBC Panorama investigation into the firm’s employment of sweatshop workers in India.

So how did the campaign of a small, underfunded charity manage to capture the media’s goldfish-like attention?

War on Want press officer Paul Collins pins the answer down to one all-important factor: skillful media campaigning. Mr. Collins organized the press coverage surrounding the 2006 War on Want report Fashion Victims, and subsequently came up with the idea to launch the Primark protest the same day as the Panorama show.

A work of media brilliance, it would seem, as any journalist can tell you finding an angle on a story is much easier if it can be linked to an upcoming event.

Mr. Collins named three key factors to consider when targeting the mainstream British media.

Factor one: get a “strong, hard-hitting story,” says press savvy Collins. He then goes on to quote media mogul Randolph Hearst, saying, “news is what someone somewhere doesn’t want you to print, all the rest is advertising.”

For example, a press release announcing support given to a charity by a local minister doesn’t quite grab attention like an investigation into the labour abuses of corporations signed up to the Ethical Investment Initiative.

Factor two: make sure the story is “well told”.  Few journalists will follow up on a lead if the pitch given by the campaigner is dull or wordy.

Factor three:  aim for the Today Programme. Making it onto the BBC’s Radio Four morning program is a ticket to success says Collins, and he has a point. The logic is, if the story can find its way to the Today Programme, it will often appear on the 7 or 8 o’clock news bulletin, and “if you’re lucky,” he adds, “you may get a live interview on the back of it.”

UNICEF UK Senior Media Officer, Sarah Epstein offered up UNICEF’s advice for small charities:

“Media work can be an effective campaigning tool but it needs to be strategic to be effective.

“It’s essential to think about who you are trying to reach. Think about the target audience and the key messages that will influence those people to take action or make changes. Consider the many different types of media that could be efficient and cost effective to accomplish what you need.

“In addition, it’s worth doing some research into the media outlets before you contact them – to understand what they want and do your best to make sure that the information is provided to them in a clear, timely manner.”

Yet even Collins admits, “You know you are making headway when you don’t have to speak to a journalist to get published.” Unfortunately, this is rarely the case for lesser known charities. Though the hope is, at least with the right PR, Bono and Beckham aren’t the only way to make headlines!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Israeli President comes to London

Tonight Israeli president Shimon Peres addressed Britain’s Jewish community on his first ever official visit to the UK.

Speaking to the crowd gathered at St. John’s Wood Synagogue, the president said: “we are ready to negotiate land for peace, but not land for war.”

Peres acknowledged the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but went on to say: “It doesn’t give us any pleasure to see anyone suffering, but they can stop it at any moment the minute they stop shooting off rockets.”

The president justified Israel’s military backlash by arguing that the Israeli retreat from Gaza in 2005 was a sign of goodwill, along with the dismantling of 22 illegal settlements at the cost of $2.5 billion. “Yet instead of appreciating it, they fired rockets,” he said.Since Israel‘s independence, Mr. Peres argued that the country had won several wars despite unfair odds, saying: “We were outnumbered and outgunned, but we knew we had no option to lose.” No mention was made of US aid given to Israel for its defense. Israel recieves more US financial support than any other country in the world.
60 years on, the president was confident that the Muslim world had shifted in Israel’s favour as countries looked for alternatives in a region that was increasingly becoming “a block of Iranian hegemony.”

Peres praised the Saudi-led peace initiative proposed by King Abdullah, echoing his previous statement made at a UN conference last week.

The Israeli president further issued his support for US president-elect Barak Obama, saying: “For me, the election of Obama was in a way closing the circle started 100 years ago with Zionism.”

He spoke of the significance of Obama’s victory in the fight to end racism and anti-Semitism, and referred to the US election outcome as a “human declaration of far reaching consequences.”

Yet in contradiction of this, the president was quick to dismiss the need for Israel to address anti-Semitism outside of its borders. He told the audience that 25% of Germany was anti-Semitic, according to an unnamed newspaper source, and added: “this is a German problem, not an Israeli one.”

Mr. Peres further addressed the need for Israel to bolster development in three key areas: agriculture, energy, and services.

Israel should commit to using solar energy to combat dependence on oil, and bolster new agricultural technology in order to expand the country’s water supply. Though Peres added that Israel had little potential for increasing exports given its small size and lack of arable land.

For this reason, Israel should focus on specialized areas such as homeland security for “unconventional terror”, and medicine.

“We want to be a contributing country, and the best contribution is health” said the president.

This comes after UN Secretary-General Ban ki-moon said on Tuesday that Israel’s blockade of Gaza stripped Palestinians of “basic human rights”.

The Future of News

“Its not enough now to just be a journalist.”

These are the words pronounced by Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World service, to a resigned audience of journalism students.

I say ‘resigned’ because this is not the first time our (I include myself in this) expectations and job prospects have been dashed on the rocks of web 2.0.

For those of you that have never heard this term before, which I’ve only recently been briefed on, it refers to the future of journalism as an all-singing, all-dancing extraordinaire of blogging, podcasts, twitter, flickr and anything else that fits under the multimedia umbrella. All this must be conducted simultaneously with the added feature of drawing on content from all these spaces to INNOVATE something new.

Okay, I admit this is a slight exaggeration, but if you don’t believe that this is the way things are heading, check out the stats on UK national newspaper sales, or for even grimmer news, look across the pond.

Roy Greenslade, commentator for the Guardian and City University lecturer, told students that his sources (the cream of the journalism world) predicted the closure of two major publications in the near future. Though Greenslade remained vague on the details, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Independent was on the short-list given its plummeting sales. Only the Guardian and the Telegraph appear to have “innovated” at the right moment as their websites maintain climbing readerships.

The digital editor of Telegraph.co.uk Edward Roussel declared that the only way to avoid drowning was for “the newspaper industry to reinvent itself,” and journalists must follow suit. In terms of content, this means “investing in what you do best, outsourcing the rest.” This will most likely impact foreign news budgets, meaning goodbye foreign correspondent, hello increasingly insulated and narrow publications.

Though Mr. Sambrook at least appeared optimisitic toward the transformation of foreign news desks (given the BBC’s budget I’m sure this isn’t difficult). Sambrook pointed out that changing times required newspapers and broadcasters to hire journalists based in foreign countries, thus providing news from indigenous sources while having the added benefit of avoiding transportation costs for foreign correspondents. At least this is how the BBC world service deals with the shifting nature of supply and demand.

The BBC world service director’s vision (and emerging reality) features a massive network of journalists around the world sitting in front of computer screens typing out stories to feed the ‘daily beast’ on the hour every hour. This image is a far cry from a romantized past in which a western foreign correspondent draped in a trenchcoat traipses across the globe with notepad in hand.

Many would argue that this is great news; a symbol that western imperialism is finally beginning to vanish from traditional media sources. I heartily agree, in principle. That is of course unless the ‘indigenous voices’ are muted due to red-lines and editor/consumer preferences. However, for the purpose of hypothesis lets assume that our indigenous journalists are given this platform. Part of me sulkily wonders what this means for us western journalists desperate to leave home and write about somewhere else. Will we all be eventually relegated to reporting domestic news?

I feel slightly like a child that has been told to stay in my room. Besides, I do not agree that an insider always has the best knowledge of a place. For example, do we really think an American is always in the best position to tell us about America? I’m sure most Brits would answer to the contrary.

To conclude, the future of news is anything but straightforward. Like this blog post, it is fragmented, messy, and unpredictable at the best of times. But perhaps this is afterall what we need. A stagnant media loses the function to reflect the changing shape of society. And anyway, at the very least it creates debate, and through this, the foundation of a democratic (if not fascinatingly anarchic) space.

Closure of Guantanamo Bay

At the Stop the War Coalition rally held in Holborn the night before Obama was elected, Guantanamo detainee Moazzem Begg announced that the new president should begin his term with the closure of the most infamous US detention camp known on earth.

He told the 200+ audience about the horrors he had experienced at Guantanamo, and the suffering of fellow prisoners.

“I have a friend in Guantanamo that has never been charged with a crime,” he announced solemnly. “He has a family living in London. He is force-fed through a tube in his nose. He has asked for the right to die. He has a child just born that he has never seen-and all his children are British.”

Mr. Begg also told the story of an interrogator that had sent him a letter of apology thanking him for the conversations they had in Bagram. Most of the audience became unsympathetic to this man after Begg’s admission, but the purpose of the story was glaring: “This is what the war has done to people across both sides.”

Like most people, I am of the opinion that Guantanamo is an abomination of human rights, and like Mr. Begg I am all too happy to see this institution shut down. But I wonder what the closure of Guantanamo will mean for the torture camps we don’t hear about. Will the invisible chambers of human suffering slip from the public eye once this symbol of US repression is destroyed?

Will the media with its short attention span shift to other concerns once the narrative on Guantanamo reaches a happy ending?

My instinct tells me that no matter the outcome, Guantanamo must be closed immediately. But lets hope the devil we know isn’t replaced by the devil we don’t.

My Obituary

Pulitzer Prize winner and renowned journalist Amy S. Thomson was found dead last night at the age of 62 after a colleague discovered her body in the Yucatán jungle where she was reporting on the movements of EZLN guerrillas.

The colleague, who has asked to remain anonymous, said “I have reason to believe she was murdered by the CIA.”

While no proof of this has been confirmed, an autopsy revealed that Mrs. Thomson was indeed poisoned. The investigation is underway by Mexican police.

The death of Amy Thomson comes as a shock to her grieving family.

“Amy did things most of us only dream about,” said her brother Dr. Phillip Stillman, author of best-selling novel The Anarchic Origins of Biology.

She has left behind her husband Ben Thomson, chief advocate of the free software revolution, and 34 year old daughter Abigail Thomson.

Former Latin American war correspondent for the Guardian, Amy Thomson was best known for her groundbreaking work during the civil war that shook Bolivia from 2020-36.

Mrs. Thomson was the first journalist to reveal US involvement in arms deals with the rightist opposition, PODEMOS, which led to the UN investigation of top US officials and the arrest of former US president Barak Obama’s daughter Sasha Obama.

Amy Thomson received many accolades for her work, including “Best Investigative Journalist” from the World Journalism Society, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2038, and the Pulitzer in 2040 for her widely read book, Crime without Punishment in Chapare.

Bolivian president Leny Oliviera has called for a national day of mourning in recognition of Mrs. Thomson’s services to the country, and dedication to the Bolivian people.
The funeral service is to take place this Monday and will be open to the public.

•    Amy Stillman Thomson, journalist, born May 8 1986; died November 6 2048