Alberta, Marzo-March 2007
17
ALTERNATIVA Latinoamericana
ENGLISH SECTION
A strange disconnect
tells the story of the last 20
years of Canadian politics. It's
the disconnect between
Canadian values (those who
object to this term have my
permission to running
screaming from the room) and
the governments they end up
with.
The old say that people
deserve the governments they
get does not apply here. Many
in-depth surveys suggest that
Canadians still hold firmly to
their views that governments
have an activist role to play in
their lives and the lives of
communities. These are
decidedly progressive values.
Yet we now have as prime minister one of the most
reactionary and radically right-wing politicians ever to
hold office.
This profound contradiction is between values
and expectations. Canadians still believe in the
principle that government is a force for good. It's just
that they no longer believe that it can be, or will be.
This is a huge victory for those like Stephen
Harper who believe in the motto of his former
employer, the National Citizens Coalition: "More
freedom through less government." The right did not
have to change people's values. They just had to
change people's expectations. And they did it through
a stunningly successful seizure of the language of
public discourse.
In other words, they framed the issues. And their
opponents fought the battle of ideas on a field
designed by and for their adversaries.
Teflon frames
There are many examples but some of the most
powerful phrases will evoke memories of past battles:
there is no alternative; we are going to hit the debt
wall; government is inefficient; public employees are
"bureaucrats" -- privileged, over paid, under worked
and lazy.
The art and science of strategic frame analysis
-- issue framing -- is relatively new in Canada,
though the concept of framing is not. The right has
been framing its issues carefully for years while the
left has been oddly complacent about re-framing
issues from their perspective.
That complacency has cost civil society groups
dearly. And it has cost Canadians even more in
eroded social programs, and the growing gap between
rich and poor.
Framing refers to the strategic construction of
messages in order that they connect with people's
deeply held world views and assumptions. It starts
from the point we all know from experience - that
people are rarely persuaded by just facts and numbers
no matter how compelling they might be. Framing
theory suggests the construction of a message
involves a complex combination of words, numbers,
stories, metaphors and messengers that support the
message, and take account of the particular context
within which the message is delivered.
A strong frame will actually reject facts that don't
fit the frame. The way that budget deficits have been
framed is a good example. There are many very sound
arguments suggesting that deficits can play a very
positive role in managing an economy and smoothing
out ups and downs in economic growth. But the notion
that deficits are totally unacceptable with respect to
government spending is so entrenched that it is the
equivalent of the Teflon frame: all competing facts and
arguments just bounce off it.
Elephant power
American linguist George Lakoff is the best-
known framing expert on the left. His now famous
book Don't Think of an Elephant coaches
progressives on how to reframe issues captured by
the right. The title refers to what Lakoff suggests is
the key to understanding framing: that you cannot
negate an operating frame. In fact, each time you
negate the frame, you actually evoke it. If you tell
people not to think of an elephant it is virtually
impossible for them NOT to think of one.
The classic example of failing to negate a frame
was provided by Richard Nixon when he famously
declared "I am not a crook." From that instant on, this
is precisely how the vast majority of Americans viewed
their president. A short time later he resigned.
Issue framing has taken
on such importance in
American politics that the
New York Times referred to it
as "framing wars" between
the Democrats and the
Republicans. Lakoff works
closely with the Democrats,
and the Republicans have
their own brilliant language
guru, Frank Luntz.
In 1997 he distributed a
160-page report titled "The
Language of the 21st
Century," which he said was
his "most serious effort to put
together an effective,
comprehensive national
communications strategy."
It quickly became the Republican play-book
bible.
Harper's fave frames
Luntz's ideas started showing up more obviously
in Canada just weeks after Stephen Harper won the
2006 election -- and just after, Luntz came to Canada
and visited the new prime minister. That's when we
started hearing the key Harper ministers repetition of
term "tax relief," a staple of Luntz's framing. Why this
phrase? Because it automatically evokes the image of
an affliction that needs relief. Those who offer to help
with the affliction are the good guys, and those who
deny that relief are cast as people who don't care
about ordinary folk.
You can't negate the "tax relief" frame any more
than you can command people not to think of an
elephant. So, instead of trying to talk against tax
relief, Lakoff would argue that you need to re-frame the
issue with your values in mind -- and talk about "fair
tax reform." That new frame evokes a whole different
set of attitudes, and doesn't reinforce the notion that
taxes are a burden. It implies that taxes are needed
and also connects with people's existing conviction
that the wealthy don't pay their fair share.
Other re-framing ideas include talking about
taxes as the price we pay for a civilized society, taxes
as an investment in our children's future, or the price
of admission to a desirable club -- one of the best
countries in the world to live in.
"Sometimes," says Frank Luntz, "it's not what
you say that matters but what you don't say."
His advice to Republicans: never say
"government." Say "Washington." Why? Because
people actually like their local government but they
don't trust Washington. Never say "globalization." Say
"the free market economy," because globalization is
scary, too big and beyond people's control. Never say
"drilling for oil." Say "exploring for energy." Never say
"undocumented workers." Say "illegal aliens."
Re-framing to win
The right in Canada, Harper in particular, will be
honing this communications methodology as we come
up to the next election. Indeed the Clean Air Act is
just one example. So, can we turn the tables on the
right and begin to frame and re-frame issues so that
they connect with Canadians' values?
Absolutely. Here's a start:
Never say "Medicare crisis." Say the "corporate
threat to Medicare." Why? Because the privateers
want people to think there's a crisis so they will
acquiesce to a radical solution: privatization. Never
say "private care." Instead say "for-profit care." Never
say "defence spending." Say "war spending." Because
the huge increases in that department are exclusively
for making war.
Don't say "child care." Instead say "early
childhood learning." Because the right tries to frame
daycare as undermining the family, and warehousing
children. Never refer to the Clean Air Act. Call it what
it is, the Dirty Oil Act.
Never, ever say "free trade agreement." Instead,
say "investors' rights agreement." Never say Tories.
Say "the Harper Conservatives." Because the former
reminds people of the politically moderate Red Tories
who are long gone. Similarly, never say "the
Conservative government." Say "the Harper
government." Never say "decentralization." Instead,
say "the erosion of universal social programs."
Two can play the framing game. It's about time
those who care about the country got serious about
winning.
Murray Dobbin (thetyee.ca)
How the Left Should
Frame Issues
the governments of Bolivia and Venezuela-51% owner,
Argentina-20% owner, Cuba-19% owner, and Uruguay-
10% owner, works from Venezuela. It has a Consulting
Board of intellectuals and public figures including
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Ernesto Cardenal, Eduardo
Galeano, Tariq Ali, Saul Landau, Ignacio Ramonet,
Richard Stallman y Danny Glover.
William Ospin, writing about Telesur in Dreaming
from the South (in Mirando al Sur) mentions that it is
"a new tool in Latin American culture, the promise of a
fluent dialogue of continental story-telling rich in voices
and perspectives immersed in the forgotten history of
our peoples..." He also describes the project as a
challenge, mainly to the imagination, because its
focus is not on making "consumer television" but on
another type of television that focuses on people and
their everyday lives, not following models that "keep us
frozen in passivity" but forming "a society rich in
imagination and creation."
Aram Aharonian, Director of Telesur, explains
that the project focus is removing constrains imposed
by the dominant Media which he describes as a
"mediatic latifundio", to favor continental integration. It
was born, he said, from our awareness that what we
were doing in alternative journalism was not enough
"We were losing by large score, cornered in small
niches, receiving funding from European and American
NGO's that assured us that we could not move from
there....They had convinced us that "our thing" was
"community" and that the major leagues or Mass
Media, was for the owners of great capital."
Recently, Dan Kennedy, in Monopoly Money
(Bostons Phoenix), explains that monopoly continues
to grow at a faster and faster rate, and it includes the
merger of cable companies. We come to the end of
the game, he says, and it may be too late to save the
Internet as a place for the expression of independent
voices. AT&T Broadband, the mayor cable provider in
the US, was bought by Comcast, which already has
22 million subscribers (or a third of the total of US
subscribers). The largest complex, AOL/ Time/
Warner, with 13 million subscribers, is already
discussing an association with AT&T/ Comcast. At the
same time these giants merge, the French complex
Vivendi Universal announces the buying of US
Networks, and legal limitations are being removed.
"The problem is that all this is taking place behind the
scenes," says Danny Schechter Media observer.
Stephen Lendman explains that "in the last 10
years, the telecom, broadcast and cable have spent a
fortune getting legislation passed favorable to its
interests and getting back far greater riches and
media and telecommunication concentration and
control in return". Internet is the last frontier, he
argues: "this is a battle the public cannot afford to
lose, and the telecom cartel will pull out all the stops
to win." For Lendman the challenge ahead "is to stop
this assault on the public welfare..." We need to know,
he says, that "there is nothing sacrosanct about the
current media structure that is the result of decades of
big media-friendly laws, regulations and huge
government subsidies all crafted secretly by the
industry without public knowledge, participation or
consent and gotten under administrations of both
parties." We need to know, he adds, that "they are the
enemy, and only mass people action can and must
stop them."
The documentary The Corporation examines the
process by which corporations have come to have
rights that previously only people could have. Still,
although corporations are treated like people and have
people's rights in front of the law, they are not one of
us. Corporations are in essence antisocial; their
antisocial traits are made obvious in their complete
lack of concern about others, their lack of capacity to
show any concern about the safety of others, their
lack of ability to experience any form of guilt and to
follow social and/or legal norms, and their constant
lying and deceiving others in order to make and keep a
profit. These anti-social, psychopathic entities are,
however, continuing to grow. They benefit from public
goods externalizing costs. We seem unable to stop
them. Nothing is safe from corporations, forget about
the Media, we cannot protect our seeds, water, genes,
air; everything can be turned into a commodity to be
dealt in the markets corporations have created and
maintain, the world corporations live in and make us
live in too.
We are ineffective. It seems this is mainly
because our appeal to justice is rooted in ethics and
morals and both are useless with corporations.
Corporations have got no soul to save, no morality to
defend, nobody can make them accountable and we
have allowed them to become legally immortal. The
play is on the table and capital concentration
continues. Giants are threatening to swallow it all and
we know because they have been demonstrating it,
that they have the capacity to do it. The question is
whether we will find the appropriate vehicle to stop
them on time.
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