An Interview with Action Media

Action Media provides media advocacy services to policymakers and public interest groups. The firm specializes in communications training, meeting facilitation, issue framing, focus group research, production and strategic use of targeted and mass media. Dick Brooks and Michael Goldberg have both worked in print and broadcast media since 1977. They formed Action Media (www.turnonthenews.com) in 1994, because their experience as both journalists and social activists persuaded them that strategic media advocacy can promote the objectives of people working for social justice by making their voices heard. Action Media led a day-long framing workshop for the Northeast Policy Leaders Forum prior to the 2001 Summit on the States.

Q.You claim that people don’t need to "pitch" their issues, instead they need to tell their stories. What does that mean?

A.Pitching is a sales term. When you pitch a story you automatically set up a situation in which the journalist is a gatekeeper – they either buy what you say or they don’t. The better approach is to try to help journalists do their job by telling them what’s going on. Their job is to recognize stories. Telling them what your story iswho’s doing things, why they’re doing them, and what’s happening as a result is a more effective way to relay the information. It doesn’t put journalists in a position to say "yes" or "no" to what you tell them.

Q.What advice can you give progressives to think more clearly about who they should target in their communications campaigns?

A. The first thing you should do is figure out who you really want to reach. Start by defining what it is you want to happen, and who can make that happen. It’s important to be as specific as you can about who you want to reach and what you want them to do. We think if we can get the right information into the right paper often enough, it’s going to mobilize people to take action on their own behalf. But you have to think carefully about which people you want to mobilize, and how you reach them.

Organizations shouldn’t settle for making a splash with the media, but should instead concentrate on building a wave. Communication campaigns should be continually in motion. What’s visible and moving at one point may slip below the surface; what’s churning out of sight may suddenly break to the crest.

Q.What are some common media myths?

A. That the most important media are the biggest media. There are circumstances and ways in which The New York Times is definitely more important than the Des Moines Register, but this is not necessarily the case for advocates who are working on state issues. The real issue in advocacy, as compared to marketing, is to not think about how many eyes you get in front of, but which eyes. A flyer in a laundromat could be a more powerful medium than a story in the Wall Street Journal.

For example, a neighborhood was trying to get some police attention to a close down a crack house. Even though this neighborhood had gone to the police several times, and there was coverage in the local newspaper about the problem, it became clear to the citizens that this wasn’t a high priority for the police.

The citizens used a medium they controlled to spur actiona neighborhood flyer couched in the voice of the crack dealers promoting the neighborhood as a police-free zone, open 24 hours a day, devoid of cops. By posting this around the neighborhood, lo and behold, the police began regular and intensive patrols.

Take another exampleundocumented immigrants working in the community are unable to get driver’s licenses or open bank accounts without proper identification. Immigrant advocates developed a campaign to change such identification requirements. One of the campaign challenges was that undocumented workers aren’t very visible. Their very invisibility has caused part of the problem. While newspapers will occasionally cover something related to undocumented workers, we wanted to raise their visibility and show their impact on local economies. The immigrant group printed up 75,000 green stickers that could be affixed to dollar bills, which said, "This money was earned and spent in Minnesota by an undocumented worker." Printed on this sticker is what looks like a U.S. Treasury seal with the words "A nation of immigrants." This money is beginning to circulate widely. The banks get the stickers, which probably makes bankers wonder where these people are banking. From their perspective, there are 50,000 potential accounts out there. Money is the most fundamental medium of communication.

Both examples highlight a misapprehension about media communications work. People tend to believe that the mass media is one thing and communications and organizing is a different thing. Communications always requires a medium: your voice, phone, brochure, TV broadcast. Those are different media to carry your communication. If you start by asking not "How can we get into a newspaper?" but, "How can we get what needs to happen to happen?" then you’re able to use media in the context of your strategy.

Q. What about the role of messengers?

A. By separating mass media work into a different category from communications work, advocates and legislators often think they are the best messengers. You often see the executive director quoted in press material. But that’s not always the best strategy. For instance, an environmental group pushing for better fuel economy in automobiles might put together a press release with the headline, "Environmental Group Demands Better Fuel Economy." So what? Of course they do. What if instead, the press release says, "Autoworkers say better fuel economy would create more jobs"? Advocates are oftentimes not their own best messengers. Related to that, oftentimes the message of what we want to tell people isn’t the message they need to hear. Telling people that fuel-efficient cars are going to protect the environment may be what the environmentalists want to say, but maybe what people need to understand is that fuel-efficient cars will improve the economy.

Q.Why is it ineffective to think about your audience as the general public?

A. The problem is, there is no general public. Do you really mean everyone? Does that include babies, or those living in nursing homes with dementia? Do you just mean voters, homeowners, or mothers? When we say "the general public," oftentimes that’s an indication that we haven’t thought enough about our audience to describe it correctly. As soon as you realize there is no general public, then any media campaign that’s supposed to reach the general public is going to fail by definition.

Q. How can legislators apply this advice to working with opponents?

A. Again, you need to think about what that person needs to hear to take the action you want. It may be that what they need to hear is not about the injustice of a current policy or about the belief system that makes us committed to these issues. A legislator on either side of the aisle is like everyone else. We operate primarily out of self-interest. If you’re trying to move your opponents, telling them what you think probably doesn’t matter very much, because they disagree with you.

Let’s say there’s a legislative battle over welfare reform. We want to say to our opponents, poor people have it really rough, and unless we improve welfare reform, it’s going to make their lives even rougher. Well, they probably don’t care. Poor people tend not to vote, number one. But what if, instead, legislators were to hear that the county commissioners of the community they represent are extremely worried about state funds devoted to welfare, because when state support is cut, the burden falls on the county. And county commissioners haven’t got the foggiest idea how they’re going to pick up this state burden. If that were a strategy, then you would need to think about how to let those legislators know that county commissioners are concerned by this. Now there’s a role for the mass media. Someone who is morally opposed to welfare might be moved by the argument that it’s better to take the funds out of the state coffers than for local governments to bear an additional burden.

Even if you have 80 legislators who agree with you on one side and 100 who don’t, you only need to move about 11 of them. You have to figure out who can be leveraged and then you appeal to their self-interest. The real problem might be two or three people, often those who are in leadership positions. One thing they’re concerned about is maintaining their leadership. Creating that kind of pressure and heat is simpler when you have something to use. Most advocacy comes down to decision-makers not those who agree with you.

Q. Progressives are often frustrated by the news, and by journalists. Why is this not helpful to our work?

A. It’s a noble and worthwhile activity to seek to improve the quality of work that’s done by any given set of mass media news outlets. But that activity is not the same as advocating for social change. If people are thinking about their communications and advocacy work strategically, in terms of who’s really going to make change happen, they’ll find that there are other things to do than to be frustrated by the media and worried about the headline writer.