This year, I
sense pro-lifers are beyond caring about the lack of headlines. They’ve bitched
about it for long that it feels like a complete waste of breath at this point.
But I think
it’s a good topic to explore.
I don’t want
this post to be seen as critical of the people who organize the March for Life.
It’s a damned hard job and they do so much with so little and they do it very
well, considering that they’ve organized the largest annual protest on the
Hill.But if we
are interested in getting into the media, then we have to put some thought into
why we’re not getting any.
And let’s
get one thing out of the way. It’s true that political bias does have a role to
play in this. But ultimately what media executives are looking to do is get
people to pay attention to sell advertising. If pro-lifers do something to get
that attention, they don’t care if it goes counter to their political beliefs,
they need to make money.
Have you
ever thought about compels editors to choose one story over another when they
make up the day’s headlines?
Here are
some characteristics I have detected that make news stories “interesting” and
how the March for Life can improve.
Interesting Visuals:
Last year,
the March for Life made some headlines because Femen managed to make it to the
podium, and the visual was a half-naked woman next to the primate of Canada.
In other
years, the March for Life’s biggest visual is 20 000 people on Parliament Hill
and a bunch of people holding signs.\
Those are
not very interesting visuals. If we ever hope to make it into the headlines, we
need to think about providing the media with something to photograph and film
so they have something interesting for their viewers to look at. What kind of
visuals? Think theatrically. A big float. Dancers. A marching band. Streamers,
balloons, confetti, empty strollers, art work. Something other than a crowd and
signs.
Controversy:
This might
strike you as paradoxical. Abortion is
inherently controversial. True. It’s an inherently controversial topic that
few people are interested in.
The
controversy I’m thinking about is not about principles, but between interests.
So for instance, if we could dig up a very controversial fact and present it at
the March for Life. For instance: Last year, 500 elective third-trimester
abortions took place in Canada, and 50 of those babies were born alive and left
to die (I completely made that up as an example). Wow! Awesome headline. You
just gave the journalists some meat for their story. It now requires a follow-up
question to feminist groups and possibly the medical association. Is it true?
What do you think of this? How do you defend it?
See how controversy
works? It gets journalists thinking and working.
Relevance to other political stories
of interest
There was a
little bit of that because there was some attention paid to the euthanasia
issue. But the March for Life has always been primarily a fetal rights event.
This year
there is an election. If there was something we could have leveraged to make
either one of the three main federal political leaders look bad—Harper,
Trudeau, or Mulcair, that could have generated a story.
Anything transgressive
Anytime
there is a major violation of laws or mores, that draws people’s attention. That’s
why the 4-20 event which calls for the legalization of marijuana gets attention
because in our culture, marijuana is not something one smokes in a large crowd. And people like to look down
on potheads.
Now of
course we don’t want to riot or hurt anyone. But maybe we might want to think
in terms of doing something “we’re not supposed to do.” This is a bit more
difficult for us because pro-lifers tend to be law-abiding, conventional
people. But one should keep it in mind when thinking about how to get
headlines.
Novelty
This year’s
March for Life looks like every other March for Life we’ve had. You can almost
use fill-in-the-blank sheet to write the story:
Today, _(number)__
people protested at the March for Life calling for the criminalization of
abortion. _(number)_ MP’s spoke, (number)___ bishops spoke, the RCMP estimated
the crowd to be (number)____ people.
What if we
had gotten Justin Bieber to speak at the March for Life? (And yes, there are
reasons not to have him here, but I’m just throwing this out as an example).
That would have grabbed journalists’ attention. It would’ve been different.
Or what if
we had had a small skit using papier-mache costumes. We would give something
for journalists to report.
When you
think of the elements that create news headlines, the March for Life leaves
something to be desired. If we’re interested in making headlines and getting
our message out beyond Parliament Hill, we should really think about how our
event can fulfill some of these criteria and make our event a reportable story
for journalists.
