FRAME: Strategy/Conflict

Lanny Davis, former White House counsel under Clinton, veteran of the Monica Lewinsky wars, and a recognized expert on crisis communication was on NPR this morning, offering some very valuable insight on message strategy in the Mark Foley page scandal. Davis recommends that iin any scandal, you want to get out in front of the story early in order to frame responsibility before either the media or your opponents do it for you. He argues that the GOP leadership, knowing about the emails last May, should have immediately confronted Foley, alerted the House Ethics Committee, told the…
If it isn't already obvious, the GOP game plan for the November election is to make September 11 and the war on terror the dominant consideration for voters, rather than the troubles in Iraq, and the lingering questions of GOP competency following Katrina. All the tools of strategic communication are being applied including negative advertising, bullypulpit agenda-setting, and selective frame devices such as calling Dems "defeato-crats" (See this overview of the game plan from the NY Times.) At the local level, the GOP plans to spend 90% of their advertising budget on negative ads, with…
Chris Wallace has this to say about the ground rules agreed to by Fox News and Clinton....
News outlets and the blogosphere are abuzz over Bill Clinton's appearance on Fox News Sunday. The whole episode is a classic example of how the negotiation of news between journalists and powerful sources can sometimes go wrong, especially when the two parties might ultimately have competing goals. After hosting a week long summit on global warming that raised $7 billion, Clinton wanted to use Fox News to reach its GOP viewers on the issue. Clinton's effort was paired with agenda-building activities during the week that were designed to attract attention among GOP members of the public who…