Adam Wagner is a human rights barrister and founder of Rights Info, and organisation that promotes public understanding of human rights. I’m a huge admirer of the project (and Adam!) and have written for the site in the past.
Following yet another Daily Mail headline that disparages the idea of human rights, Adam posted a couple of Twitter threads in response. The first was about why investigations into alleged human rights abuses by British soldiers is important and necessary. The second was about how the tabloids ‘frame’ human rights stories, and how fact-checking them is not enough if we want to ensure public support for our rights.
I’ve blogged about this communications challenge before, but I think Adam puts it particularly well. I anticipate referring back to this in the future, and make no apology for reproducing the entire series of Tweets below.
Thanks to everyone who retweeted this thread – a couple of interesting things which have come out of it (short thread – promise!) https://t.co/PiWzWoIzQi
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
There were some pretty howling factual errors in the Mail story. First, that they said £33,000 was damages for unlawful detention. In fact it was £3,300, and the rest (over £30,000) was for abuse and mistreatment. Pretty important error.
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
There was also the regular references in the media to one of the claimants, Al-Waheeb, being a bomb-maker, which the judge found no evidence for (that actually came up in a radio interview I did with @NickFerrariLBC).
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
I deliberately stayed away from picking factual holes in the Mail’s story – not because they were accurate (they weren’t) or because it wasn’t important (it was) but because others were doing it and I think we often focus to heavily on small or large factual inaccuracies…
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
But with a story like this correcting the record is only half the job. Because many people don’t care if it is £3,000 or £30,000 damages, or if there was evidence of wrongdoing or not. They object to the very idea of soldiers being held accountable for battlefield wrongs
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
As with the Brexit debate, arguing over contested facts will only get you so far. One of the basic ideas behind @rights_info (based on a lot of empirical research) is to build support for human rights you have to work from first principles
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
Over many years, Daily Mail, Sun etc. have built pervasive emotional and values-laden frames against human rights. That they are for scoundrels, rich lawyers, elites – for them and not for us. This kind of story feeds right into those frames which is why it was on the front page
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
Here is my ‘human rights headlines’ collection, to which I have now added the latest Daily Mail headline. Some of these are things of beauty, from a framing perspective (obviously I don’t agree with the sentiment) pic.twitter.com/7cAFzrKO16
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
The headline I often come back to is The Sun’s ‘THEIR RIGHTS… YOUR YOURS?’. It’s genius and it encapsulates the entire anti-human rights narrative. On the “their” side are pictures of people with captions “killer, terrorist” etc. On the “our” side it’s people with names
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
It’s genius. Dehumanising, brilliant use of images, doesn’t fall into the trap of using black and brown people on one side and white on the other (The Sun is too clever for that). It tells a story using strong images and text which anyone can understand
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
Then there are the others – you can see the key anti-human rights frames very clearly represented: decreases security (anti-soldiers), increases unfairness (system for rich lawyers to get richer), reduces sovereignty (European judges controlling our society)
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
It’s a huge task to get the positive frames out there. And fact checking will only get you so far. Follow @rights_info! (-:
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
It’s a huge task to get the positive frames out there. And fact checking will only get you so far. Follow @rights_info! (-:
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
Basically the answer is to build an mixed emotional and factual set of frames around human rights using stories of real people winning victories for justice, equality, fairness, common sense. Tell the stories beautifully and simply like the tabloids do
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
So when a story like this one does you can instantly feed it through one of the well developed emotional frames (think of them like streams which over time cut into the bedrock of our consciousness) – this story would be accountability, everyone has human rights, basic fairness
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017
Because otherwise you are left with people seeing the Mail framing of story and saying ‘oh not again! Typical tank chasing human rights lawyers and their scoundrel clients’. Which, I am afraid, is what most people think when they see that story. No matter how many factual errors
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) December 17, 2017