It works in real life too. Distract the public for long enough that few people make a stink and the law gets through. When people complain later it’s “Oops, we didn’t know, no one seemed to care. Well, nothing we can do now”. Much harder to do that if everyone is shouting at you to not do the thing.
How many? Can you list some of them? I think that your assumptions are kind of the general opinion, but I am interested in facts. I couldn't find "many unpopular laws being passed during such events", can you?
The public, as a group, can only keep a small number of subjects in focus at a time. This feels like a phenomenon that I take for granted to be true but I haven't heard any name for it or read any studies.
It really feels like a symptomatic phenomenon of our time.
I don't know, my local journalists paid with public money seem to be able to follow a lot of domestic trivia. They are much less capable of following matters of national interest, like how the country's economy is doing, what laws are coming up, and how's that Orwellian State business coming along.
For a similar example from the UK, look up "good day to bury bad news" [1]
Quite often a government body has missed some performance targets, suffered cost overruns or has other bad news which they need to announce publicly at some point. But they can choose when the announcement comes out.
Then along comes September 11th 2001, planes crash into the twin towers, and while the towers are still burning government PR teams are rushing out the announcement that they've badly missed their train punctuality targets.
They know the news and social media are going to be full of the big event for days or weeks. By the time things are quiet enough that the newspapers have space to report on train punctuality, the bad figures are old news.
This works equally well with big good-news stories like royal weddings and big sporting events.
The "good day to bury bad news" quote is interesting because someone leaked an e-mail where a government PR boss literally encouraged it. Usually such encouragement would be by telephone or whatsapp to avoid creating a paper trail.
Here in Italy the worst and most controversial laws are proposed and accepted in the last days when the parliament is open, which happened to be in the middle of August, where everyone is on summer holidays and all activities and offices are closed.
latexr|1 year ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYOdO4pEyI
It works in real life too. Distract the public for long enough that few people make a stink and the law gets through. When people complain later it’s “Oops, we didn’t know, no one seemed to care. Well, nothing we can do now”. Much harder to do that if everyone is shouting at you to not do the thing.
t0bia_s|1 year ago
prmoustache|1 year ago
pelasaco|1 year ago
How many? Can you list some of them? I think that your assumptions are kind of the general opinion, but I am interested in facts. I couldn't find "many unpopular laws being passed during such events", can you?
ErikBjare|1 year ago
paulcole|1 year ago
BodyCulture|1 year ago
worldsayshi|1 year ago
It really feels like a symptomatic phenomenon of our time.
dsign|1 year ago
I don't know, my local journalists paid with public money seem to be able to follow a lot of domestic trivia. They are much less capable of following matters of national interest, like how the country's economy is doing, what laws are coming up, and how's that Orwellian State business coming along.
michaelt|1 year ago
Quite often a government body has missed some performance targets, suffered cost overruns or has other bad news which they need to announce publicly at some point. But they can choose when the announcement comes out.
Then along comes September 11th 2001, planes crash into the twin towers, and while the towers are still burning government PR teams are rushing out the announcement that they've badly missed their train punctuality targets.
They know the news and social media are going to be full of the big event for days or weeks. By the time things are quiet enough that the newspapers have space to report on train punctuality, the bad figures are old news.
This works equally well with big good-news stories like royal weddings and big sporting events.
The "good day to bury bad news" quote is interesting because someone leaked an e-mail where a government PR boss literally encouraged it. Usually such encouragement would be by telephone or whatsapp to avoid creating a paper trail.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1823120.stm
fastinfer|1 year ago
cjs_ac|1 year ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
jv95|1 year ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bread_and_circu...