Those 'Convention Report' newspapers sold outside Convention grounds.......

by nicolaou 3 Replies latest jw friends

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  nicolaou

  They always have photographs of Brother Righteous and his theocraptic family! The report on the convention has clearly been fed to the editors by some WT PR department to try and portray the fundies as a sane group of Christians that you might like to join [shudders].

  Well if any of you can dig out the names of these papers and a contact address, fax or email then I'd be happy to work on short but revealing 'Press Release' that can be submitted for inclusion in the same issue of the paper 'in the interests of fairness and balance'. Most editors might actually welcome an opposing and controversial point of view.

  What do you think?
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  steve2

  I remember how naive I was: I thought the newspaper journalists and photographers were really interested in publishing big front-page stories about how special we were, until a friend in the newspaper industry shared with me that the special editions sold outside convention grounds were different from those distributed more widely to residents of the city. It was nothing more than a good business ploy to suck in the JW conventioners so they'd buy extra copies. Remember how the Watchtower used to quote from these articles, crowing about how special Jehovah's people were? I get goosebumps just thinking about it...not.
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  IT Support

  nicolaou,

  I think it's a great idea, in theory.

  Remember, the 'Convention Report' is simple a front and back page wrap-around the regular edition of the newspaper. Even then, it's rarely the national newspapers which go in for these sorts of stunts, but the local 'rag' that's deperate for any way to sell a few more newspapers.

  The 'Convention Report' is there for one purpose, and one purpose only. Not to provide a fair and balanced critique of the convention programme, or Witness beliefs, or any of that nonsense. In these situations, newspaper editors don't give a fig for fairness and balance---it's only about selling a thousand extra papers each day.

  steve2 is absolutely correct. It's PR 'fluff.' Any words or pictures that might alienate this potential readership are Definitely Out.

  Perhaps the most that one could hope for would be to write a letter to the editor and hope it might get published in the main paper. On the other hand, local newspaper editors are also part of the local community, and in spite of their skinflint ways, even JW conventions bring a lot of money into those communities which they would not want to jeopardise...
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  steve2

  I don't know what it's like in other countries, but the days of widespread coverage of Watchtower conventions by the media seem to be over. On at least two occasions in recent years, the JWs have had their district assemblies conventions in my city (Palmerston North) and I knew nothing about it - no newspaper coverage at all. I only found out later from my mother who had visits from her JW siblings who were in the city for the convention. Main nation-wide newspapers typically ignore these events with absolutely no coverage.