WHO’S NEGATIVE, THE DA OR THE MEDIA?
The following story is from the blog ‘Ant’s World’, run and managed by the DA’s Director of Relationship Management, Anthony Hazell, and makes some interesting points about the constantly repeated - but, I would argue, never substantiated - claim that the DA is ‘negative’.
The story is worth reading and his blog worth visiting.
WHO’S NEGATIVE, THE DA OR THE MEDIA?
By: Anthony Hazell
There's a contention that pops up in the media from time to time - usually on the editorial and opinion pages - that the Democratic Alliance is too negative - that it only criticises and never offers its own solutions. It is never presented as the central thesis of a substantiated argument (that would be difficult, I would argue); rather, it is almost always a throw-away line - a cliché even. But does it hold up to scrutiny?
Fortuitously, Mandy de Waal published an interview with Media Tenor SA CEO Wadim Schreiner on Thought Leader yesterday that provides excellent background for this post. Among other things, it looks at how the media's agenda setting plays a role in how politicians and political parties (or any institution or personality, for that matter - Cape Judge President John Hlophe is another case in point) are represented and perceived.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is certainly a straight-talking, no-nonsense, critical opposition, and unapologetic about it. It's also what the overwhelming majority of our supporters, as well as a significant proportion of voters who don't yet vote for the DA, want from us.
In market research we recently commissioned, voters were asked whether they thought the DA was too critical, not critical enough, or just about right. Only 32 % of black voters - the market in which the DA needs to gain support in order to grow - think the DA is too critical; 15 % think we are not critical enough; and 39 % think we get our criticism just about right (margin of error of 2%). Among white voters - the majority of the DA's current support base - 58 % think the DA is not critical enough; a further 36 % think we get it just about right. Only 2 % think we are too critical.
But the DA is by no means only critical. It also offers analysis of the numerous challenges the state faces - the better to identify the root of problems - and proposes solutions to many of those problems. This is something that all voters - regardless of who they voted for, or intend to vote for - want from an opposition party.
The DA produced some 30 new policy and discussion documents in 2007, including an analysis of ASGISA Posted on 13/6/2008
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