Letter-Writing Campaigns: Classic Or Dud?

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This kind of spins out of the honestreporting.com stuff on one of the 9/11 threads but I wanted to talk about it in the abstract because I realised it was my gut disagreement with the tactics not the cause that made me dislike that site so much. i.e. if there was a site where you were encouraged to bombard pro-Israeli writers with hostile letters I'd feel just as uncomfortable.

The idea is that you have an organisation and when the organisation reads something it doesnt like it harasses the people who wrote it (or who are doing the not-liked thing) with e-mails and letters, most of which are form letters ("a suggested letter"). It's a kind of "lets flame this asshole" but with a cloak of high-mindedness and I really hate it - especially with the cut-and-paste letter element it's actively discouraging people to think for themselves, just using them as verbal footsoldiers.

That's what I think, anyway. On the other hand I see this is full of flaws - there's no reason an individual's opinion should be less valid just because it's been organised, and I think a right to reply is massively important. There's just something of the virtual mob about it which repels me.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 12 September 2002 17:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Would this be the wrong place to encourage people to sign that petition to make Soul Train's Queen Of Soul someone besides Ashanti?

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 12 September 2002 17:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Signing petitions is different too! i.e. the depth of feeling becomes known but there's only one 'deliverable' so to speak.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 12 September 2002 17:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Organising people's opinions sounds pretty sinister to me. Media bias at it's best perhaps?

On the other hand people can be pretty slack about doing things for themselves and it's not as if they're being forced to send letters.

― toraneko (toraneko), Thursday, 12 September 2002 17:27 (twenty-three years ago)

ilx vs Uncut's Nigel Williamson and the Scourge of alt.country?

― david h (david h), Thursday, 12 September 2002 17:42 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom, I'm not sure if I agree with you in principle or just because those "HonestReporting" people are cockfarmers.

There's quite a good bit in Robert Fisk's book about the Lebanon where he discusses hostile letters he has received. He sees them as essentially attempting to suppress journalistic inquiry into events, but he does claim that he answers every one.

however, I am a member of Amnesty International and sometimes write letters at their suggestion to world leaders asking them to stop torturing, executing, or unjustly imprisoning named people. Does that fall within the rubric of letter writing campaigns?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 13 September 2002 11:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm not sure. I think maybe letter writing campaigns to politicians are different because politicians have an actual power to do something about events, whereas journalists are just reporting on events. But then letter-writing campaigns to journalists are saying essentially the same thing ie if you were doing your job right youd be doing this this and this. Hmmm.

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 13 September 2002 11:24 (twenty-three years ago)

it does seem a bit weird that it might be wrong to ask world leaders not to torture people.

you have opened a dangerous can of worms, Tom.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 13 September 2002 13:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom, I think your petition mention is the key: the goal of a lot of letter-writing campaigns is not to show widespread disapproval (which a petition could theoretically do), but to physically deluge the offender with so much complaint that it becomes difficult for them to function. And this does border on harrassment: the media organ watches its words from then on not out of service to concerned readers/viewers, but because it knows it can be (ahem) "terrorized," essentially, by any annoyed faction. (I'm not entirely serious with the terrorism implication, but the function is actually sort of the same: "we will get back at you by destroying your mailroom.")

Chicago's largest weekly paper recently took a big hit from honestreporting over a line in a film review: the reviewer said scenes in the documentary Gaza Strip depicted Israeli soldiers using nerve gas on Palestinian children. (The "facts" so far as anyone can tell are essentially that it can't be proven to be nerve gas, but it was certainly something worse than tear gas.) This inaccurate sentence in the film review mobilized letter-senders from all over the nation, most of whom had virtually no opportunity to even see the article itself. This is where the "discouraging thought" part comes in.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 13 September 2002 14:55 (twenty-three years ago)

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