Silence as attention diversion

There is a bundle of strategies journalists call ‘taking out the trash’. The best known of them is the ‘Friday news dump’. It refers to the practice of governments and agencies to release bad news and embarrassing documents on Friday afternoons. The creator of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin, has written a whole episode with the title ‘Take out the Trash Day’ (Season 1, Episode 13). In one of the scenes, Josh tells Donna how it works: DONNA

What’s take out the trash day?

JOSH

Friday.

DONNA

I mean, what is it?

JOSH

Any stories we have to give the press that we’re not wild about, we give all in a lump on Friday.

DONNA

Why do you do it in a lump?

JOSH

Instead of one at a time?

DONNA

I’d think you’d spread them out.

JOSH

They’ve got X column inches to fill, right? They’re going to fill them no matter what.

DONNA

Yes.

JOSH

So if we give them one story, that story’s X inches.

DONNA

And if we give them five stories.…

JOSH

They’re a fifth the size.

DONNA

Why do you do it on Friday?

JOSH

Because no one reads the paper on Saturday.

DONNA

You guys are real populists, aren’t you?

(Godard, 2012) There are disclosure standards in government. One has to give certain information. The authority has no choice but to release news, which with non-release would hurt its reputation more than the news itself. It is not whether to do it but how to do it. Strategic silence chooses not the event but its timing. The speaker speaks when the listener does not listen.