The questions we need to ask now are which of these sub-stories
convey the messages which are the most damaging to our point of view,
what are these messages,
and what clear and simple messages can we communicate in order to counter them.
There are several ways we can change the stories:
- Suggest another "leading character". For example, we know that
the journalists are likely to interview a psychologist. Why not mention
Thomas Szasz and try to convince the jounralist would find his point of
view intersting. Another example: there may be people who had a relative
commit suicide, yet still feel that ash managed to help them. They might
have posted about it to ash. We could suggest journalists to talk to these
people instead of those who tend to blame ash.
- Discredit the lead character. For example, there is a book (which appears in
the advocacy page) which has a research where most psycholgists thought
that suicide was legitimate in some cases. Pointing to that research, we
can descredit any comment a psychologist would make against us by claiming
that it is not possible that a psychologist would openly support us since
his reputation would suffer. However, in private most psycholgists support
us and in fact, we have heard stories of ashers who were helped by their
psychologists...
- State a counter message directly.
