“Rat Bites Baby” - a lesson in framing
Imagine this headline in the metro section of a major urban daily:
Headline 1. “Rat bites baby”
The story is set in a housing project in the black inner-city community of a large city. It involves a single mother who left her baby in the crib while she went down to the corner to cash her welfare check. The door was left open so her neighbors could hear. While she was gone, the baby was bitten repeatedly by rats. A neighbor responded to the cries of the infant and brought the child to the Central Hospital where he was treated and released in his mother’s custody.
How is this story being framed? Who are the bad guys?
• Bad guys: Not the city. Not the owner of the project. It is the mother who left her baby alone to go and cash her welfare check. The bad guys are all welfare recipients and unwed mothers – especially people of color.
• Good guys: upstanding citizens who work or get off welfare, as well as politicians who advocate for welfare reform.
• Images: the images that communicate this frame are the photos of people hanging around the local check cashing business, abandoned children playing in the project and politicians calling for welfare reform.
Headline 2. “Rat bites infant: Landlord, tenants dispute blame”
Suddenly, the frame has changed considerably. Now it is a 60 minutes-style story: the slumlord hounded by cameras in his wealthy neighborhood, his jacket over his head, surrounded by lawyers, jumping into his Mercedes and driving away. This version of the story includes information about other tenants who claim that their repeated requests for rodent extermination had been ignored by the landlord. An image that communicates the frame is one of angry and concerned residents of the project coming together to protest. Though the landlord tries to blame the tenants of improperly disposing of their garbage, the frame has been expanded. The facts will now be selected and ordered differently, guided by a different set of values and responsibilities. Still something is missing. Consider this:
Headline 3. “Rat bites rising in city’s ‘Zone of Death’”
The frame has changed again. Now City Hall is implicated: Elected officials, urban policy, economic empowerment zones and affordable housing become part of the story. The whole inner-city context is under fire. According to this version of the story, the woman’s baby is only the latest victim of a ‘rat epidemic’ plaguing inner city neighborhoods in the ‘Zone of Death.’ The good guys and bad guys have changed places. The mother, criticized in the first “rat bites baby” story has now become a spokesperson for families victimized in the urban “Zone of Death.” She becomes the emblem of the story. The frame of the story – its focus, boundaries & underlying values—has changed. Meanwhile, the story has moved from page 5C to page 1A of the local paper and is the lead TV story.
The importance of framing
This is what you must do for your news: you can set the frame. You can create the messages, the images and the significance of the story in a way that puts you on the offense. You can shape public opinion by strategically framing the story and communicating messages: this is the most empowering thing you can communicate with the media.
With strong messages, we can:
• Change the terms of debate
• Change public opinion
• Change perspectives, views, beliefs
This example taken from the SPIN Project’s “SPIN Works: A Media Guidebook for Communicating Values and Shaping Opinion,” pages 22-23, by Robert Bray (2000).
