All sides represented in a story want their side presented "fairly"...and those with the financial ability to do so will work hard to "manage" your story to best present their side.
The Guardian recently published what is says are media management instructions from a Sons of Confederate Veterans handbook, explaining how members can "manage" your story:
Media management
Media management is also a preoccupation in the document, which gathers 10 “Dos” and “Don’ts” under the heading, “Speaking with the Media”.
Many of these focus on the possibility that activists will be drawn into talking about monuments in ways that touch on race.
One instruction warns that journalists may “try to lead you to recognize them by race, national origin or political bent. Resist this by consistently addressing the opposition simply as ‘opposition’.”
Elsewhere, the document instructs, “Do stay on topic”, warning that “veering into a discussion of taxes, race, political parties/candidates, legislation in other areas, even slavery is a great risk.”
Another “Don’t” counsels against letting “a reporter form the issue as simply one of the South supporting slavery”, offering counterarguments like “slavery has been common for centuries” and “it was the Western world that finally ended it in their civilization” and “It was about independence. Period. That is the reason so many blacks supported the Confederacy.”
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