Thread by @hhesterm

A tale of how to rule in partisan 24/7 journalism. With journalistic failures by the Guardian, Telegraph and Express. (thread)

Today, a Belgian court delivered a judgment on preliminary measures in the EU v AZ case. /2

We first learned about it by an AZ press release. Which sounded very good for AZ. Here it is. /3

https://twitter.com/davcarretta/status/1405861751615328257?s=20

So twitter shouted victory for AZ. But then came the Commission press release. Which sounded good for the Commission. /4 ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…

So the informed twitter community was confused. I tried to explain how to judge "who won", but sadly my message was not sexy. It was: wait for the judgment.

https://twitter.com/hhesterm/status/1405866394735058952?s=20

Unsurprisingly nobody did. Here's the Express. Now it was never in doubt what the express would write, no matter what happens in reality, so let's move on to the Telegraph.

Here's the Telegraph's contribution to "we have written something, but we did not bother to read what we wrote about" telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/…

And yes. Here's The Guardian, chiming in that the EU lost the case @JedySays

And the judgment is out now. The Commission has published it here. Let's just say: None of the above news outlets have bothered to read the judgment. ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…

AZ wanted the lawsuit dismissed. It wasn't. The EU did not get everything it wanted, though. But AZ was held to have committed a "faute lourde". A grave breach.

So this wasn't a total win for the Commission. But the fact that it was a win can be seen in the split of the costs.

This is just the interim measures, who knows what happens next. But reporting this as an AZ win is... well... quite impressive.

What is the lesson here? Be the first to get your press release out, at all cost. Frame the judgment as a victory. Try to preempt the other sides arguments. Et voilà.
Framing wins the day.

Remember that the past debate in the UK produced a consensus that AZ was clearly, utterly clearly not in breach of its contract. Now the debate has been reframed as "AZ is ordered to do something it can do, so it won the case"