Anticipatory Response Quotes

The first printed appearance of the world occurred in a Washington Post article by Dan Batlz, May 26, 1996.
The news coverage cycle of a Presidential campaign had become so accelerated that candidates commonly gave copies of major addresses of press before the address was delivered so that the spinners could get to work and frame the issues of the speech so that it will be reported in a way favorable to them. The Clinton-Gore campaign first came up with a weapon to neutralize this pre-release of speeches. Specifically, they read copies of the speech and instead of waiting until the speech was given to rebut it, they issued the rebuttal before the speech was given so that their spinners could have an equal shot at influencing the reporting of the speech when it would be given. Gore coined the word, ‘prebuttal’ to describe the new technique. Soon everyone was issuing prebuttals to addresses whenever they were released in advanced—and prebuttals began to be issued outside of the campaigns and applied to any speech that any officeholder would give. The common sequence was: Address Release & Spin, Prebuttal & Spin, Speech Delivery, Rebuttal, Spin by both sides.