'Yes, but... or Yes, and...': How to pitch the 2005 debate, ODI Blog, June 2005

On Tuesday, we held a media briefing at ODI on the 2005 agenda. As usual, we paid tribute to the political leadership and energy driving the 2005 agenda, and then got stuck in to the technical issues we mostly work on: absorptive capacity, investment policy, trade issues and all the rest. The first comment we received, from a senior BBC journalist, was ‘hang on, the audience out there can’t handle this complexity. The story has to be simple. The problem is poverty. The answer is debt relief, aid and trade liberalisation’. End of story. Literally........................