This is interesting. If I may--I think that Owen is both right and wrong. Right about aid, the importance of testing, and DFID. Wrong about how journalists think. I don't know Ian Birrell. But I do know journalism, having been one for a while. So... https://twitter.com/owenbarder/status/1273540401232842753

Three things to understand about journalists. One: most of us don't have terribly fixed ideologies. If you move a journalist from one publication to another, his or her positions tend to shift. This isn't true of academics.

Two: we tend to think in terms of heroes and villains, good and bad. "Simplify, then exaggerate" is a joke about journalists, but a telling one. Consistency is not our strong suit. Many seem to believe, for example, that foreign aid is bad but health aid is good.

Three: we like stories, anecdotes, good quotes, and astounding numbers. We like these things because we assume that readers / listeners / viewers do. This is true even of highly numerate journalists.

Much of this strikes academics and think-tank types as outrageous. How on earth can we use an anecdote, or a great quote in a report, to draw such a sweeping, simplistic conclusion? Didn't we even look at Table 2.1?

But note, as I say, that we change our minds. I doubt it is possible to change the way that certain esteemed development economists think about aid. They have built careers around those positions. Changing a journalist's mind is, by comparison, pretty easy.

To do so, though, Table 2.1 will only get you so far. Stories and anecdotes are needed, too. To digress: I used to write about asylum-seekers in Britain. Well-meaning advocates were always complaining about the many unfairnesses and structural flaws in the UK asylum system.

They would have done much better to find someone who had applied for asylum in Britain, only to be rejected, sent home, and tortured or killed--and tell a journalist about it. Stories about real people are powerful. See e.g. Amelia Gentleman's terrific reporting on Windrush.

I think it would be useful for academics and think-tank types to learn to think--briefly!--like journalists. It would not just be useful in their dealings with journalists, but also with the politicians (inc Boris Johnson) who are ex-journalists.

Your journalistic enemies are, for the most part, less implacable than they appear. Unfortunately, the reverse is true. Your journalistic allies aren't actually allies.