Stealing Thunder
Stealing thunder is "revealing the negative information about oneself or about the issue at hand before it is revealed by an opponent or others." (Pratkanis and Aronson page 336) By releasing the information themselves this greatly lessens the impact. This is the opposite of what usually happens, with people trying to hide information, and then trying to discredit it once it is released. Sometimes trying to hide negative information leads to increasingly extreme measures, as in the attempts to cover up Watergate and the various Clinton scandals.
Reference
Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, Revised Edition, by Anthony R. Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson, W. H. Freeman and Company, 2001.
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Written by Jim Norton
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