ABSTRACT
There is a bundle of strategies journalists call 'taking out the trash'. The best known of them is the 'Friday news dump'. It refers to the practice of governments and agencies to release bad news and embarrassing documents on Friday afternoons. The creator of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin, has written a whole episode with the title 'Take out the Trash Day'. The Friday news dump is a widespread practice in parliamentary democracies. Taking out the trash is only one in a package of strategies that use good timing in the natural oscillation of public attention in weekly and daily cycles. Taking out the garbage uses an attention low in the weekly cycle. Other strategies use the highs. Such is the firebraking. Silence functions in the interaction between speaking and listening, not in the absence of either. The Friday news dump distracts the public from unwanted news by using a habitual low in the tide of attention.
