They stood no chance against sophisticated operatives. The whole thing was cleverly and covertly engineered by the media. How? By highlighting and amplifying true but negative stories about the government consistently. Each day, the media would expose extravagant lifestyles, corruption, irrational expenditures, lost monies, proposed tax increases, and all sorts of scandals. This increased the resentment by one level each day. By the time the government was forcing the finance bill, the notion had been planted in citizens' minds that ' politicians want to steal more by force.'
Such soft techniques are effective when the goal is to elicit organic and intense reactions from a target population without alerting the government of an impending crisis.
But was there anything good for the media to report on?