Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Media narrative control 101

How you as a journalist can make the narrative up as you go along in two easy steps:

Desired Outcome
: Liberal leadership rumblings

Step one
: Hound Bob Rae with leadership questions.

Step two
: Write a story about how Bob Rae is being, go figure, hounded by leadership questions. Ignore the fact you're the one hounding him with them.

It gets more fun in the advanced class when you now consider your generated premise as fact and do a reaction piece to your own generated story, later graduating to fun little “mistakes” like this:



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9 comments:

Woman at Mile 0 said...

Totally dead on with this BCer. It would be funny if it wasn't so deadly serious.

Mike514 said...

Does that say "Boob" Rae?

Could that image be doctored?...

Jeff said...

mile0 we're going to have to get used to it too, this is going to be the narrative for a few weeks, and as Bob joins Stephane and Iggy in the HoC. Harper, and Layton, will be doing their best to reinforce it too no doubt.

Mike, it does indeed say Boob, and I don't believe it has been altered. Just a bad day for a copywriter at CTV.

Mike514 said...

I found a screenshot at another blogger's site (do you allow links to other bloggers' sites?) showing "Bob."

http://climbingoutofthedark.blogspot.com/2008/03/mike-duffy-big-oops.html

Someone was having a little Photoshop fun with the screenshot you found. I'd suggest changing your screenshot to the "proper" one... unless it was you that made the change to "Boob"? :)

Mike514 said...

Sorry to monopolise the thread, but I feel this is relevant:

Src.ca (the French CBC) has an article about Harper recognising Kosovo's independence. The SRC didn't bother including any quotes/comments from Liberal leader (AND former inter-gov affairs minister AND clarity-act pioneer) Stéphane Dion.

However... they did manage to quote Bob Rae.

Hmm... Dion (with his relevant background AND being leader of the Liberals) is excluded from the discussion, while Bob Rae manages to get quoted. Interesting.

Zorpheous said...

Yes, the image was alter ~wink~ Everyone was making so much noise about Duffy's typo, I decide I should add my own ~wink~

So what type of web site is boobrae.ca anyways? Does Bob have a thing for hooters?

Jesus, is my photoshopping becoming that good that people can't tell the different anymore? LOL

see

http://thewingnuterer.blogspot.com/2008/03/mike-duffy-live-new-liberal-leader-link.html

for the other image as well.

Hey Jeff were you at Bob's party on election night. I showed up with Chris Tindal and was looking for some other bloggers but I didn't see any one.

Zorpheous said...

oh, this gives me a good idea for slamming Duffy ~evil grin~

Thanks Jeff

Jeff said...

Thanks for finding that out Mike, and damm you Zorpheus! I'd seen this screenshot all over the blogsphere yesterday and just assumed they were all the same, I'll make the change.

On the SRC thing Rae is the Liberal foreign affairs critic, so its unsurprising he'd be quoted.

Zorph, I wasn't at Rae's, I spent the day volunteering in Willowdale and then hung out at Martha's party. From your pics Bob's seemed a touch swankier, but we had fun.

Zorpheous said...

THE WINGNUTERER STRIKES AGAIN!!!!

MUHahahahahahahaha!

Victory is Mine!!!