Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Speaking of CTV and Dion...

...and Robert Hurst and what not, I thought I'd pass along this article from The Canadian Journalism Project that passed through my inbox this morning. While it misses a number of relevant points in my view, it does offer some more insights into CTV's side of the whole drama. Incidentally, the whole affair has generated quite the debate in journalism circles.


Behind the scenes at CTV: the Dion interview

Here’s the scenario: You are in charge of a television newsroom near the end of a tough, close election campaign. Your six o’clock host heads downtown for a late-afternoon, live-to-tape interview with one of the major party leaders. You’re a bit concerned about whether he’ll be back in time for the 5 pm newsbreak, but otherwise it’s a straightforward shoot.


Tape rolls, and said leader – whose first language is not your program’s – finds the first question confusing and asks to start again. As the two cameras keep rolling the host agrees, but then it happens again. This time, the leader’s aide jumps in, trying to help. A third time, the guest starts to laugh. The fourth take is fine.
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6 comments:

ch said...

"Oh, and there’s good reason to believe that if you don’t air it, someone else will."

Do you have any idea what that sentence means? I thought this was just an interview with CTV. Were other news stations present at the interview? Or when CTV tapes an interview, is it somehow available to other news stations, even if they chose to discard some parts of the tape?

This is an interesting report, although I am skeptical about statements made by CTV (and this is a report based on talking to three CTV people) since they are not reliable.

ch said...

On re-reading it, I've decided they were referring to some other person at CTV using the tape. I don't think that sentence can apply outside of CTV.

Hishighness said...

CTV can lie all it wants, we know that they're a mouthpiece for the Conservatives and that's all that matters.

Besides I already caught them lying about it.

http://liberal4lifeblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/someones-lying-at-ctv.html

kitt said...

Now I switch the channel when it's ctv. I can't abide liars and Harper bum buddies.

ch said...

The comments on the journalism site you link to has this one:


Posted by Steve Murphy 2008-10-26 16:55:54
The question employed the same mixed tenses used by M. Dion in his speech a few hours earlier, which I quoted in the preamble. The essence of the question was what would M. Dion have done to deal with the economic crisis, that Mr. Harper had not done.



Doesn't this suggest he heard Dion misuse tenses in his speech just hours earlier, so he knew Dion could slip up on English tenses, and he posed a question with mixed tenses to try to trip him up? Murphy's behaviour when Dion asked him what time frame he was talking about is then consistent with this. It was "gotcha".

burlivespipe said...

They AND their advertisers are history in my house. And if you feel the same way, I recommend that you write those advertisers and tell them of that fact.