Tag Archives: jounalism ethics

Global Quebec’s fake local news

August 7, 2008 – 9:26 pm| Posted in Montreal, Opinion, TV

In October, you'll recall Global TV announced a major overhaul of its local news outlets. As part of the plan, sets would be demolished, staff would be laid off and instead of a proper studio, local anchors would deliver the news in front of green screens to cameras controlled remotely out of Vancouver. Story packages would be shipped off electronically to a centralized news processing centre, and virtually all the production would be taken out of the hands of local workers. (The results, of course, left much to be desired)

At the time, Global reassured local viewers that their broadcasts would still be local:

News staff in each market will continue to generate local content. All content will be delivered to a Broadcast Centre and packaged into a program format for air. Local anchors will continue to deliver the news from their local stations.

Well, apparently that's not quite the case anymore. Because being in front of a green screen means you can pretend to be almost anywhere, Global is exploiting this to make its news anchors pretend to be in places they're not.

Hannah Thibedeau anchors Global Quebec's evening news from who knows where

Hannah Thibedeau anchors Global Quebec's evening news from who knows where

The three of you still tuning into Global Quebec's evening local newscast might notice some unfamiliar faces on your screen. Hannah Boudreau Thibedeau is anchoring the 6pm newscast for what I'll assume is a vacationing Jamie Orchard. Except Thibedeau isn't part of the Global Quebec team, she's Global's Parliament Hill correspondent based out of Ottawa.

But that's not conclusive proof. She could have driven into town to fill in, the local staff stretched too much as it is with summer vacations and all.

Anthony Farnell doing Global Quebec's local forecast

Anthony Farnell doing Global Quebec's local forecast

More conclusive is weatherman Anthony Farnell, since on the same day he appears on both Global Quebec's local newscast (above) and Global Ontario's local newscast (below).

Anthony Farnell does Global Ontario's local forecast

Anthony Farnell does Global Ontario's local forecast

Unless he has a special helicopter to shuttle him back and forth between Montreal and Toronto, he's clearly doing both weathercasts from the same location, in front of the same green screen.

That in itself isn't too much of an issue. I mean, any idiot can do the weather.

The problem is that he's being dishonest about it. In both newscasts he uses the word "we," as in "we are going to see heavy rain over the next couple of days." For the Quebec newscast, he cut to clips of Montreal traffic. And yet nowhere is it mentioned that he's doing this newscast from a green screen in Toronto.

Lying about your location goes well beyond the usual fakery we see on TV news. It's dishonest an unacceptable from an organization that is supposed to be trustworthy about bringing the truth to its audience.

It's hard being the No. 3 newscast for a community of only a few hundred thousands anglophones. The fact that nobody watches the newscast does justify cost-cutting (though that only continues the hopeless ratings death spiral). But you have to be honest about it. Level with your viewers, explain the reasons behind your decisions and even if they don't like it, they'll at least understand.

Saving money by lying to people is just one step above fraud.

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Hi, I’m Chris Hansen…

June 7, 2008 – 1:52 am| Posted in Media, Montreal

Cara, a catering company at Trudeau airport, says it apprehended a journalist sneaking into a secure area passing himself off as an employee. It won't name the journalist, or say which media outlet the journalist was from (*cough*), but it says it is handing the matter over to police.

For those of you wondering what happens when these journalist on security exposés actually get caught in the act, now you know.

Patrick Lagacé has some thoughts on the situation as well.

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Where’s the line between union and journalist?

June 4, 2008 – 4:26 am| Posted in Media, Opinion

Last week, MédiaMatinQuébec, the Journal de Québec locked-out/striking workers paper that I've discussed here many times before, decided it would refuse ads from Quebec City's administration, which is involved in its own labour issues. The city paid for ads in MMQ that explained its points in its negotiation with its union. But because that union supports MMQ, the paper decided it could no longer take advertisements that served to attack its allies.

Was a line crossed here? It's one thing when MMQ refuses to take ads from Le Soleil, which has a vested interest in making the Journal conflict go on for as long as possible. But Quebec City has nothing to do with Quebecor.

Then again, the entire raison d'être of MMQ is as a union pressure tactic. Should we expect a union-produced newspaper to betray those who support it?

I guess it comes down to a simple question: Is MédiaMatinQuébec a newspaper, with a duty to be objective, or is it a union pressure tactic, whose content should further its ultimate goal?

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MP’s ex is hot

May 9, 2008 – 9:47 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

In this Canadian Press photo, you see Julie Couillard, a woman once linked to a Hell's Angels member, being escorted by an unidentified MP to an official function. We've decided not to identify the MP in question, since he hasn't been charged with anything and we don't want to sully his reputation.

Wait, you say? It's stupid of me to disguise his identity since his name and photo have appeared in Quebec media all over the place?

Tell that to Quebecor/Sun Media.

Quebecor-owned outlets, including TVA/LCN and the Journal de Montréal, pretty notorious for exposing gossip, decided to blur this woman's face and refrain from mentioning her name in their news reports (though apparently the word didn't get out to all their bloggers, nor to the anglo Sun Media papers which are running CP stories with her name on their websites).

Both are in the news recently because of allegations that she, the ex-girlfriend of Maxime Bernier, was once married briefly to a member of the Hell's Angels biker gang.

Of course, no evidence whatsoever has been brought to light suggesting that she did anything wrong, much less him. In fact, it seems the guy, Stéphane Sirois, actually grew out of favour with the Hell's for marrying her.

Now while the Conservatives are pleading for privacy and the opposition is screaming OMG biker warz NATIONAL SECURITY!!!111, most of the media outside of Pierre-Karl Péladeau's control are milking this story for all it's worth. They want to give it maximum exposure, reveal as much as possible, put it out there for everyone to gawk at.

(I guess the Journal, for one, had a change of heart after that, and decided to un-anonymize her later this morning)

Fortunately, the rather obvious and curious actions have not been missed by the bloggerati. Patrick Lagacé, Martin Patriquin, Richard Therrien of Le Soleil, 321Blogue, Julie Bélanger, MédiaTrib and others have pointed this out with curious looks on their faces. Could there be some collusion between Bernier and Péladeau? Could Quebecor be afraid of the biker gangs? Surely their explanation of not wanting to sully the reputation of an innocent person can't be taken at face value considering what we know of the Journal et al's ethics.

As we ponder the conspiracy theories, let's get back to the story.

And really, there's a very important reason this story is getting so much attention: Look at her. She's hot. We-stiff-on-hard-for-thee hot.

Imagine, if you will, taking sex out of the equation. If this were an unattractive male friend who had, say, an important business relationship with someone alleged to be linked with the mafia or other organized crime, would it have gotten attention from the news media, even if there was no evidence of anything wrong involving the minister?

Of course it would. But it would have been a 500-word story in the politics section. Not Page 1, and not more than a brief on TV.

So, in the end, Quebecor is at fault for nonsensically hiding information from the public. And the rest of the media is at fault for sensationalizing this issue just as an excuse for running file photos of her boobies.

UPDATE (May 11): According to LCN, the woman (who they're still not identifying) told the Journal her life has been destroyed by this scandal. Note that the Journal identifies her. But the LCN story about the Journal story doesn't. How weird.

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Journalist, criticize thyself

May 1, 2008 – 3:00 am| Posted in Media, Opinion

This is why people don't trust the media anymore: La Presse says TVA isn't covering the Journal de Québec situation fairly, because both are owned by Quebecor.

There's this thing with the media that's always annoyed me:

  1. Journalists love to talk about their industry with other journalists
  2. People love reading about the media (within reason, of course)
  3. Journalists are hesitant to write about matters that are "in the family" (owned by the same company) or within the media outlet itself, whether because of paranoid self-censorship or orders from upper management not to pursue a story
  4. Journalists and their media outlets will never talk about their competition, unless it's to report something bad about them, in which case they go all out.

La Presse isn't immune to this. Neither is The Gazette (the paper I work for), nor any other media outlet I can think of. And the larger the corporate empire, the worse the problem gets.

Why can't they be more honest about themselves? Giving a union boss criticizing a platform to criticize you makes you look bad, but denying that union boss a voice makes you look worse.

Remember: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

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Media won’t cooperate with Habs riot investigation

April 23, 2008 – 1:40 pm| Posted in Media, Montreal, Opinion

Mere hours after demanding that police ruthlessly prosecute anyone involved in the Great Habs Riot and some even printing photos of suspects and asking people to identify them to police, local media are now refusing to participate in the investigation by handing over photos and video of the rioters. They are now in the process of fighting search warrants while evidence sits sealed under police custody.

The media have a legitimate interest in fighting such invasions. If they were seen to be agents of the police, they wouldn't be able to do their jobs properly. Perhaps more worrisome, in situations like this the media itself could become a target.

But can you really pretend to take the moral high ground and a tough law-and-order stance, asking people to get involved and cooperate with police, when you refuse to do so yourself?

None of these rioters received promises of confidentiality, and none could have been stupid enough to think photos and video of them smashing police cars and store windows wouldn't eventually get in the hands of police.

UPDATE: The Gazette's Andrew Phillips responds on his blog, using the "slippery slope" argument. The Gazette's article presents both sides of the issue, and Thursday's paper has an editorial explaining the decision. The Journal's Benoit Aubin also responds, giving mostly philosophical arguments about how the media shouldn't act as deputies to the police.

Meanwhile, Richard Martineau, always ready to disagree with everyone, asks the question: Aren't journalists citizens first? Should they not report when they witness crimes?

UPDATE (April 26): The court date is set for June 17. Can you feel the overwhelming speed of our justice system?

UPDATE (April 29): A letter-writer calls cooperating with police "doing one's civic duty," journalist or not.

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Tremblay breaks the law

March 31, 2008 – 9:07 pm| Posted in Media, Montreal

Here's one of those you-be-the-editor moments.

On Saturday, mayor Gérald Tremblay went out for a photo op to show off the city's new pothole-fixing technique. Basically, it involves repaving a thin layer of asphalt across a large surface instead of just filling the hole itself. It's supposed to last four years and make everyone happy.

The photo op involved Tremblay sitting atop a repaving machine and driving it for a couple of feet while journalists take pictures.

In jest, reporter Max Harrold apparently asked Tremblay if he had a license to operate a heavy vehicle like this. Tremblay, with a basic Class 5 license, does not. So technically, he was driving illegally.

That little bit didn't make it into the story published on Sunday next to the photo.

Should it have? Is it an important piece of information, or is it just pointless trivia that won't make any difference in anyone's life?

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Media critic, criticize thyself

March 27, 2008 – 3:53 am| Posted in Media

Yet another example of a photojournalist fudging the truth out of laziness and manufacturing an award-winning photo of an event that never occurred.

What amuses me is the blog this was posted on, of the Guardian's Roy Greenslade:

Greenslade blog

You'll notice two identical photos of him, which appear to be part of a template for article pages on the blog.

You'll also notice that one of the photos is flipped horizontally. Last time I checked that was a journalistic no-no, even if one is under the delusion that human faces are symmetrical and it doesn't matter.

I guess some photo manipulation is more acceptable than others.

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News should learn from Krista Erickson

January 21, 2008 – 8:26 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

CBCgate

CBC announced today that reporter Krista Erickson has been punished for breaking journalistic ethics in the most horrible way possible: They're sending her to Toronto.

In what Jonathan Kay calls Pablogate, and Mario Asselin calls CBCgate, and is really not a gate at all, Erickson fed questions to Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez about Brian Mulroney's connection to the current Conservative Party, which Rodriguez asked Mulroney during the Mulroney/Schreiber inquiry over the Airbus affair.

Through this story there's been a lot of outrage but not much analysis of what exactly went wrong here. The CBC says there was no partisan or unethical intent, and I believe them. It was an unconventional method of getting answers to tricky political questions.

What this story is more indicative of, however, is the amount of informality in beat reporting. It's nothing new. Reporters and the people they report on have been chummy for decades. That's how they get the scoops, how they know what's going on, how they get access to important people.

But the downside is that there can be a perception of partiality when there's the slightest hint of cooperation between the two. It's a real problem, and it needs to be tackled in a realistic way by news organizations rather than arbitrarily decided on a case-by-case basis when someone complains.

News organizations should learn from this incident, and update their codes of ethics to cover the problems inherent in beat reporting. The paragraphs the CBC quoted in their statement are far too vague. At the very least, add this situation as an example of what not to do.

UPDATE (Jan. 23): The CBC News Editors Blog discusses the subject without mentioning Erickson's name (what are we, idiots?). Though it talks briefly about the problems of becoming part of the story and the need to be "inside" while still staying objective, it fails to go into depth about the familiarity problem other than to deny it exists.

Meanwhile (via the Tea Makers) Facebook groups supporting and against Erickson have popped up. Do I even have to point out that the pro-Erickson group was started by a Liberal Party activist and the anti-Erickson group by a Mike Huckabee-supporting Tory?

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Quebecor the big loser in journalistic ethics rulings

January 7, 2008 – 4:32 am| Posted in Media, Montreal

Raymond Viger, in his 2007 look back, decides to evaluate local media based on decisions rendered against them by the Quebec Press Council. An interesting quantitative measure if there ever was one. Quebecor's various properties, led by the Journal de Montréal (unsurprisingly), get top "honours."

I think it's also worth looking at who's not on that list:

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