Transcript of a completely fictional meeting at the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec:

Hey guys, I have an idea. We should commission a survey of Quebecers and ask them about how they feel local news has eroded over the past few years. Then we’ll release it and maybe convince some companies to stop gutting local journalism.

Great! I’ll get on it right away.

Make sure to get it done before our big conference in December.

[later]

So what did you find out?

It’s not good.

What?

Well, it seems 80% of Quebecers think they’re getting good local journalism.

Seriously?

Yeah.

Dude, WTF?

We checked it twice. These are the numbers.

But that doesn’t make any sense.

I know.

Well what about the regions? I mean, with the Montrealization of the media, the numbers must be better for us there.

Actually, they’re worse. People in the regions are more likely to be satisfied with local news than people in Montreal.

What? What the hell is wrong with people? Don’t they know what’s going on?

I don’t know, man. It’s all backwards.

OK, ok. We paid a truckload of money for this. What are we going to do?

We can’t bury it.

No, we’ll have to release it. We’ll say we were surprised by the results.

No kidding.

Maybe someone at the conference can explain to us how this makes sense.