Category Archives: In the news

| In the news, Media, On the Net

Media’s election post-mortem

Looking at my feeds, here’s a roundup of links about media coverage of the campaign and especially election night:

| In the news, On the Net, Opinion

Crunching the prediction numbers

As the results finally become known in all 308 ridings (some recounts may occur, but none were apparently close enough to qualify for an automatic recount), the two big seat-by-seat projection websites did a self-analysis to see how they did:

DemocraticSPACE got 25 of 308 ridings wrong, for a 91.9% accuracy rate

Election Prediction got 27 ridings wrong, for a 91.2% accuracy rate

Those sound like impressive numbers, but I wondered how significant that is when so little changed. They both got Edmonton Strathcona wrong, for example, but then again so did all the pundits. They also didn’t predict three seats shifting from the Liberals to Conservatives in New Brunswick.

Looking at the election results (Wikipedia has a riding-by-riding breakdown on one page), I see that the incumbent (or incumbent’s party) won in all but 41 ridings. So if you blindly picked the incumbent to win in all 308 ridings, you’d have an 86.7% accuracy rate.

That makes 91% sound a lot less impressive.

Then again, in an election where only 25 of 308 winners got more than half the vote, predicting anything is a throw of the dice.

| In the news

Interesting results when you look deep

It was boring, yet fascinating. The big picture didn’t change much, with the Conservatives still just below majority territory, then the Liberals, Bloc, NDP and two independents. But looking at the individual regions, plenty of stories to be told:

I’m sure I missed some other interesting local stories. Feel free to comment below.

| In the news, Media

Election coverage tonight: 9:30 on TV, 10 online

Thanks to Elections Canada rules about not divulging the outcome of a vote to a region that is still voting, news outlets will have to be careful about their results tonight. That means that CBC Newsworld and other national news networks won’t be providing results until 9:30pm (ET), when polls close in the Eastern, Central and Mountain time zones, and these networks will be blacked out in British Columbia and Yukon until their polls close a half hour later.

For online, unless news outlets want to put trust in geoblocking services, expect no results until 10 p.m., when all the polls are closed and there are no restrictions on broadcasting. This will be a full three hours after the polls close in Newfoundland.

Of course, don’t expect everyone to play by the rules. Some people who are either clueless about the law or unclear on how it applies will no doubt be leaking information early.

I’d be looking at that, plus live-blogging coverage of the vote and analyzing news websites as the results come in, but I’m working tonight as one of the election copy editors. Feel free to use the comments section as a forum to point out anything you notice.

If I notice something late tonight or tomorrow I’ll post it then.

| Media, Slow News Day, Video

Two Gazette legends exposed

In the video above, editorial cartoonist Terry Mosher (Aislin) goes behind the scenes as he draws five cartoons of the federal party leaders as sports-themed bobbleheads (you can see the cartoons on the Viewpoints page).

Meanwhile, CBC interviews Red Fisher, who has been covering the Canadiens since the dawn of time.

One day I hope to be able to meet them, and be referred to as something beyond “that kid over there.” But that’s years away.

| Opinion, Slow News Day, TV, Video

Journalism, politics sink together to a new low

I was busy dealing with real news tonight, so I completely missed the broohaha over this incident with Stéphane Dion and ATV News.

For those who haven’t heard of it, you’re lucky to have limited exposure to the echo chamber of political gossip reporting. Here’s the deal: ATV (an Atlantic TV network owned by CTV and rebranded CTV Atlantic) had Stéphane Dion on for an on-camera but pre-taped interview. Host Steve Murphy asked Dion a question about what he’d do about the economy if he was prime minister today, and Dion started answering before realizing he didn’t quite understand the question. It was an awkward exchange with a few false starts.

Dion asked if they could re-start the interview, and Murphy agreed. Murphy also, according to CTV, “indicated” that the bad part of the interview would not be aired.

Except later, after the interview, people at the network huddled and decided to go back on their word and air the outtakes, deeming them to have some news value.

Thanks to Stephen Harper’s decision to devote a whole press conference to this “gaffe,” it’s been analyzed from all angles:

I don’t have much to add, so I’ll keep it brief:

  • CTV’s transgression was not a breach of journalistic ethics. There was no promise of confidentiality, no pre-agreement, and no information was gained through deception. Murphy did, however, go back on his word by airing the outtakes after he “indicated” he wouldn’t.
  • Dion’s campaign is right when they say the purpose of airing this was to embarrass Dion. It’s a secret every journalist keeps, even to the point of deceiving ourselves. Political campaigns so ruthlessly control the narrative, that latching on to something they don’t want you to talk about gives us a thrill. It’s not that CTV is biased against Dion. It’s simply biased against politicians and in favour of scandal.
  • CTV wasted minutes of airtime putting this interview out there. This time could have been spent on news, and the interview outtakes posted to a blog somewhere. Had that happened, we would not be discussing journalistic ethics here, but the clip would have gotten just as much traction online.
  • The clip has little news value. It shows that Dion is a logical thinker, perhaps to a fault, in trying to wrap himself around the exact hypothetical situation. But that’s not why CTV chose to air it. The fact that they did not specify what news value it contained is a good indication that there was none.
  • Some have mentioned that Dion has a hearing problem and that may be related. It’s not. The question was clear and the room was quiet. It was a logical comprehension question, mixed in with some grammar issues.

Conclusion: Steve Murphy and his cohorts at ATV are douches, and Stéphane Dion a human francophone who can be annoyingly professorial at times. And it’s just a matter of time before someone unearths an interview outtake of Stephen Harper that makes him look bad.

Now can we get back to the issues?

UPDATE (Oct. 24): J-Source looks back on this story with some interesting background on what happened at ATV and CTV News offices.

| Media, Opinion, Slow News Day

That one.

I’m sorry, apparently I forgot during last night’s debate to be offended that John McCain used the words “that one” and pointed to Barack Obama when pointing out something about Obama’s senate record. Apparently it’s a codephrase that everyone but me knows about and is inherently racist.

Remember all those white racists in Alabama chanting “that one” and pointing to MLK? He was clearly trying to appeal to the racist electorate.

Now we need to make this into the issue of the election, because it’s so much more important than those boring things like the economy, tax policy, the environment or foreign policy.

| In the news, Opinion

Stop the presses: Maxime Bernier might be human

La Presse has the scoop this morning on what Julie Couillard is going to say in her book due out on Monday. Essentially, she says Maxime Bernier is an arrogant, womanizing SOB who badmouths his party leader and his constituents behind their backs and whose primary concern is himself.

I’m trying to contain my shock. I mean, a politician who’s self-obsessed and hides his true feelings from the public? What is this world coming to?

Of course, I’m willing to trust these claims about as much as I am Bernier’s denials. The fact that she’s releasing such a book in the first place (and has moved the publication date back a week to have more of an impact before the election) shows quite a bit about her character.

But if we assume that what she says in the book is true, does that make Bernier a horrible person? Concluding that sovereignty is inevitable and saying your prime minister is too fat are clearly offenses worthy of expulsion, and badmouthing your own constituents is usually political suicide. But I find it hard to imagine any politician not doing these things on a regular basis.

Do we really think that Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae aren’t trash-talking Stéphane Dion in private? Or that Gilles Duceppe thinks he can win 75 seats in this election? Or that Jack Layton doesn’t think Alberta Conservatives are stupid? Or that John McCain and Barack Obama are really as religious as they let on?

There were a couple of scenes in the West Wing’s last two seasons in which presidential candidates said that voters are asking to be lied to when they put their politicians up to such unrealistic standards.

So, in the end, should the most successful politicians simply be those who are better at concealing their private thoughts and keeping their lies going?

I think that’s a scarier thought than a minister leaving confidential papers at the home of a biker chick.

| In the news, Opinion

By-erection

Those of you who had Sept. 23 as the day when “erection” would be used in an election story and not be a typo, pat yourselves on the back:

But that statement was contradicted by a retreat participant, who said the New Democrat had a partial erection in front of the young girls.

So let’s discuss: How much of an erection is it appropriate for an MP to have in front of young girls? What qualifies as a “partial erection”? What if you just have to pee?

Who cares about issues when we can talk about penises?

(Though seriously, stories like this make me wonder: If the choice in a no-hope riding is between some unknown party loyalist and nobody at all, perhaps it’s best to go the latter route?)

| Blogosphere, In the news, Montreal

It’s just federal politics in Quebec – who cares about language?

On the heels of a report from La Presse that the Conservative candidate in Papineau (who, let’s face it, is going to lose anyway) doesn’t speak French very well, Angry French Guy calls around to some local campaign offices to see how they respond in Canada’s official languages.

Admittedly, it’s not the candidates but just random people who answer the phones, but you’d think the campaigns would make sure that front-line workers were bilingual.

| In the news, Opinion, Technology

Akoha: Is that all?

Last week, we got our first true glimpse into the über-secret world of Akoha (formerly Project Ojibwe, aka Austin Hill’s new project), after they presented the project at TechCrunch50.

I find myself feeling for Akoha something similar to what I felt about Standout Jobs when it launched in public beta: disappointed.

Not heartbroken. Not “wtf this is crap,” but more a feeling of “a team of computer programmers spent months in super-secret hiding for this?”

Added to that was the fact that both did a lot of talking about supporting the local community, but when it came to actually launching, they both took off for the other side of the border.

Based on the presentation, the comic on the website and Roberto Rocha’s article, Akoha is some sort of game where you buy cards and have to do what the cards say. And then you go online and tell everyone you did what the cards say. And then you feel good.

Mark MacLeod points out some of the issues Akoha will have to deal with, like marketing, user retention and monetization. I’ll also add authentication: How do we know that someone’s claim to have done something is true?

But the biggest problem, I think, will be keeping a critical mass that goes beyond the fad. People will be interested, at first, but without that Facebook-like regular activity and new information, I can see people using Akoha less and less until the playing cards start collecting dust at the back of the closet.

But then, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. TechCrunch liked it, as did Scoble. So maybe it is the next big thing.