CTV broke ethics code in Dion interview: standards council

[nakedgord]

The arbiter of ethics on the airwaves ruled Wednesday that CTV violated industry codes when it included three false starts in a broadcast of an election interview with then Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council found CTV Atlantic's 6 p.m. newscast was "discourteous and inconsiderate" when it ran the awkward false starts after the anchor promised Dion they wouldn't be broadcast.

It also found the question that was put to Dion "confusing."

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2...s-council.html

Kind of funny I found this today right after hearing Bob Rae joking how Lisa Raitt might have mistaken the CTV News bureau for a department of the Conservative party.

[eljay]

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council found CTV Atlantic's 6 p.m. newscast was "discourteous and inconsiderate" when it ran the awkward false starts after the anchor promised Dion they wouldn't be broadcast.

That's a fair assessment.

It also found the question that was put to Dion "confusing."

Garbage. To suggest that Mr. Dion couldn't have understood such a straightforward hypothetical question is to insult his intelligence and his grasp of the English language. He was asked tougher questions in the debates, and he offered replies which demonstrated a rather respectable command of English. The CTV question evidently caught Mr. Dion off-guard and unprepared, so he did his best (which was embarrassingly bad) to avoid answering it.

The CTV, however, should not have aired his foolishness.

[Alan Toronto]

The interviewer's question was confusing. Educated French speakers tend to have better and more precise grammar than comparable English speakers. The interviewer's question, and restatements, kept changing and confusing the grammatical tenses, which kept changing the sense of the question.

Another politician would have ignored it and just stated his preferred prepared sound bit, but Dion is not like that. Dion diligently tried to understand and clarify the badly-worded question. That may be poor politics, but it shows how earnest Dion is.

The interviewer was wrong.

[CrazyInSane]

Well hopefully CTV Atlantic is shut down so I don't have to deal with their damn simsubs anymore.

[trask]

The interviewer's question was confusing. Educated French speakers tend to have better and more precise grammar than comparable English speakers. The interviewer's question, and restatements, kept changing and confusing the grammatical tenses, which kept changing the sense of the question.

Another politician would have ignored it and just stated his preferred prepared sound bit, but Dion is not like that. Dion diligently tried to understand and clarify the badly-worded question. That may be poor politics, but it shows how earnest Dion is.

The interviewer was wrong.

I couldn't disagree more. The interviewer kept changing the wording because Dion couldn't grasp it or more likely didn't want to. The question was pretty straight forward: What would you do differently than the Conservatives have done? Not that hard to understand. He just didn't have an answer because he didn't have a strategy. Pretty much the same thing going on with Ignatieff questioning the strategies of the Conservatives currently. Non stop complaining yet no ideas or comments on how he would do anything different.

[nobsplease]

It's not Iggie's job to provide policy direction for Steve & Company. His job is to oppose and hold government accountable for lying, cheating etc.. He appears to be doing that quite well with much more to come.
Have you heard Lisa Raitt trying to explain why this breakdown at Chalk River isn't a crisis for patients needing medical isotopes while the one in Nov "07 was? Disgusting behaviour.

[Alan Toronto]

The interviewer confusingly mixed his verb tenses. He was essentially asking if you were PM now, what would you have done. That makes no sense. Dion rightly questioned it, as it was not clear whether the interviewer wanted to know what Dion would have done if he had been PM in the past, or what he would do now going forward.

As I say, a native English speaker would likely have ignored the tense mismatch, but educated French speakers have better grammar and grammar is used more specifically in French. (I speak both, so I can see the differences.) If Dion were more a basic polititican, he could have just given an answer not totally related to the question, which is often what politicians do. Dion's mistake was to diligently try to understand the confusing, contradictory question.

The interviewer's restatements just made it even worse and more grammatically confusing.

[trask]

It's not Iggie's job to provide policy direction for Steve & Company. His job is to oppose and hold government accountable for lying, cheating etc.. He appears to be doing that quite well with much more to come.
Have you heard Lisa Raitt trying to explain why this breakdown at Chalk River isn't a crisis for patients needing medical isotopes while the one in Nov "07 was? Disgusting behaviour.

No what he's doing is playing politics because a lot of what he's complaining about (ie. the deficit) is due to the Tories bowing to pressure from the other parties to put more money into the bailout packages. There's really nothing the Liberals could or would do differently right now. The world is in the midst of a global recession and Iggy is doing nothing but jumping on an opportunity to dump on the current government when there's really little else that can be done. I'm not saying the Tories are blameless here, far from it, but Iggy is posturing and nothing more. The country wouldn't be in any better shape with another party in power.

Chalk River is a disgrace, no question about it.

[trask]

The interviewer confusingly mixed his verb tenses. He was essentially asking if you were PM now, what would you have done. That makes no sense. Dion rightly questioned it, as it was not clear whether the interviewer wanted to know what Dion would have done if he had been PM in the past, or what he would do now going forward.

As I say, a native English speaker would likely have ignored the tense mismatch, but educated French speakers have better grammar and grammar is used more specifically in French. (I speak both, so I can see the differences.) If Dion were more a basic polititican, he could have just given an answer not totally related to the question, which is often what politicians do. Dion's mistake was to diligently try to understand the confusing, contradictory question.

The interviewer's restatements just made it even worse and more grammatically confusing.

Look it's real simple from where I stand. I had no problem understanding the question, just like most who viewed the tape. If a man is going to become leader of a country that has english as well as french as an official language, he damn well better understand the nuances of it. I believe he was unprepared for that question and fumbled it badly trying to give himself time to come up with a canned response, but if as you say he just didn't get it, in my mind that's just as bad because a person in that position shouldn't be fumbling around with the english language that badly. It's old news anyway; his party couldn't get rid of him fast enough after that.

[RingtailedFox]

well, dion learned a hard lesson: honesty and playing the good guy rarely works out in the end. it's sad, becuase i kinda liked dion.

[cmurray]

The media has no place inserting itself into election campaigns. I am old enough to remember the hatchet job done on the decent but dull (in appearance) Robert Stanfield. He fumbled a football (after several successful catches). Guess which clip the media showed?

Trudeau was charismatic and athletic in his day but that hardly qualifies a politician to become a prime minister.

[reidw]

I was never a Dion fan but I always felt that CTV/ATV deserved to get spanked for this action. In TV/movies outakes are never to be used without the consent of the "performers". That's always been an accepted practice.

[HT gearhead]

The media has no place inserting itself into election campaigns.

Why not? The left wing CBC has been doing it for decades, what's changed?
Oh ya, this time the lefties are on the receiving end for a change.

[cmurray]

Why not? The left wing CBC has been doing it for decades, what's changed?

Could you give an example of this behaviour?

[reidw]

Just because one party does this doesn't make it right for the other side to do it also. In this case the CBC's code of ethics would prevent them from ever doing what CTV did in the first place.