Thursday, June 11, 2009

Duffy Burns His Journalist Card, Crushes His Last Remaining Scruple

I have a very serious problem with this:

The presentation will be moderated by Senator Mike Duffy, a former television journalist, and feature Harper, flanked by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley and Gary Goodyear, the local MP and Minister of State for Science. It will include a staged interview segment between Harper and Duffy.


What this means is that the Canadian public, after years of thinking of Friendly Mike Duffy as some sort of a journalist, will see him "interviewing" the Prime Minister about the wonderful job the government's been doing and will be more inclined to believe what they are hearing because... well, it's Duff! Even if they know that Duffy is now a Conservative Senator who no longer has to even pretend to be unbiased (and they may not), the impression is still there.

Sadly, the whole 'report card' demand was left far too open to this kind of manipulation from the get-go. The thing should be presented in Parliament, not on TV. And certainly not on CTV.

7 comments:

  1. I heard that CTV refuses to air the "interview" with Duffy. They say it's wrong. Hmmmm...interesting to say the least.

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  2. What? CTV finally developing scruples?

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  3. Yes, Chrystal. They said it was a "staged" Q&A & the whole thing was wrong.

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  4. Well, CTV ran it anyway. Musta changed their minds. They can't be trusted anyway.

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  5. Now isn't that interesting, Penlan! Shades of Steve Murphy/Duffy incident all over again. First, they assured Dion they wouldn't air the outtakes. Then they did. Here, first they say the staged Q&A was wrong and so they wouldn't air it. Then they do after all.

    Is the part where they make those first comments available somewhere?

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  6. I've noticed that ever since Peter MacKay's girlfriend left CTV for Harvard, the conservative bias has declined somewhat. They are at least making the appearance of being impartial now.

    http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/636692

    As latest winner of the Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Neiman Fellowship, Juginovic will take a career break and go to Harvard to fulfill a dream to study the news industry full-time.

    "I can't believe I get to do this for a year," said the 35-year-old CTV journalist, named yesterday as 20th winner of the fellowship set up in the memory of the late president of Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. Juginovic's topic at Harvard will be how public policy is shaped by the influence of 24-hour news.

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  7. Chrystal, I've been trying to find where I read that & can't find it now. If I do I will post a link here.

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