Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

"Got" who, exactly?

by kadyomalley on Friday, October 10, 2008 8:12am - 0 Comments

“Some of these stories are ridiculous examples of ‘gotcha’ journalism that have nothing to do with anything the voters care about in this campaign.”

-Stephen Harper comments on the controversy surrounding Conservative candidate Lee Richardson over remarks he made, and then attempted to clarify, to a local newspaper.(September 27, 2008)

The Tories delayed their flight so their leader could watch the tape and comment on it. Stephen Harper usually talks to the media only once a day, but last night he met journalists again.

“When you’re running a trillion-and-a-half-dollar economy you don’t get a chance to have do-overs, over and over again,” he said. “What this incident actually indicates very clearly is Mr. Dion and the Liberal Party really don’t know what they would do on the economy.”

-Stephen Harper comments on the controversy surrounding Liberal leader Stephane Dion over his attempt to clarify a question while appearing on CTV News. (October 11, 2008)

Tags: duffygeddon, gotcha!, Stéphane Dion, Stephen Harper, what a difference narrowing polls make

More by kadyomalley

LeslieE

I think Steve (Murphy) didn’t understand the question, that’s why he couldn’t rephrase it. It shows poorly on Steve.
JennyC

Folks, if the issue was Dion’s answer, why show the outtakes? Why not just show his pretty lame answer to the (even lamer) question?

As has been suggested, starting interviews over is de rigeur in TV-land. Hence the invention of the blooper reel.

I watched the Duffy piece and I think the question *was* confusing. Despite the interviewer’s suggestion that he would ‘rephrase’ it when Dion said he didn’t understand it, the interviewer proceeded to ask it the same way another three times, giving no more clarification when Dion asked further questions to try to figure it out – it being when in this hypothetical situation he was elected PM…i.e. how much time would he have had to do something: 2.5 years? 2.5 weeks? Dion really should have just picked one and gone with it.

In any case, since when was asking for clarification on a question or issue the hallmark of poor leadership? I would rather have a PM who knows his limits, asks questions and surrounds himself with qualified advisors.

The one-man-show we’ve had for the past 2.5 years is frightening.

[And, to pre-empt the cries of "another Liberal!", I'm voting NDP this time around.]
Sisyphus

Murphy couldn’t rephrase the question because he needs a script – I mean really, really needs a script.

But it matters not. Because clearly Kady is responsible for Duffy being a dipstick. She bears a terrible burden.
Mike Horn

I agree that neither the liberals or conservatives will talk about thier econiomic plans. Not while other world leaders seem to be blatently lifting policy from the NDP platform.

I saw the ? to Dion however and it’s totally fracked up. basically ‘if you were elected today what would you have already done?’ Dion should have shown leadership and rejected the premise.
Steven Sands

Ms. O’Malley:

Are you suggesting that Mr. Harper and his ( hidden-from-view-because they will likely say something profoundly stupid to the media ) sock puppet Tory Candidates / Cabinet Ministers are hypoctrites?

Say it isn’t so!
http://BobbyWonderful Bob Larocque

During their interview on The National, when Mansbridge asked Harper if he really wanted to be heard telling people that it was a good time to buy stocks, was he offering to restart the interview?
Brian

Speaking of liberal apologists in the media, here is what Julie Van Dusen had to say:

“Well that’s interesting because we hear about [Dion's plan] every single day,” said the CBC’s Julie Van Dusen, who is covering the election.

“It’s … about meeting the premiers, it’s about creating infrastructure jobs to kick-start a slowdown in the economy. It’s about his $1 billion fund that he has for the manufacturing sector in case they want to tap into it.”

I guess its unfortunate for the liberals that Julie wasn’t conducting the interview — asking the questions or giving the answers.
http://seeingredinthesouthwest.blogspot.com Deb Prothero

The question was deliberately posed in convoluted grammar to try to force Dion into saying something. The reporter didn’t change the question because that was his goal. Dion recognized the trap and tried to get a re-phrasing of the question. When that didn’t happen, he admittedly was slow to answer. I like his economic plan – meeting the premiers would be beneficial so that he understands how the financial crisis is affecting each area. One universal solution to this problem isn’t going to be the panacea. Dion’s plan is balanced and incremental and doesn’t exhibit panic.
AM

Murphy: if you were the PM now what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper has not done

Dion: if I were the PM 2 1/2 years ago?

Murphy: if you were the PM right now

Dion: if I am the PM next Tuesday?

Murphy: no, if you were the PM today what would you have done that Mr. Harper has not

Murphy’s inisistence on asking his flawed question repeatedly was the problem, not Dion’s attempts to answer it. How would Dion suddenly find himself the PM ‘today’ if he hadn’t been elected 2 1/2 years ago.

How the outtakes ended up on the national news is a reflection on the lack of journalistic ethics of CTV.
Andrew

Q:

If you were Prime Minister *today*, what would you have done that King hasn’t done to deal with WWII?

A:

You mean, if I had been elected in 1935?

Q:

If you were PM *today*.

….

The question was clearly ridiculous.
The Rat

Kady, you’re trying to point out inconsistencies and hypocrisies and that’s noble if a little one-sided so far. Still, I wonder why a lot of questions never seem to get asked. Like, when discussing private health care, it’s such an easy question, “would you shut down private clinics?”, a real softball for guys like Layton whose base eats that up but we never hear follow-ups like “would that include Henry Morgentaler’s private for-profit abortion clinics”?

Maybe it would be fair to us poor voters, dependent on you people in the media to ask the right questions and to filter our news for us, if you and other journos could start each story/post/interview with something like “Hello, my name is Kady O’Malley, I voted XXX in the last election, and I’m interviewing XXXX, of the XXXX or YYYYY party.”

At least with me and all the other “conbots” you know my biases, but I don’t really know yours or Wells or “Fat Man” Potter’s. If you told us maybe we could deduce with some clarity why some reporters miss obvious questions or why some blog posts seem to point out only some hypocrisies and not others.
http://www.johnwaugh.blogspot.com John W

Good point Deb:”The question was deliberately posed in convoluted grammar to try to force Dion into saying something.”

My suspicion from the beginning
was that this was a set up from the moment Dion walked into the studio and that Duffy was involved right from the start. Of course, the Harper people were teed up in advance as well. Reporters, investigate this!
BobbyB

So, hypothetically, what if Dion did not have an answer to the hypothetical question last night? The only ones that seem to want to make this hypothetical an issue is Harper and the Conservatives.

The point that is being missed is that in reality Stephen Harper’s Conservatives made up the government….and what did they do….in reality…..over the past several years as stewards with only a minority government……well, not very much and they spent like drunken sailors in the process!

The Conservatives, if they are running on their record of what was done and not some HYPOTHETICAL, had left Canadians with a very large debt (read BILLIONS of dollars) and it took the Chretien Liberals to straighten out that mess. Then the Conservatives have gone and squandered over the past several years the 13BILLION plus surplus the Martin Liberals had left.

Previously their FINANCE minister (and I use the term FINANCE loosley to fit the way he is manageing the government monies and the reporting of where it has been spent) had left Ontario with a 6BILLION dollar deficit when the Conservatives “ruled” Ontario.

Now they have somewhere in excess of 13BILLION (or is it 18BILLION) in costs for the Afghan mission but nobody knows for sure because the FINANCE minister and the Conservative Government under Stephen Harper have not seen it as important to account for the spending in any way that anyone could make sense of!

Those realities are what we are voting to change. Not whether HYPOTHETICALLY things could be done differently, but by assessing what was actually done by the Conservatives and whether we want more of the same from the Conservatives!

The reality is ….. do we want more laisse-faire attitude from the Canadian Government? More spending without proper accounting? Do we want less oversight into water and food? Are we in need of more tax breaks for businesses without tax breaks for individuals? Can we withstand more job losses? Do we want to see our manufacturing sectors continue to fail?
Phil P

Have to agree with many of the posters who are not satisfied with the answer that Mr Dion eventually provided. Those folks all understand that there is little to nothing that the Canadian government can do today (or could have done in the last few months) to significantly reduce the economic turmoil that is evident today; I’m not convinced that Mr Dion understands that fact. Holding 30 days of meetings might provide some emotional relief, but little else; in fairness I suppose Mr Dion should at least get credit for that.

Also have to agree with the handful of previous posters who have indicated that the quality of the question was poor. Mr Dion clearly recognized that the question referred to both the past and the present, and tried to get clarification about the hypothetical time line from Mr Murphy, as any intelligent person would. Mr Murphy didn’t rephrase the question at all, he simply asked the same question in the same way two more times. At least he didn’t treat Mr Dion like a visitor from out of the country by also repeating the question slower and louder.
Kat

I would still like to know the answer to the question. After critisizing the government for not having done anything…would they have done better? They wouldn’t have cut the GST, that we know. They wouldn’t have lowered taxes for businesses, we know that too. So what would they have done to insulate Canada from this crisis?

The opposition parties are trying to make out that Harper’s gov’t has no plan. My perception is that his plan is ongoing, started over a year ago.

Dion started answering the question with his 30/50 day plan. What is that? For the economic crisis, he has a 30 day plan to talk things over with “so called” experts whose advice is readily available now. Why can’t he come up with a plan now? Dion is asking us to vote for him because he has a plan to make a plan. I want to know the plan before I vote.

As far as the interview goes, he didn’t seem to understand the concept. It wasn’t a hearing problem, it was an understanding problem. Atleast, I hope that’s what it was. If it was Dion not wanting to answer the question and then relying on his “handicap” to excuse the effort, that’s scary.
Geo

I am still wondering why a taped CTV show felt it was necessary to show Dion’s out-takes. It was not an open mike for everyone to share. It was prepared questions. Everyone is allowed to do questions over and often things are clipped from the final tape. Do they have a Steve out-take for us?

For CTV to show the out-takes and make them the news is unprofessional and highly biased. Helping Duffy get that Senate seat while the getting good is all I can guess. Passing it on with a heads up to the ConBots is small, low and extra ugly, but not so surprising. It’s in there with puffin poop and other juvinille behaviour from the lot of them. Hope Mom is giving Stevo good stock-tips as that is about all he is getting in good ideas from anyone.

Kady, keep speaking the truth to it gal, over and over and over. Deb P: you too,, but I know you do:) AM; thanks for the actual context of the conversation that has Steve reading so much into it(such a loser the man is). Like Dion said; “no class”.

I’m from the real west, “BC”, (not those home-schooled posers in Alberta)and myself and most everyone I know are voting either Liberal or we are swapping votes to make sure than the CRAPCons do not get in.

3 more days is all that is left in this illegal election. Let’s wrap it up as it should be.