Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Sitting; less bull

by Paul Wells on Monday, December 21, 2009 11:33pm - 66 Comments

Dianne Sawyer becomes the anchor of ABC World News; does not allow her newscast to become a carnival of asinine gimmickry. Too bad she and her crew can’t keep up with the brave cutting-edge types at the CBC.

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HelloKitty

Am I the only one catching a hint of sarcasm here?
Overseas Canuck

Ya'll are all stupid, and would have to be freaking blind not to notice the extreme jingoism and desperate soulless bandwagonning that has been the CBC renovation. All the flatscreens and floating anchors symbolize nothing more than the seeb's utter lack of purpose and format as it navigates this transitional time for traditional media.

If you couldn't tell that's what Wells was getting at it just means you weren't watching enough tv, not that he were watching (…and referencing) too much. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

One love.

From San Francisco.

An overseas Canuck.

Scott in Ottawa

You realize that San Francisco is not overseas, right?

sbt

It can be if you take the scenic route.

wilson

'would have to be freaking blind not to notice the extreme jingoism and desperate soulless bandwagonning that has been the CBC renovation'

lipstick on a pig

http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

billion dollar lipstick on a pig

Bruce

Paul, I really want to follow your blog because you post some funny and thoughtful content. The only problem is that more often than not I just don't get the point. This post is a good example; I don't watch TV news with any regularity, so I had to watch your linked broadcast and a similar amount of The National to see what you're referring to. The broadcasts looked more or less the same to me, so that's 20 minutes lost to a futile hunt for some good asinine gimmickry. Did I watch the wrong CBC programme or something? Am I just obtuse?

I know you're a brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit writer, but you spent a large number of words yourself a couple years back talking about how attention is the most valuable commodity in media today. Maybe you could review some of your briefer posts from the perspective of someone who isn't on the inside of every joke, and just throw us the occasional hint as to what exactly you're commenting on.

http://arsenisms.blogspot.com/ Fat Arse

Paul,

Respectfully, I concur with Bruce. Now, even though I immediately understood where you were going with this particular post… I have say there have been a few in the past months that left me scratching my head. As my old English Prof once told me: "Sonny, brevity is only an asset when the import of your idea is self-explanatory." (insert smiley-face here)
James Connors

I think Mr. Wells was attempting to juxtapose the set change at CBC – to standing and wandering around aimlessly from sitting behind a desk reading the news – and the personnel and style makeover that occurred when CBC Newsworld changed to CBC News Network, which was roundly and correctly panned in the blogosphere and CBC comments, to Diane Sawyer's [ahem] conservative set and style debut on ABC.

The link, I might mention is not particularly Firefox friendly – or the site does not like AdBlock Plus, or NoScript or something I'm running on this computer to keep things simple goes against ABC internet policy?

Viewing it in IE I suppose everyone is forced to watch the advertisement first as well? Having merely watched Ms. Sawyer's introduction I wonder Mr. Wells opinion of whether the ABC news broadcast content is also superior to CBC news coverage and how that fits into the style over substance argument?

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

Probably your adblocker, worked for me on Firefox (with ad).

I don't watch TV so I can't compare them, but the Sawyer segment was a blast from the past, and not just in terms of format: substantive reporting, old-school anchoring (i.e. anchor asks reporter questions), reporter tells a story (with some humour at the beginning), etc. Treats the viewer like an adult. Positively archaeological.

Santa

Bruce, don't expect any sort of reply of guilt by Mr. Wells. As much as I love him, Wells doesn't take criticism well.

Far too often those in the media highlight stories not for the average reader, but for their own friends, colleagues, and egos. This is a very good example. No one wants to readily admit they didn't get the reference immediately as that would mean they're not on the same intellectual playing field as Monsieur Sarnia Sciences Pos.

At any rate, at least Wells is a talented and shrewd journalist the majority of the time. He only ever gets in trouble when his sense of self gets in the way. As for Wherry…..

wilson

What Santa said.
But this blog post, as most are, is for Macleans groupies, it's quite the gathering here.
Jan

Good God – do some of you need backgrounders or what? When I run across a reference I don't quite get, I don't blame the writer. Why do you?

John D

Paul can you please make some posts that are more blatantly obvious and tailiored to the demands of individual readers? I'd like mine to be about cake. Thanks.
http://intensedebate.com/people/hellomike hellomike

And when you do the cake post, can you liberally quote wikipedia and maybe some other basic explanations about cake? I don't know if I'm up enough on cake to know what you're talking about, but I will whine so much if I have to look it up myself. Thanks.

Dot

Mansbridge: Last stand; Big horn
Sawyer: Wounded knee
http://intensedebate.com/people/Mike514 Mike514

Paul's always keeping us on our toes. I always read the tags to help get a better idea of what he's talking about, but this time… no tags! (cue the ominous music)
http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

The fact that Sawyer is sitting is a bit of a decoy (one I fell for with the post's title). What's striking is that her and her colleagues devote a huge chunk of time to explaining, in detail, the guts of a major proposed policy reform. Now obviously it's an unusual day: the first weekday after health-care reform bids fair to pass in the Senate. But on one recent evening, the National led with a story about a bus that went out of control in Alberta and could have hurt somebody but didn't. On this night, Monday, they lead a story about gold at the mint with a clip from Rick Mercer's show.

Wallace Cleaver

her and her colleagues????

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

Good catch. Sorry. Her and she colleagues.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

The fluff-to-news content of the National has been going in the wrong direction for quite a while now. With the exception of their occasional special reports, there's nothing presented on air that one couldn't gloss from their website in about five minutes.

And Mansbridge's nightly flirt with the weather woman manages to make the segment not just useless, but cringe inducing.

Then again, I still admire many of their journalists like Milewski and Arsenault.

John D

Yeah, until you see them forcing Arsenault to do a piece on SHOES

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

To be honest, I have something of a schoolboy type crush on Arsenault, so I'd probably watch that too.

Dot

What are your feelings towards Keith Boag on Tiger Woods?
http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

I didn't know Boag had dyed his hair blonde.
John D

There's a clip of "Keith Boag on Tiger Woods" action?
psi

Tiger is a Liberal?

http://intensedebate.com/people/robert_mccl6309 Robert McClelland

To be fair, Mr. Wells, ABC doesn't have a Conservative government minder staring over their shoulder looking for excuses to justify slashing their funding.

DPT

to be fair Robert ABC doesn't have a billion dollar taxpayer extracted subsidy either.

Anon

I pay a lot more in taxes to fund torture in Afghanistan, so it all works out.

http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

Yeah, at ABC they actually earn their money. What a concept.

http://intensedebate.com/people/hellomike hellomike

On the night that the parliamentary order for documents was passed, their first story was something unrelated (though actually news), their second and third stories were "it's snowing", and then it kept going from there. The real stories felt about 45 seconds long, too.

It's really crap when you're away from the country – I'd rather read a newspaper to get my Canadian news, but I can't, so it's just the web for me. CBC's has increasingly useless stories and their TV news gets more grating all the time, and I've been using them as my primary online news source for years. They have some great reporters, and reading their online columns is a treat. Their TV segments seem neutered and shallow, in contrast. You would think there would be a market for a news show for people who like the news.

http://intensedebate.com/people/OntarioTown OntarioTown

I have to wonder how hard it is for the women on CBC to stand for hours in high heels – painful.

Evan Solomon spends more time asking a question than what is alloted for responses – and he constantly interrupts. It's annoying and rude.
Dot

I didn't watch the Sawyer piece to the end, so I'm not sure what the weather is like in Alaska and Hawaii.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"But on one recent evening, the National led with a story about a bus that went out of control in Alberta and could have hurt somebody but didn't. On this night, Monday, they lead a story about gold at the mint with a clip from Rick Mercer's show."

I don't watch The National so I don't know what it's like but I have a good idea from Wells description. I have a bunch of lefty friends who watch Mansbridge and this explains a lot, actually. However, I think Evan Solomon's show is significantly better than Newman's brooadcaaast.

"Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24." Wall St Journal Dec 21 '09

There are many aspects I admire about the American political system but how they put together legislation is not one of them. I much prefer our Parliamentary system because there is much less horse-trading going on and bills can be written to tackle specific problems without having to buy off a bunch of Senators with expensive trinkets and bobbles.

http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

Normally, they would have a debate, but with the Dems controlling 60 votes in the Senate, they'd rather not bother.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Nich Nich

We are most fortunate that RDI isn't suffering the same indignity and irrelevance as the CBC.
KOL

I hate these annual Frustrated Holiday Travelers stories. OMG it snowed between mid-December and mid-February in the North with predictable consequences!
MIkeB

The new National is basically unwatchable, and no longer on my radar for news programs I want to watch. I hope their ratings plummet, and somebody gets the can over this mess.

To those griping about Paul's cryptic short posts: realize that they tend to reward the loyal reader. don't get it? stick to Paul's print columns. The blog is his space.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

I'd normally answer the way MikeB did, but Bruce seems to have some company, so I take his point. Sometimes I'm just going to be cryptic — although I really, really didn't think I was being cryptic here — but I, too, don't see the point in a blog that's All Cryptic, All The Time. Will apply this lesson, unevenly, in '10.

http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

It wasn't that cryptic. I don't even watch The National and I knew what you were referring to. 'Sitting' is obvious and I assumed you didn't include 'sh*t' when you wrote 'less bull' because it is family site.

I have no idea of what I am talking about but I have impression that The National, as many other orgs have done, is tailor their broadcast to people who don't watch in hopes of attracting them. I think too many managers listen to focus groups of people who don't watch news or buy newspapers instead of listening to people who actually consume news.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

Bit of a tangent, but do you have any thoughts on this, PS?

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/12/22/…

http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

I like the result. But this made me cringe: "The Supreme Court said it examined laws in other countries with similar legal systems, such as the United Kingdom and Australia. It found that Canadian law was strict by comparison and did not give enough weight to the value of free expression."

Yeesh. Since when does law involve copying what other countries do. It should not even be a consideration. Hopefully they had a look at Somalia as well.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

I see what you mean, but I'm not too uncomfortable with our courts having a look at what's going on in other nations with similar government and court systems.
Richard

"Since when does law involve copying what other countries do?"

Somewhere between the development of oral communication and the invention of papyrus would be my guess.

http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

Do you think we should be more like Guyana or that Guyana should be more like us?

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

Guyana does not have a 'pure' common law system derived from the British tradition, so I doubt you'd see reference to cases from there.

The important thing about common law (now that I've done some reading!) is that it interprets current cases against the backdrop of prior ones. Rooted in the United Kingdom – starting in the Middle Ages (Richard was wrong), the tradition and evolution of all current common law systems share that ancestry. As such, it's logical that case law from other common law jurisdictions (think of them as legal siblings or cousins) will sometimes be germane to our own cases. That's even recognized in the USA, despite their history of breaking away from Britain.
Richard

Copying law from other jurisdictions is by no means unique to common law. Codification of Roman law drew heavy influence from legal custom throughout their empire as well as what they inherited from previous civilizations. Yes – the papyrus comment was sarcastic, but you'd be hard pressed to find any legal system, or any body of law in the world today, or through history, that didn't draw heavily on 'outside' influence. The same is true for Canada's other legal tradition, as Quebec's Civil Code traces its roots to the same origins as much of Europe, and has many similar influences as former European (mainly French) colonies and protectorates.

In short, law has involved 'copying what other countries do' for at least as long as there has been 'law" or 'countries'.
http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

We're not talking about the roots or form of a legal system. We're talking about the specific inclusion and accounting for decisions and judgements from other nations, and the fact that some weight is given to them in rendering judgments in our own courts. If you go read the particular judgement we're referencing here, they specifically account for judgements in Australia and the UK.
Richard

Courts (particularly high courts) have been relying on/influenced by their neighbours' means of settling disputes and answering tricky legal questions since antiquity.

If you read ten randomly chosen, precedent-setting cases decided at the SCC, I bet you that 7 of the 10 will make reference to cases from the UK, Australia or the U.S.A. – particularly in non-criminal matters.

Since SCC decisions generally break new ground, may establish new law, it only makes sense that they would look outside common law jurisdictions. Citing UK, Australian, American and even New Zealand law is nothing new. More recently, International agreements, UN Conventions and other sources of international law are also brought into the rationale behind such decisions. Similarly, Canadian decisions are commonly cited around the world in other high courts. You;d be hard pressed, for example, to find a court in the common law world that hasn't cited our jurisprudence on sexual orientation and discrimnation in the past decade, if forced to address any such questions.
http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

All that may be true.

But it doesn't necessarily answer the question whether the law in one jurisdiction is better than the law in another. Even if they've changed their law from a common one and we haven't, that doesn't mean it was a change for the better, or that a change in our law should not take a different direction.

There are a lot of laws in the UK that I hope will never be replicated here.
http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

Like so much of this country, I guess it's a curious compromise of sorts. I can sure see the appeal of studying and practicing law – you could lose yourself for a lifetime just in its history.

ERB

I grew up during the cold war and remember being scared to death by the news and the possibility of bieng fried at any moment. The news today is usually incredibly boring – as one poster above says, the value of the loonie and yet another snowstorm in winter, god forbid. But if no news is good news, then maybe we should be thankful.

I don’t really care about the sets the news come from, though Diane Sawyer improves any one she is on. I think the CBC suffers because of it’s biases and one-sided reportage always slanted to its leftward political posture. Rex Murphy is the only token conservative allowed. Climate change is a prime example of this – the climategate scandal is raging and CBC rebroadcasts Inconvenient Truth. Go figure.

Orson Bean

I see you've got a net 2 thumbs-down rating for that incorrect utterance of yours. I'll bet you're on Santa's naughty list as well. Anyway, I'll risk the wrath of the downward thumbers as well — I agree. No matter what you think of the whole climategate thing and the AGW issue, the CBC's coverage has consistently been utterly one-sided. They've clearly taken an editorial position here that they can just ignore any dissenting opinions. That's what Pravda used to do.

Jen

Have to disagree with Bruce. I got the point right away. Watching The National's new format gives me a headache – they've replicated everything I dislike about major CNN political event coverage in their studios. (Groups of anchors wandering around a studio aimlessly in front of constantly moving video backdrops, occasionally running across a group of people sitting at a round table and quizzing them for 10 seconds each, etc.) What they didn't take into account, perhaps, is that CNN has poor ratings and election coverage that is widely considered ridiculous.

I have no memory of a time before glitzy cable news; I'm 24. The extent of my nostalgia for traditional newscasting is having watched "Network" once. Despite this, I think the "anchor sitting down" format works, because you really just need a talking head to read news clips to you, preferably concisely and intelligently, and to report breaking news events in a professional way. I don't need a full body shot of Peter Mansbridge while hearing about the current strength of the Canadian dollar, or where in Canada it is snowing the most. Thank Jesus, the CBC doesn't have the budget to send Rex Murphy in via hologram.

There's nothing wrong with trying to update the program, but I hope the CBC, specifically the National, will revise some of its new format because it actually distracts me from the content of the broadcast and makes me want to switch to Telejournal or BBC World rather than endure it. This despite the BBC's own odd visual quirks – have you ever noticed that BBC World's anchors wear pink about 90% of the time? Including the men's ties. I can think of no good reason for this, but it must be their on-air dress code.

http://intensedebate.com/people/hellomike hellomike

BBC World does a lot of standing in front of video walls as well, actually. Though their sit-down segments are calm enough that it seems to work. CBC's theme now seems to be frantic kineticism, in all of their news shows. Power & Politics is -terrible-.

Orson Bean

Agreed. I just caught the last bit of the National last night, the weather bit, and I found the whole Peter-walking-around-and-talking-to-Claire-Martin-on-a-screen thing to be utterly offputting and distracting. They should just lose the whole schtick.

knick

The 'cutting edge' of CBC's Newsworld new format is obviously intended to attract 'younger' viewers. It had better work because it's probably not going to continue to attract a more mature audience. The frantic pace of the stand-up news and it's 'light' content, and the rapid-fire examination of issues by Evan Solomon on Power and Politics are enough to cause vertigo, though I do think that it's the producers, not Soloman who set the pace.
http://intensedebate.com/people/CTM Claudia Lemire

The only time I watch the National is on thursdays because I can't get enough of Andrew Coyne and Chantal Hubert, but CBC kind of changed that too and it sucks! But will keep watching… And also they took our beloved Kady O'Malley and I just don't think is working out, she is so missed here, come back Kady, come back!!!

http://intensedebate.com/people/DerekPearce DerekPearce

Er, must nitpick, Chantal's last name is Hebert. I enjoy her columns and panel appearances too!

http://intensedebate.com/people/CTM Claudia Lemire

You are right, quick typing…

http://intensedebate.com/people/OntarioTown OntarioTown

Yup, and CTV's boom, boom, boom with horns and My Toronto, etc. is so much better.

CTV – problems with ad revenues? Neverending ads, noise, noise and Lloyd Robertson – now there's a personality for you.

Oh, and Jane Taber……..
Anon

I'm less concerned with how trivial CBC daily news programming has become and more troubled by the absence of in-depth, investigative reporting on issues of substantive public interest. The 5th Estate has been just awful in the last while.
http://intensedebate.com/people/DerekPearce DerekPearce

Since we're all piling on, my little beef is with the setup of Wendy Mesley's pieces– she could do better. It's always "You would think such-and-such is this, but is it really? We'll look at what's actually happening…" Bloody EVERY item she does is in this format. It's predictable and boring– partly because whatever the such-and-such topic is, is obviously debatable in the first place– she never really goes against the conventional wisdom after all.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Jenn_ Jenn_

According to my On This Day email that I just now opened, today is Diane Sawyer's birthday. Is this a little present for her, Paul?
WJM

Am I the only one who remembers the “spin” machine thingie in the earliest iteration of CTV News One?