With a federal election that could come any day now, and the Liberal government’s public favour continually waning, some, shall we say, unorthodox media practices appear to be afoot, particularly in terms of how Pierre Poilievre is being presented to Canadian viewers. The Conservatives are always complaining about progressive media bias. This is what they mean.
Those of us who work in newsrooms know that benign, unintentional mistakes happen all the time. People accidentally get misquoted, the wrong images accidentally end up being used with stories, the best experts aren’t always chosen.
This week, CTV News’ Omar Sachedina aired a statement apologizing to Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative party: “Last night, in a report on this broadcast, we presented a comment by the official opposition leader Pierre Poilievre that was taken out of context. It left viewers with the impression the conservative non-confidence motion was to defeat the Liberals dental care program. In fact, the Conservatives have made it clear the motion is based on a long list of issues with the Liberal government including the carbon tax. A misunderstanding during the editing process resulted in this misrepresentation. We unreservedly apologize to Mr. Poilievre and the Conservative party of Canada. We regret this report went to air in the manner it did.” The same apology made its way through X in a tweet.
Presented a comment? Taken out of context? A misunderstanding during the editing process? CTV’s communications office no doubt spent hours frantically working on that one.
What exactly happened? Could it have been an honest mistake? I reviewed the CTV segment and the original CPAC video that the apology was issued for, and I encourage readers to do the same.
Let’s start with the CTV news segment that was framed around the question of what NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s tearing up of the Liberal supply and confidence agreement might mean for the Liberal’s dental care program and mentions that the Conservatives will be tabling a non-confidence vote.
Before the infamous edit, Canadian viewers of CTV were presented the following voiceover by CTV’s Cristina Tenaglia:
“A week after Singh nixed his pact with the Liberals, the Canadian government released ads, noting that close to 650,000 Canadians have already received (dental) care.”
At this point in the voiceover, CTV cuts to a clip of Poilievre standing in a hallway answering reporters’ questions. (Apparently Pierre Poilievre does answer media questions).
Tenaglia’s voiceover resumes, and, with Poilievre’s image now in a hallway in the frame, Canadians are told: “While the continuation of the plan appears safe for now, the events of the last week have raised new questions over the plan’s future.”
We know this next part is supposed to be scary because Poilievre is now squarely in the frame and is presented as saying, “That’s why we need to put forward a motion,” suggesting that Poilievre had been referring to the dental program. Only the Conservative leader didn’t actually use that phrasing, and he was not referring to the dental program.
Although labelled CTV in the segment, the original clip of Poilievre answering reporters’ questions in that hallway was from CPAC. In that original video, it is clear that Poilievre says, “That’s why it’s time to put forward a motion for a carbon tax election.”
So, in an official news segment about whether the Liberal dental care plan was in danger due to Jagmeet Singh ending the supply and confidence agreement, someone from CTV appears to have chosen a clip from CPAC with a statement from Poilievre that was about a “carbon tax election,” not dental care, placed it in the segment in a way that appeared to present Poilievre as directly attacking the program, and apparently edited his words resulting in the decontextualization and apparent misframing of Poilievre. What the heck is happening to our media ecosystem in Canada?
The Conservative party’s media spokesperson, Sebastian Skamski, stated that CTV’s apology “doesn’t cut it.” The party has demanded an apology that acknowledges that this wasn’t a “simple misunderstanding” or a typical but regrettable newsroom accident. According to Skamski, the party will no longer engage with CTV News or its reporters “until they explicitly acknowledge their malicious editing & omission of context to undermine Pierre Poilievre.”
This, of course, isn’t the first time the Conservatives have accused outlets of being biased towards them. Who among us can forget the “How do you like them apples” interview where reporter Don Urquhart casually accuses Poilievre of being a “populist” and suggested that he was “taking pages from Donald Trump’s playbook.” When Poilievre pressed him to explain what he meant by these phrases, he couldn’t.
This kind of hyperventilating biased coverage of Poilievre is constant from all progressive fronts.
The Toronto Star and CBC painted a Poilievre conversation with anti-tax protestors as an endorsement of unknown and unsubstantiated far-right activities.
The Canadian Press made the claim that Poilievre was moving conspiracy theories from “the fringes of the internet to mainstream thinking” when he criticized the World Economic Forum. No evidence was offered to support this assertion, and the fact that Liberal and NDP MPs have been similarly critical of the WEF was ignored.
When progressive parties start waning in popularity, the discourse noticeably shifts to accusing conservatives of engaging in “far-right” rhetoric. We’ve come to expect this from MPs while engaged in political theatre, but journalists appear to have made it their side gig.
CBC tried to aid Trudeau in an attempt to associate Poilievre with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, simply because Jones said he liked Poilievre’s policies. Ditto, Press Progress.
And, in probably the worst self-own I’ve ever seen, a Canadian Press reporter tried to repeat Urquhart’s disastrous apple approach with Poilievre at a gas station during a media availability, asking him if he was “trying to court the far-right vote.” Somehow surprised by his response to her loaded question, she tweeted, “He would not answer the question, saying my question sounded like a CBC smear job and a distraction from the real issues.” Where are these journalists learning their interview skills?
Look, it’s entirely possible what happened at CTV was an honest mistake. But it is entirely understandable the Conservatives reacted the way they have.
Either way, our media environment cannot go on this way. Reporters must engage with their subjects in good faith and with charity. Otherwise, no one will give them an interview. It’s common sense. That doesn’t mean journalists can’t ask tough questions and reveal hard truths. They can and should. It’s the job. It just means those questions can’t be loaded or wracked with conspiracy theories, association fallacies, and name-calling, and, as CTV has recently learned, framing and editing practices must be fair to all political candidates, not just the ones whose policies they prefer. Our goal should be to provide accurate information to Canadians so they can make informed decisions. CTV failed horribly in that respect, accidentally or not.
National Post