Archive for the ‘news conference’ Category

"Excited" "new" "Canadians"

It seems like just a year or so ago that Netflix found itself in the New York Times apologizing for hiring actors to pretend to be excited about the company entering the Canadian market. And didn’t the US Federal Emergency Management agency have to apologize for pretending that its own employees were journalists, when it faked a news conference? Oh yeah, they did!

But hey, those guys are amateurs. They are certainly not “Canada’s home for hard news and straight talk”, a network that is “unwavering in their commitment to uncover the real stories impacting the lives of everyday working people and their families“.

So when Sun News wants to cover a citizenship ceremony, what ends up happening? The minister’s office sends down the orders to put together a ceremony at the Sun studios (not where Elvis and Jerry Lee hung out, sadly), and when they have trouble putting together enough warm bodies to make the ceremony look legit… the ceremony gets faked, with public servants posing as new Canadians. Here’s the video, in all its cringeworthy glory. Keep in mind as you watch it, that six of these people are not “new Canadians.” They are federal employees.

I’m guessing the two small people on the end aren’t the public servants. They appear to be children, although in this topsy-turvy world who can tell? Here’s the story as reported in the Globe and Mail, obtained through Access to Information requests by the Canadian Press.

The story’s money quote:

When a bureaucrat sent Sun News a list of possible citizenship ceremonies to cover in Ontario, a network employee suggested another scenario. “Let’s do it. We can fake the Oath,” reads an email from a sunmedia.ca email address, the name blacked out of the document.

I suppose I should draw the lessons, although I can’t imagine I have to:

• Journalists shouldn’t create pseudo events or cover them as real events.
• Public servants should have more integrity.
• Hard news and straight talk don’t mix well with “Fake the Oath.”

Let’s all be a bit better than this.

UPDATE:

The political appointee Candice Malcom appeared on Sun News today to apologize for the event. Sun News host Pat Bolland claimed that they knew nothing of the fakery. For what it’s worth, I never would have suggested the strategy followed in the wake of this muffup. Here’s the video:

UPDATE 2: Sun News Network’s David Akin weighs in with his take on the event.

Rob Ford tells the media their questions. Then answers them. (Image from CBC)

Rob Ford is the mayor of Canada’s largest city. The dedicated Flacklife reader may note that I’ve covered Mayor Ford a couple of times here. The most notable post was the one in which I included audio of his interview (to use the term loosely) with CBC Radio’s national show “As It Happens” — an pre-booked interview which was 210 seconds of intense awkwardness.

That was October. This is August. And Rob Ford has worked hard on his media relations skills.

Today, he met with the Premier of Ontario, and afterward, met the Toronto media for a scrum. But this was a scrum with a difference. Listen and learn:

[audio:http://www.translucid.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/robford1.mp3|titles=robford]

This is taking the Donald Rumsfeld school of media relations to an entirely new plateau. News conferences are far more pleasant when in two minutes you can tell the gathered reporeters what they would be asking, answer those questions, and leave.

I don’t know whether to rejoice at the innovation or… jump off a bridge.

Audio from the National Post’s Youtube channel.

I’ve been a flack since the 1990s, a lover of politics for longer, and I have to say that this news conference as captured by Gawker is about the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.

Apparently, South Carolina’s governor disappeared on Thursday, saying he was going to hike the Appalachian Trail. Turns out he went to Argentina to visit his mistress.

Talk about watching someone’s political (and personal, probably) life unravel on live TV.

Sure, you have to wonder what he was thinking to have an affair. But could nobody have kept him from doing the news conference this way?

This makes Eliot Spitzer look like a media master:

Ciao,
Bob.

I thought I’d seen just about everything that could happen at a news conference. But then I saw this YouTube video of RyanAir CEO Michael O’Leary at a Dusseldorf news conference.

(This video is not safe for work, so use your judgement.)

O’Leary tells the reporters that business class travelers will get free oral sex.

The miracle is that nobody’s called for his resignation yet! I’m stunned. The Guardian, for example, merely put it in their quotes of the week.

Ciao,
Bob.

Courtesy of Chris Selley’s excellent Maclean’s blog, a clip from a news conference by two New Democratic Party MPs here in Canada yesterday.

The horror. The horror. Who in god’s name at the party’s press office was asleep at the switch on this one? Possibly the worst idea in recorded human history (with the exception of selling Richard Simmons those shorts).

Certainly the worst idea for a news conference in my lifetime.

Ciao,
Bob.