LILLEY: Entire media industry hurt by CTV hit job on Poilievre

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Bell Media fired two members of their team Thursday, as a journalist I take no joy in the job losses, but I also understand why it had to happen.

The outright attack on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was beyond anything that should be defended by anyone in the media industry.

Poilievre walked out to speak to the media on Monday to explain why he felt the government needed to be defeated. Sadly, CTV National News came up with their own reason that the Conservatives wanted to defeat the government.

In reality, Poilievre said that he wanted to defeat the Trudeau government on the carbon tax. Yet the report on CTV National News portrayed this as Poilievre opposing dental care for seniors.

This wasn’t based on anything that Poilievre had said but rather on claims by the Liberals.

In the story that aired from CTV, Poilievre is heard saying, “That’s why we need to put forward a motion.”

The problem isn’t just the context that CTV News placed the clip but also the fact that Poilievre never said those words in that order. To get that clip, CTV had to take two words from near the start of what Poilievre had said, two words from the end of his statement, and then the rest from the middle.

In essence, CTV created a Frankenstein sentence by taking different parts of what Poilievre had said and putting them in a different order.

This is nothing short of journalistic malpractice, anyone in the industry who is still defending these actions is hurting the credibility of journalism.

It’s no wonder that the Conservatives reacted with outrage at the report. CTV’s initial reaction was to admit the story was wrong but tried to put it down to a “misunderstanding during the editing process.”

“We unreservedly apologize to Mr. Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada. We regret this report went to air in the manner it did,” lead anchor Omar Sachedina said on air.

You don’t create a Frankensentence through a “misunderstanding” in the editing suite. Creating that clip of Poilievre took deliberate effort to cut different phrases together.

That’s why the Conservatives demanded a real admission of guilt and a true apology from CTV News. The party went so far as to say that none of their MPs would speak with, appear on or deal with CTV News in any way until this happened.

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Remarkably, the Liberals, all the way up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have attacked Poilievre for demanding an apology. Remember, this is a government that spends a lot of time speaking about putting a stop to misinformation and disinformation and yet have spent this week defending actual fake news because it benefits their party.

“I, as you well know, have often disagreed with some of the conclusions that media has been opining on from time to time, but in the conveying of facts, in the challenging people in positions of authority or who seek positions of authority, it’s absolutely essential that we always defend the freedom of independence of media,” Trudeau said on Tuesday.

“And politicians who deliberately undermine the legitimacy and the hard work by professional journalists are not standing up for democracy, are certainly not standing up for freedom.”

In standing up for a blatantly false report, Trudeau isn’t defending journalists or the media, he is helping cement the idea, held by an increasing number of Canadians, that the media is bought and paid for by the Trudeau Liberals. By CTV airing this report, by the journalists and editors who created it, they are doing the same thing, giving skeptics all the more reason to doubt the entire industry.

The Liberals who defended this report as a way to attack Poilievre politically now have egg on their faces, though most will forget about this quickly.

In their second and full apology announcing that two people had been removed from the CTV News team, the network said that the trust of their audience is of the utmost importance, and they will work to earn that trust back.

Sadly, it’s not just CTV that has to work to earn the trust of the public after this incident, it’s the entire industry.

blilley@postmedia.com