In yesterday’s post, CBC provincial affairs reporter DavidCochrane dropped a bit of a bombshell in the comments section.
I opened that item with a quote from Hansard, in which Premier Danny Williams mused about possibly selling off Hydro to pay down the provincial debt.
Cochrane stepped in to confirm that Williams had indeed said that in the House, but corrected himself in a scrum immediately afterward.
“I was in the legislature when Williams made that comment,” Cochrane wrote. “The entire press gallery perked up when he spoke of selling Nalcor.
“We pulled him outside for a scrum to ask about it. Even before we asked a question he clarified his comments. He said he misspoke in the legislature. He wasn't talking about selling Nalcor. He was talking about selling the individual assets it acquires.
“For example, if the Hebron stake is eventually worth 5-billion dollars and someone wants to buy, Williams said he would consider selling it to reduce debt.
“That was consistent with past comments he had made when the government rolled out its plan to revamp Hydro into an energy company.
“So while his statement in the legislature certainly appeared to be big, big news the followup showed that it wasn't what it appeared but rather a careless comment from Williams that he immediately clarified.
“I don't write this to defend Williams. Only to explain why the media (this IS supposed to be a media blog isn't it?) didn't do a breaking news story that day.”
Other commenters expressed surprise that the media would drop the story, so Cochrane replied with further clarification.
“Nalcor has a division between the regulated side of its activities (the old Nfld Hydro) and the unregulated side (the new energy corp). Williams has said repeatedly he wants to build wealth in the unregulated side and use that to increase the province's net worth and reduce debt. He can either flip those assets as they grow in value, or use the revenue they earn to pay off debt. That is what he was talking about. He had said that very thing many, many times before. So it wasn't news once it was clarified.”
If he had reported the premier’s comments as spoken in the house, the media could be accused of “manufacturing a controversy,” Cochrane said.
“Williams did not let those comments stand. Within five minutes he came out to a scrum and said ‘I gotta clear something up,’ because he realized what he said in the legislature was not what he (apparently) meant.”
Cochrane describes an interesting ethical dilemma, and has a good point when he says “unlike you guys – I was there.”
We all look at these things differently, through the filters of our own experience. In my case, I ask myself what would have transpired had this happened at The Sunday Express (an investigative weekly where I worked from 1988 to 1991, when it folded).
I think we would have weighed what Williams said in the House, against his subsequent retraction, and asked ourselves three questions:
1) How credible is the retraction? Was it an honest mistake? These things do happen;
2) OR did he accidentally divulge a policy direction that was not intended for public consumption, and was now attempting to contain it?
3) On either account, should the media agree to ignore such a controversial statement?
I think we would have done the story.
First, Williams statement in the House is unequivocal. The subject of his paragraph is Hydro; this is what he is talking about selling. But accepting that he did indeed misspeak, I question the logic in what he supposedly meant to say.The equity chunks he is taking in various projects will be valuable, but they will need to fetch $10 billion in order to pay down the debt. I suppose that’s possible, but there is room for doubt here.
Second, it’s possible that the premier did let slip a bit of unintended information. Even Cochrane said it was “(apparently)” not what the premier meant. So, yes, there is room for doubt.
Finally, I would be uncomfortable ignoring a quote from the premier that was, after all, going to live forever in Hansard. In the interests of historical accuracy, I would have reported the full story. I would have opened my story with the quote in the House, then followed with the premier’s clarification.
And that’s where it would have sat. On the public record. For viewers and readers to decide for themselves.
Here’s how I would present the story:
Premier makes, then retracts, controversial statement on Hydro
Premier Danny Williams raised the prospect today of selling Newfoundland Hydro. He made this statement during debate in the House of Assembly:
(audio or transcript of quote from Hansard.)
However, he attempted to retract the statement immediately afterward, in a scrum with reporters. The premier said he misspoke; that he was talking about selling specific pieces of non-regulated assets, such as equity stakes in oil developments, and not the hydro asset.
(audio or transcript of Williams’s scrum with reporters.)
There was considerable controversy in 1994 when Premier Clyde Wells announced his intention to sell Newfoundland Hydro. The plan was eventually scrapped.
- 30 -
And that’s it. Straight reporting of both points of view. I don’t think this is “manufacturing a controversy.”
But it does put things on the public record, in the unlikely event the premier does announce a plan, somewhere down the road, to sell off the entire corporation. And if he doesn’t, the record reflects that too.
I realize I am viewing this in isolation. On that date in April 30 2008, there would have been a number of stories competing for a reporter’s attention, including the testimony of Louise Jones at the Cameron Inquiry, and the resignation of the province’s third pathologist in two weeks.With so many balls in the air, it might have been easier to let this one drop.
All I’m saying is, I wouldn’t have dropped it. I would have done the story.
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Mark Watton from ON writes: The reason Hansard is recorded, and presumably why the legislature's proceedings appear on TV, is so that the public can see, hear and maintain a very public record of the comments, arguments and votes of their elected representatives.
Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that a better place for a Premier, a Minister, or any other MHA to correct such a mis-statement (if indeed this was one) would be in the legislature where the comments were made?
Of course, that would probably require an Opposition with the ability to recognize such a thing and ask about it.
Easy as it may seem to dump on reporters for letting the Premier off easy, there's even less excuse for the Opposition to let him off the hook so consistently.
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Ed Hollett from St. John's, NL writes: This little flap over the past 24 hours raises several curious points. There is only one that remains truly worthwhile as far as I am concerned:
I am still waiting for someone to dump on a reporter for missing a story here. It would be easy enough, admittedly but up to this point, no one has suggested anything of the sort.
David launched a pre-emptive something or other but unless I completely missed it, no one suggested any story had been missed even after he explained why he and his colleagues didn't report the sell-off-the-bits story in 2008.
So what exactly has prompted a couple of people to rush to the barricades armed with their old chestnuts only to find themselves hurling them where the discussion isn't.
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David Cochrane from St. John's, Newfoundland writes: We didn't miss a story Ed.
According to Geoff we chose to willingly suppress a story.
To me that is far more insulting and damning than to miss a story.
To miss it, implies human error.
To suppress it, implies a conscious act of deception.
I will let you decide which is worse.
I know which is far more insulting.
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Ed Hollett from St. John's, NL writes: David, if we could all briefly leave aside whatever personal things are in the comments and just focus on the issue, there is much in this that is valuable to people participating in the discussion and people reading it.
So if I ve said anything inflamatory or it has been taken that way when it wasn't meant as that, please just skip over it all and accept my apology or whatever it takes.
And I'd say to everyone else, just put it all to one side and let's talk about what I think are a couple of major points.
Now that I've doused myself in cold water, beaten myself and whatever else it takes, let's start with what I hope will be a readily acceptable premise: stories get missed and stories get suppressed.
It happens every day for a lot of good reasons and some not so good reasons. But for now, we all udnerstanding that people are humans and may not see things. They may also be led to believe things that aren't entuirely the whole story. At the same time, editors and reporters may chose not to run a story - suppression is a potent word so let's stop using it - and again the reasons are many and varied.
With that said, I want to go back to the April 30 comments. Regardless of what happened at the time, my take on the original comments and what you've described as the clarification remains the same. The two things are both the same and what the Premier seems to have said in the scrum makes a distinction without a difference or whatever the phrase is.
To my mind this is an important piece of the overall story of government energy policy. For all the talk of control of energy resources and being masters of our own domain and so forth, the government policy is the resources can be sold.
All the fighting, fussing and chest-thumping and all the public cash that has gone into them and will go into them could change tomorrow if someone offered cash on the barrelhead that could be applied to the public debt.
Criticising the 1994 privatisation proposal therefore is disingenuous. The 1994 privations proposal was based in part on the same idea: get a good price, lower the debt and away we go. Government still retains necessary control to protect the public interest. It's a good idea.
Flip over to new Brunswick today and you see exactly the same thing.
yet the provincial government's position is that the same is different and that even within the NL provincial government itself the same could be different depending on the circumstances.
This all ties rather interestingly to the Dunderdale comments where there were two contradictory stories operating at the same time.
So even if something was missed, overlooked, suppressed, buried or just forgotten in 2008, subsequent events have brought it to the forefront and very forcefully.
Whatever it was in the past, it is most definitely a news story today and at the same time it also raises a very significant question about provincial government energy policy. There is nothing as I can see in the 2007 energy plan about buying the assets and then flipping them for a profit.
So what exactly is the government's energy plan and energy policy? That's the big story this whole thing reveals today.
Now undoutbedly the Premier won;t like anyone knowing this since he will have to try and reconcile his completely contradictory statements made at the same time and at different times. There's a story in the Saturday Telly that points in that direction. If people know what's going on, they will ask questions and he will have to explain things to them which all takes too much of his time.
Unfortunately for the Premier this isn't a private corporation. It's public money he's using and people have a right to give or withhold consent. That consent must be informed or the whole process is invalid.
So I think in the greater scheme of things, there is a much bigge rissue and a much bigger story here than what happened in April 30 and which reporters didn't cover what.
In the meantime, if you have that scrum tape, David you should hang on to it. It could be valuable.
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Geoff Meeker from Conception Bay South, NL writes: After some contemplation about what I wrote in the above blog, I have gone in and made a couple of surgical edits. I have removed references to ''suppressing'' this story. For journalists, it's a value-charged term that packs quite a punch. And David is right... I wasn't there to see what transpired. It's easy for me to say what I would do, in an ideal world - and I still think I would have done the story - but not having been there, it was wrong for me to use the word ''suppress''. Sorry about that, David.
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peter whittle from nl writes: Geoff:
I have waited a little while to become engaged in this issue.
Acknowledging in a comment that you regrets your language - even apologizing for it - would be one thing; but actually going back and changing his words in the text, in affect, changing the permanet record of his original post, is wrong.
ot everyone reads the commentary section and if you are going to change your original post to reflect a misgiving, or backpedal than you owe it to your readers, to the record to ensure that the change is acknowledged in the post. Simple, clean and total.
When I clean up my posts that have already been published, it's for things like spelling or repeated chunks of sentences - which I tend to do often. I'd never change the tone or meaning, even it was regrettable. P&P has often made corrections, offered new posts or bolded, bracketed or footnoted a change in the original post but never altered the record.
The standard for online journalism is you let the original stand BUT add your corrections, updates and revisions to the original. The rational being transparency and the reader has context and the evolution of the story.
Why would repected juurnalist or the proffesional media participate in a forum about the media and be subjected to allegations of bias and suppressing stories.
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Ed Hollett from St. John's, NL writes: Peter:
You are way off base on this one.
Geoff has noted the point in plain view and noted that he changed certain language in the original post. In this particular format, the comments are appended to the post itself. As such, he added a comment where it can be plainly seen and will always be seen with the post itself unless someone deliberately prints it off and omits the correction notice and all the associated comments.
Online posts are an ongoing dialogue and as such corrections should be expected where someone has a change of heart and of mind. The appropriate thing to do is exactly as Geoff as done.
You raised this issue with me last night in an e-mail without disclosing that it was Geoff initially. I gave you my views on the scenario you presented about what neded to be done if you wanted to revise and reconsider a post. Later on, you asked about and I gave my views on Geoff's action in this instance.
They are one and the same: he did exactly what he ought to have done.
That said, you have done him a huge insult here and in your own blog. You have attacked him without foundation.
You have attacked his ethics, again without foundation.
You have attacked him personally by suggesting that he had libeled someone. You do not explain how.
those familiar with some of your online antics won't be surprised at your intervention here and the personal attack you have mounted for some unknown reason.
If I were Geoff I'd demand a retraction and an apology. After a string of quisling and traitor nonsense on other issues and aimed at others you have just kept going here with the same sort of ad hominem garbage.
Do yourself and the rest of us a favour: withdraw your unwarranted and unfounded personal attack on Geoff.
Apologize.
Then if you want to make a substantive contribution to the discussion do so.
You can make a substantive contribution if you want to but rest assured accusing Geoff of libel definitely ain't it.
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peter whittle from st. john, nl writes: I dealt with the issue in much more detail on P&P. I stand by the fact my posts and no apology will be forthcoming.
As well I had send another post to this blog apologizing for the messy copy which was not posted, beating out reply's on my net book at coffee matters with my chubby little fingers makes for a mess. I hit send before I had a chance to review and clean up. I stand by those comments without hesitation.
Here is what I had to say.
I stand by the fact my posts and no apology will be forthcoming.
http://www.polemicandparadox.com/2009/11/changing-record.html
CHANGING THE RECORD
There has been quite an explosive exchange in the local blogosphere over the past week which has seen one high profile blogger accuse one of the province's brightest and best political reporters of suppressing news stories, of consciously making a decision to cover-up a story. To be fair, the blogger, Geoff Meeker of Meeker on the Media, apologized yesterday, but the form of the apology bothers me just as much as the original irresponsible charge.
In a post entitled For The Record , Meeker, a former journalist and managing editor who has worked in the corporate communications field in recent years, and whose blog is billed as offer[ing] insight and analysis on the media scene in Newfoundland and Labrador , crossed the pale. Not only did he second guess CBC Television and Radio Reporter David Cochrane, he accused him of being biased, of suppressing a news story related to comments made by the Premier in the House of Assembly.
That post was made on November 6th. Yesterday, I went back to Meeker's For the Record post to see if there were any new comments. Now he says in the comments section that he reconsidered his use of the word suppressing and did a surgical edit (and, thus, re-posted the story with a Nov 8 dateline, although other comments are all dated prior to that, of course, since the original post was Nov 6). And, indeed, the word is gone from the post.
I think acknowledging in a comment that he regrets his language - even apologizes for it - would be one thing; but actually going back and changing his words in the text, in effect, changing the permanent record of his original post, is wrong.
When I clean up my posts that have already been published, it's for things like spelling or repeated phrases. I'd never change the tone or meaning, even if it was regrettable. P&P has often made corrections, offered new posts or bolded, bracketed or footnoted a change in the original post, but never altered the record.
To have accused Cochrane of suppressing a story was libelous. The standard for most professional online journalism is you let the original stand BUT add your corrections, updates and revisions to the original. The rationale being transparency and giving the reader context and the evolution of the story.
In his post Meeker says he wishes more journalists would participate in his blog. But why would a respected journalist or professional media person participate in this now jaded forum about the media? This is a black eye for Meeker, and for The Telegram that hosts his blog.
The general consensus seems to be you acknowledge the change and it is acceptable. My own opinion is that not everyone reads the commentary section and if you are going to change your original post to reflect a misgiving, or to backpedal, then you owe it to your readers, to the record, to ensure that the change is acknowledged in the post. Simple, clean and total.
What he should do is write a new post, clear the air, apologize to Cochrane and not hide his faux pas in his comment section.
Meeker On The Media is a blog that is often critical of how other media approach stories. This is a blog that is often critical of the provincial government's approach to communication and freedom of information. If insulting the integrity of another reporter was not serious enough, Meeker has compounded that mistake with an egregious attempt to change the public record.
We need a real media blog in this province. One that is not jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon against the government of the day. One that understands media and at least attempts to maintain a professional journalistic standard.
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