This Day In Snookland....Saved By The Stenographer's Bell!

TheNon-StoryCurveBallTheProMedia

JustCan'tLayOffOfVille

Jeff O'Neil: Is it nicer to be in this studio than (that of CKNW's) Bill Good's?

Christy Clark:(Pauses)....You're better looking.

Jeff O'Neil: Is security outside, by the way?

Christy Clark: I'm not telling. You could have a gun aimed at your head...Even as we speak.

The C-FOX Radio Morning Zoo

Fall 2012 (=2 months before Drex and the 'question')

 ****

Don't you just love the way the CorpMedia went crazy for the 'Premier talks to Drex' story the last few days?

And, without any sense of irony whatsoever, did not mention that she would not talk to anyone about something that matters (i.e. her party's firing of the Auditor General ) during the same time period.

But that, I guess, is to be expected given that irony is not the game here.

But when I climbed into the cigar tube yesterday (am in bloody New Cleveland again) and started combing through the dead tree versions of the papers I had just purchased Ian Bailey's piece in yesterday's Globe floored me.

Especially the part where he 'followed' up on the rehiring of 'Drex' by C-FOX which goes like this:

...(Senior program director Chris) Duncombe said The Fox, which targets a young male audience, had no problem with the Clark incident. “It certainly was not a deterrent. He was brought into the light to a lot of people who had never heard of him before because of that controversy. When you listen to the content [of the conversation], the Premier is playing along and laughs during the content so she clearly had no problem with it.”

He noted that Ms. Clark has been a guest on The Fox, and was a member of the same corporate family in her years as a radio talk-show host in Vancouver. After leaving provincial politics in 2005 to spend more time with her family, Ms. Clark went to work at CKNW before returning to politics in 2010 to seek and win the leadership of the B.C. Liberals. Both CKNW and The Fox are owned by Corus Radio, although Mr. Duncombe noted they have very different broadcasting approaches...

All of which is fine and good. 

But do you see what is missing from the straight-up stenography above?

I mean, do you see any direct reference to the quotes above, or the bit below, which comes directly from one of Premier Clark's 'appearances' on CFOX before she was 'interviewed' by Drex:

'Scotty': What did you do last night for fun?

CClark: (Preamble about having to get to bed early so she could get up to take her son to hockey practice in the morning)....I watched half of the first show of 'Game of Thrones'.

JO'Neil: You're just starting it now?

CC: Well, ya. I read all the books! Somebody gave me one of the books, like, three years ago. And I started reading it last year. And then I couldn't stop. I had to get to the...

JO: It's a good show.

CC: Ya!

Scotty: There's a lot of nudity in it.

CC: Holy....Smokes.

'Karen': That's why people love it so much.

CC: 'Mr. Skin' is gonna be busy, huh?

(Much shock jock laughter)

CC: Do you guys...(yelling over laughter)....Do you guys still have him (Mr. Skin) on on Thursdays? I can't listen on Thursdays 'cause (my son) could be in the car...

JO: Listen. Christy....

CC: And...

JO: We have a lifetime password (to Mr. Skin?). I'll give it to you.

CC: Laughter (other shock jocks join in)....

JO: When you're bored at the legislature next year, maybe you can check out 'Mr. Skin dot com'.

Honestly, if the proMedia is going to leave something like this out of the story, something that demonstrates, unequivocally, that Ms. Clark is willing to say all kinds of even more inappropriate stuff in response to already inappropriate questions, does that not give their readers an extremely skewed and sanitized version of the Premier's own actions that likely facilitated Drex's asking of the awful, terrible no good 'question' a few weeks later? 

Furthermore...

If the proMedia is too squeamish to deal with something as cut and dried as this, where there is abundant evidence that contradicts their 'meme', can anyone expect them to deal forthrightly and fully with the massive smear offensive from Mr. Clark's surrogates that has already begun?

And, perhaps even more importantly, how much does it embolden the surrogates of the smear to know that they will not be called on their codswallop as long as they run up a little 'reasonable' deflector spin that will be swallowed, whole, by the stenographers?

OK?

.