Hey, CP! How Wrong Can A Lede Be?

AreThesePeopleEvenPaying
AttentionVille

Here it comes, unbylined (at least on the CTV site) from earlier this afternoon:

VANCOUVER -- While some of Bollywood's biggest celebrities have descended on Vancouver for Hindi cinema's equivalent of the Academy Awards, most British Columbians wouldn't know the stars if they passed them on the street....

Who ever wrote this and whichever editor approved it does know that the 'awards' in Vancouver are not the Bollywood Oscar equivalent, right?

I mean the reporter and editor do know that there is an actual long-established Bollywood Oscars-equivalent  show that runs AFTER our provincial election that Ms. Clark and friends ditched because they wouldn't move up the date?

And the reporter and editor do know that the show in Vancouver was made up out of whole cloth earlier this year when Ms. Clark gave the Times of India more than 10 million of our dollars to stage it BEFORE the election, right?

Of course they do, kinda/sorta, as they make it into a he said/she said thingy down deep in the story, without actually stating what actually happened.

****

Look.

You know what really, really bugs me about this?

Well....

It's the fact that the Wizards that come up with these 'shiny object' stunts count on the fact that a certain segment of the proMedia is so lazy and soundbite-afflicted that they will throw up wurlitzerable codswallop like this every single time.

Sheesh.


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And, interestingly, a few suddenly somewhat skeptical proMedia folks have actually decided to check Ticketmaster to see if all the tickets, paper-housed or not, are actually gone....Gee, where have we seen that approach before?
Bob Mackin is really, really going to town on this one, as he has since the beginning....And, most importantly, you just know that, with FOI requests pending, he won't forget all about it by next Tuesday.


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