Thursday, September 08, 2005

Reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated

Lots of egg on the face over at CTV Newsnet as the cable news channel which at the moment has the genre all to itself, managed to kill off Lucien Bouchard without the former Premier and Bloc Quebecois king passing away.

As Mike Duffy launched into a wonderful eulogy of Mr. Bouchards contribution to political life, someone whispered into the Duffs ear that uh, ooops, ole Lucy is still around.

CTV then managed to chuckle their way to commercial and went on with their regular dose of endless loop news coverage, edited of course to omit the exit of Bouchard from our mortal coil.

Now to make things worse for the folks at CTV, the crew at Quebec's Radio Canada are livid with them for suggesting that the Death notice was filed by the Quebec broadcaster. Management at Radio Canada say they issued no such advisory today and wonder how exactly CTV managed to screw up so badly.

A fair question no doubt, but even more alarming for the folks at CTV is the idea that they need to scalp news (incorrectly as it turns out) from other media sources and run with the story without in house verification. As things began to hit the fan the finger pointing and harrumphing began in earnest!

Over at the CBC, things were a lot more relaxed and error free. With no actual live programming making its way from the National or Newsworld, countless dozens of Canadians could sit back and enjoy the antiques roadshow uninterrupted.

The public network which is now into day number 26 of the great network lockout managed to avoid embarrassment due to the fact that there's no one around to watch the other channels, let alone to do some reporting of their own.

With CTV looking sheepish these days it's advantage CBC News and they're not even on the air!

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