I'm still surprised by the amount of vitriol this generated, and how out of hand the whole thing seemed. You know, it adds to my unease generally about news spin, as I've got to say that every news story I've ever had first hand knowledge of has seemed like a massive distorto-fest -- no matter how I was involved -- as an observer, journo, bystander, or participant.
Farrell sent her to Queen`s Park at the invitation of the Queen`s Park Press Gallery, who suggested McGuinty needed tweaking about his self imposed five foot personal space limit. The local press wags even offered to keep her hidden until it was time to pounce. She waited for a signal that the session was about to wrap, which she always does. She did her ambush thing, and McGuinty was appropriately awkward. Mission accomplished.
Except NDP MLA and former Sunshine Boy Peter Kormos went ballistic, spinning the comedy ambush into some sort of assault on working people in Ontario. `Get the hell out of here!`he brayed, bringing the encounter to an end.
It all got posted at thestar.com and other places, packaged as a CP video hit. Hall`s crime was that her intrusion took place as McGuinty was speaking to job losses at Stelco in Hamilton and Nanticoke, which definitely is no laughing matter. But this was at the end of the session and this wasn`t the joke Hall or 22 Minutes were ever going to tell.
Still, Hall was quickly tried and convicted, guilty of bad timing. Too bad Kormos never dared to pick on Mary Walsh in all her Marg Delehunty thunder. She would have cut him in half.
I didn't make too much of this in the other piece I wrote, well, mainly because I was into my own froth about journalists and the Parliamentary Press Corps (which, I now have to say, looks like it was hyperbolic over-reaction in the other direction, in light of Brioux's subsequent reporting. Note to Queen's Park press gallery: Daddy is sorry. [more of a retraction than you'll get at some places. Oh, I kid. I kid because I love.])
Then again, those news organizations did run with the...no, no, no, no, no, Daddy is sorry. Sorry.
But baby, why you make Daddy so mad?
Anyway, having done that kind of producing work for years and years, the least convincing argument I heard from people was, "look at the footage. she bombed."
I've seen about, oh, 5000 hours of raw footage in my time. It always sucks. Part of what I used to be paid for was to make it awesome. It's part of the gig. Also, I think it's awesome that Brioux goes for it and makes the point that I almost made and pulled back from: you would have never pulled that shit on Mary Walsh. Mary Walsh would have taken Peter Kormos downtown and dropped him in the drink, bad back or no.
I heard from a number of people quite close to the show in the aftermath, but didn't feel like quoting or getting into that game, since this isn't a journalism blog, and I'm not really a journalist. I'm glad a real journalist tracked down one of the nicest guys in Canadian show business, 22 Minutes Executive Producer Mark Farrell, for their side of the story.
But I'm also glad Mark didn't talk to me because he (being aforementioned nicest guy in show business) would probably not want me to end by reiterating the following point:
Peter Kormos is a giant douche.
I'd forgotten he was a Sunshine Boy. Goof.
2 comments:
Hey Denis:
Michael Donovan and I were going to post something in a previous thread but there's a certain guy to whom we don't want to give anymore airtime.
That said, here it is, bearing in mind the time frame is a little out of whack.
Hi everybody:
And here we thought we were going to get in trouble for the “So You Think you Deserve an MRI” sketch we did last week.
We're not going to argue subjective taste, no one has to think anything we do is funny.
We can, however, provide the backstory: Someone from the Queen’s Park press gallery pitched us the idea of ambushing McGuinty about the five foot rule thing. Yes we know it’s not breaking news, but we thought we could make something out of how our leaders don’t like reporters getting close, something that seems to have actually started with the Prime Minister.
Geri and our crew were hidden from the Premier by the press gallery. As a consequence, Geri didn’t hear the presser. She had no idea what was being said. She was operating under the impression that we were coming in after the last question (we normally don’t try to interrupt press conferences until the end). The question she came in on, in fact, had to do with the Ontario Pension Fund.
Then the print media wrote some very funny and original ‘timing is everything’ jokes. They also wrote that the piece wasn’t funny. I will subjectively disagree with that. What we shot, the raw field tape, looks funny to us, (but we will concede that we're biased.)
If the blogosphere demands a culprit, blame us.
It is completely 100% fair for anyone to say that he or she doesn’t like the character, doesn’t like the show, doesn’t like when we ambush. It’s all fair game.
Everyone is entitled to debate timing and poor judgment. But Geri hadn’t heard what the Premier had said about Hamilton. She had only heard Dalton fumbling an answer about pension funds.
One more thing, there are no plans to stop ambushes or field pieces. In fact, Geri is doing another field piece this weekend for us.
In terms of the piece, we’ll edit it, show it to our studio audience, and if we like it, we’ll put it on the TV show in its entirety this upcoming Tuesday night.
Thanks for commenting. Thanks for loving, thanks for hating, thanks for liking the show as a friend.
Michael Donovan
Mark Farrell
Executive Producers, 22 Minutes
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