QMI keeps up campaign against Plante
QMI is keeping up the pressure to get rid of Valérie Plante, also the pressure to bring back Denis Coderre. I’m a little puzzled by the latter, since although Coderre was a reliable source of news stories about bombastic projects gone wrong, he’s a known federalist and never provided much interest on the nationalist side. Maybe it’s just that he’s a guy.
I’ve been watching with interest how the media are manufacturing consent that Plante is doing a bad job. You do this not by making outright claims or charges, but by implying that “a lot of people think” a certain way. We’re herd animals, and if told often enough that other people feel a certain way, a lot of people will follow suit. Look how Allison Hanes does it in the Gazette in September.
I only have to think back to the utter chaos of the latter Tremblay years and Denis Coderre’s weird, expensive inflation of the city’s 375th anniversary celebrations to see how this city is not doing so badly – under a worldwide pandemic, yet – and wonder how people can feel that Plante is doing a terrible job, compared to recent people in that chair, and given the current situation.
Mark Côté 10:11 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
That’s one of the ways social media manipulation by bots and click farms works too. The main “service” they provide is legitimizing a point of view by making it (or a person) appear to have a lot of public support. That in turn can lead to real public support.
CharlesQ 10:20 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
totally agree, La Presse is doing the exact same thing. They’ve been promoting Coderre’s “return” for the past months now. I have the impression that these media depend a lot on car manufacturers and dealerships for advertising money and I wonder how much impact that has on their choice of news and opinions. Plus drivers seem more vocal then anyone else, or I should say those media give them a lot of exposure, just think of regular articles on road construction and obstacle, there are even whole radio stations dedicated to car traffic. Car use has been normalized so much that it it’s like there are no other alternatives or those alternative are only promoted by socialist nuts. I wish one politician would just say it out loud, there reason there are parking and traffic problems is simple: there are too many (big) cars on the roads. Ferrandez tried to talk about this but he suffers from condescending resting face and he was turned into a province wide “tete de turc”.
Also Coderre has wasted millions of dollars on the 375 for projects that are barely usable or visible. And he hired a known sex offender (Rozon) as his campaign finance director and the director of the 375 and defended him publicly. It’s not guilt by association but it shows he’s so much part of the good old boys club and he’s willing to look the other way.
Douglas 10:30 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Hopefully we can bring in a new mayor that is pro-development so we can get some money back in this city after Covid destroyed the retail economy. City is back in a deficit and Plante’s policy’s do not promote growth.
Jonathan 11:00 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Thank you Kate and Charles. This is exactly how I feel too. We are witnessing straight up the way media is manufacturing opinion. I do think that car advertising plays a direct, if not indirect, role in this.
Having spent some time around St-Denis street this past weekend, I really am hoping that people are going to start to feel like the Plante administration has done some great things. I think the new safe and lively ambiance is one of the more tangible changes of this mandate.
Now if only people would stop listening to the ‘traffic nightmare’ discourse and actually head on over, they too could see it. My parents (who live in Pierrefonds) have been speaking about how they want to go downtown and St. Denis but think it will just be a nightmare to drive there.
I think Plante has done a good job managing the development of the city. Before the pandemic the city was breaking records… and I have been seeing news that among the top 20 cities in North America, Montreal has fared the best.
paul 11:19 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
I agree that Plante has done a good job considering an antagonistic provincial government and a global pandemic. She clearly tries to walk the line between good urban planning practices and the pro-car/development crowd.
I agree that the media is actively trying to create a narrative against her driven by pro development and car voices which are not representative of the majority of the population.
I hope that the public will see that come election time, but I fear the narrative has already been set
Kevin 11:46 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
CharlesQ and Jonathan
Reporters rarely know what ads appear in their publication.
When everything was in print, they’d only learn by reading the newspaper.
With everything online, there is no connection between reporters and whoever handles advertising. They may not even be in the same country.
On TV, the reporters are working and so don’t watch the program. The anchors/directors/producers are on feeds that go to black when commercials come on.
DeWolf 12:03 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
I had’t seen that Allison Hanes column before and I was absolutely shocked to see it does not mention the pandemic, not even once. And this is supposedly a column about why Montrealers are feeling ornery these days!
It also galls me how often local media figures shrug off the way the media can be used to manufacture consent about something like this. Hanes accused Plante of “blaming the messenger” by criticizing the media but that’s a bit rich when much of the opposition to Plante is coming in the form of opinion columns. (Or in the case of QMI, a coordinated cross-platform network of columns, talk shows and suspiciously biased news coverage.) When you write an op-ed, you aren’t the messenger – you’re the message.
Mr.Chinaski 12:19 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
It’s ironic that they pretty much did the same last election, but with the roles reversed. I guess that it sells.
Reg Cap 13:34 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Information that is essential for meaningful democracy “that sells?”
CharlesQ 13:35 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
@kevin I wasn’t talking about journalists and reporter but about the people who decide what is going to be reported. I doubt that journalists always decide what they are going to report on but the newpaper and tv station owners do.
jeather 13:46 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Yeah, I don’t agree with everything Plante does, but I’ve been reasonably happy with her, and certainly happier with her than any other recent mayor. I don’t understand what the huge argument is. I didn’t agree with closing the mountain road, but if the only real complaint is that (which she took back, despite clearly not wanting to) and some bike lanes?
Kevin 14:05 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
CharlesQ
The journalists and reporters usually decide what they’re going to report on each day. They check in with their editors — who may be low-level managers, but probably are just employees one teeny rung up on the ladder — and the editors will make decisions too.
The only place I could see an owner getting involved in the decision making process is in a very small shop, say the Halifax Examiner – which was founded by a journalist who manages the paper and writes articles.
Everywhere else, it’d be like the chairman of a bank getting personally involved because you’re having problems resetting the PIN on your bank card.
MarcG 14:27 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Time for us all to review Manufacturing Consent? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwh1HCb_xnk
Mark Côté 15:46 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Kevin, honest question because I’m genuinely curious: assuming you agree that different need sources have different biases and opinions, or at least are differentiated in some way other than just the quality of writing and investigation, how do these differences come to be if any reporter is essentially allowed to write anything? There must be some tacit, if not explicit, agreement that some stories or angles are more important than others.
Jack 17:17 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Coderre, ( I forgot ), Applebaum, Tremblay are you serious ! The only thing for certain about QMI is they will not start a campaign to promote the leader of the opposition. Plante will win the next election.
Kevin 18:01 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Mark Côté
Your question could form the basis of a 3-credit class on the principles of journalist thought and practice.
But what I think you really mean is: how do organizations decide which stories to cover and how to cover them?
I obviously can’t give you a supremely in-depth answer here, but I’ll point out that upthread I did use the word discussion, and that’s what happens.
Each newsroom has its own vibe, but in general it starts with a reporter pitching a story. Everywhere I’ve worked we have daily meetings to pitch ideas–interns, reporters, editors — and people lay out their rationale. Get a consensus, then go to work.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/10/how-to-successfully-pitch-the-new-york-times-or-well-anyone-else/
Mark Côté 18:32 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
And in your opinion people like Rupert Murdoch have no real effect on the type of news that is reported or how it is reported by the media he owns? Or the advertisers that fund a newspaper; they are really at arms length and have no sway over the type of reporting that’s done? It feels…unlikely, but of course that’s my own biases at play.
Michael Black 18:50 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Watching them make that film about Chomsky, I remember the day Peter and Mark went off to Washington DC to film Chomsky the first time, it made me think about old news. It’s a cluster, people may pick up a newspaper for a variety of reasons (it was the comics page for me), but on the way they may take in other things. It’s for a broad audience, which helps to define contents. There’s a balance between “what do people want?” and “what do people need?”. There can be incredibly ” trivial” stories, which get a paragraph as a result, and most people won’t care, yet for a handful, it matters a lot. Some guy sets himself on fire, it matters only to relatives and friends, but for people who actually saw it happen, it explains what happens.
If you get too narrow, people tune out. Specialized publications exist for that, and their readership is limited. Conversely,, endless people and groups want their story told, and they want the wide distribution of mainstream news.
There is bias, but I’m not inclined to see it as deliberate. I keep seeing “normal” in the Gazette, because that’s the viewpoint. Somebody who already spends most of their life alone would see the pandemic differently. Stories get told, but usually from a certain perspective, and many people can’t see the story from any other point. I’ve been seeing “police brutality” in stories recently, and people can get behind that, but it ignores how much abuse happens long before violence.
People think the Gazette should cover the stories they want, when there are others who rarely get their story told from their own viewpoint.
DeWolf 18:54 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
I’ve pitched stories and worked with editors on three continents for the past 18 years. There is definitely bias at play. Sometimes it’s the editor’s personal bias, like when a former news editor at a major paper refused to commission any features about asylum-seekers because he thought they were all scam artists who were working the system. Sometimes there is a culture of self-censorship that develops in response to the owner’s political leanings. Kevin is right that publishers rarely get involved in the day-to-day operations of a news organization, but they make their preferences very clear to the editor-in-chief, who in turn has a lot of influence over what editors are willing to assign to their reporters or commission from freelancers, even if in theory they have a lot of autonomy.
CharlesQ 18:55 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
@kevin the idea of all those journalists pitching stories about traffic and parking “nightmares” makes it even sadder.
CharlesQ 18:58 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
@DeWolf that exactly how I see the influence on journalists but I’m not in the business so it’s good to see someone who’s is in the know describe it so succinctly.
Kevin 20:57 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Mark
I once worked at a station where we did a part expose series into crooked activity by some car dealership. The people in the news room only found out after the fact that the car dealership was buying ads on the station.
Journalists don’t consume media the same way that most people do.
And yes, like Dewolf says, There are some people in charge of going to want to publish certain stories. This is why we all need multiple media sources in big cities.
But my experience working for large companies is that the “publisher” is not involved. In many cases now the “publisher” is an Anonymous conglomerate.
@CharlesQ
It makes a lot of sense if you stop to think about it: reporters often have to travel from location to location during the day.
Blork 22:05 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
I agree with @Kevin that you can’t blame the individual journalists for these stories. That said, they generally write what they think will be accepted by their editors with the least resistance. But even the editors — aside from the managing editor — are not particularly interested in skewing to advertisers aside from a general sense of pandering to broad demographics.
The publishers, however, might set the tone or even give specific directives down the line. But how much that translates to the wording of specific articles is debatable; it’s more a matter of overall tone.
This is particularly true nowadays, with so much ad revenue coming from programmatic advertising. That means ads that are placed according to online auctions that take place based on you, the reader, and what they know about you based on your profile. These auctions take place in milliseconds. It’s basically:
SSP: Hey, I have a click here from a 45-year-old male in Montreal who was recently shopping for refrigerators. What’s your bid for the impression?
DSP 1: I have a Home Depot ad here and I’ll give you [X amount] for it.
DSP 2: I have a Samsung ad here and I’ll give you [X.5 amount] for it.
DSP 3: I have a Costco ad here and I’ll give you [X.3] for it.
SSP: Samsung wins! (Inserts Samsung ad.)
All of the above takes place in the time it takes to load the page. (SSP is “supply-side platform,” which is basically the agent for ad impression inventory, and DSP is “demand-side platform,” which are the agents for the advertisers looking to place their ads.)
This is why the bottom of so many newspaper articles contain such awful clickbait ads (“You won’t believe what Megan Markle looks like now!” etc.) Those are basically bottom-drawer programmatic ads that are usually not even based on your user profile and they net the publisher the lowest return. It costs them nothing to run those ads and they make a trickle of revenue from them. The real money is in the ads that interrupt your reading of the article.
That said, not all of it is programmatic. Car ads, for example, can be sold to the publisher directly, or through an agency, but they are targeted to only appear in articles that appeal to car enthusiasts. So the managing editor will definitely want articles about cars, driving, and issues around driving. What those articles ACTUALLY SAY about driving is largely irrelevant; if they mention roads and driving, those ads will appear.
Blork 22:08 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Just to be clear: no actual human decides what programmatic ads appear anywhere. Those Megan Markle ads were not placed there based on a choice made by a human; it’s all done through programming and algorithms.
Kate 12:13 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
Blork, but somebody somewhere is designing the algorithms.
Blork 12:17 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
Sure, but you can’t blame the journalists for that. And the people designing the algorithms are dorks and nerds who have no sense of being evil. They’re just matching peoples’ profiles (and thus, perceived interests) with ads pertaining to those assumed interests.
Kevin 15:02 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
Blork
The algorithms are what killed Global News this year and led to that company’s layoffs.
When everyone was at home, readership of all digital media went up substantially, but ad revenue dropped across the spectrum.
In part it was because companies cut back on advertising spending.
The second and more substantial reason is because a lot of Global’s advertisers had clicked the box saying “don’t put ad next to bad news”.
The algorithm decided that Covid-19 was bad news, and so Global’s ad revenue dried up. As did that of many other media companies like Vox, Buzzfeed, and Quartz.
My only question is how long it took the managers to realize why they lost revenue. I bet that June/July was the first time many of them realized what exactly was happening.
Blork 15:45 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
Bear in mind we all get a laugh when those algorithms and settings are NOT used (or used badly) and you end up with things like an ad for KFC embedded in an article about heart disease, or an ad for a Mediterranean resort embedded in an article about African refugees washing up on Mediterranean beaches.