On The Canadian Press, Deadlines, and myCampaign
It would seem that the Canadian Press’s Alexandra Panetta has a story up in the Globe about myCampaign, the Conservative’s talking points website.
I barely call it a news story, because myCampaign is hardly news: the CP story appears today, oh, six months after the Toronto Star’s Allan Woods first wrote about it.
I’m looking at the blogpost I wrote about myCampaign at the time of Woods’ story. And I don’t see anything, today, that would make me re-write my earlier post. Especially this point about myCampaign’s utility:
The schedule of phone-in shows, for example, is useful, carrying air times, frequencies and phone numbers. The speaking tips are also useful and common sense.
The “talking points,” on the other hand, have a limited value. Most people, including politicians, have a habit of equating “talking points” with an actual script. And with the wording of some of these talking points, people can tell if the caller is reading from a script. It happened during the SSM debate in Parliament, and it can potentially happen here. To read from a script, ironically, robs the caller of authenticity.
So why resurrect an old story like this? Probably, I suppose, because it’s an alternative from writing about the Liberal Party’s troubles or the freedom of speech story.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1462/1818/320/262511/btweek.gif")
March 26th, 2008 at 08:30
“So why resurrect an old story like this”
Well, because all the other pseudo scandals the Libs have tried to influence Canadian voters with seem to have fizzled.
They have tried Schrieber/Mulroney – bust
They tried using a dead MP (Cadman) bust
They tried using a jailed woman (Martin) bust
Why not try insinuating the Tories are a cult!
March 26th, 2008 at 12:01
All of this was inspired by the executive assistant of the Mayor calling the same call-in program under the pseudonym of “Tom” using inside city knowledge to explain and support the Mayor’s position re bailing out the snow budget. This was deceit on the caller’s part and led to the subject of callers possibly calling on behalf of a political party using talking points; hence acknowledging the existence of the CPC website explaining the processes in calling phone-in programs. Conservatives tend to call radio programs whereas the Left responds to the print media with their spinning and vitriol (note responses at end of the Globe article).
CP’s Panetta’s write-up was heavy on detail but a bit one-sided, so in the interest of fairness, those interested in babblespeak
http://www.liberal.ca/speak_e.aspx