Sooner or later, every news organization gets sucked in by a questionable story.
Best practice suggests the appropriate way to deal with this is to admit everything as soon as you realize what happened, say you’re really, really sorry, and then try extra hard thereafter to ensure it never happens again.
It’s embarrassing, and not very pleasant, but it enhances your credibility in the long run – or, at least significantly reduces the damage to your reputation.
CTV Calgary seems to have missed this essential lesson when it got fooled by claims about a robocall poll that purported to show, in the words of the broadcaster’s original online story, that a majority of Albertans think minors seeking abortions should be required to tell their parents.
Given the murky story that has emerged since CTV published that report, it seems unlikely that the release of the interactive voice response technology poll at a time Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party (UCP) were pushing anti-trans measures, including a plan to make schools to inform parents if children want to change their names or pronouns, was entirely coincidental.
When CTV filed its original story early Monday afternoon, there had already been negative online commentary suggesting something was wrong with the poll, so there was really no excuse for the network not to have been suspicious of the claims by a company calling itself “National Public Research Canada.”
Consider what a polling company called Canadian National Public Research and its parent company PrimeContact Research Group then had to say:
“We at PrimeContact and its subsidiary Canadian National Public Research, are compelled to publicly denounce a recent poll disseminated by CTV, sharing a polling company’s name that is very similar to our company name,” a statement reads.
“It is our opinion that CTV has irresponsibly published findings from a highly dubious source, identified as ‘National Public Research Canada,’ a ‘company’ with absolutely no ties to our organization, Canadian National Public Research,” the statement goes on to read.
Accusing CTV of “audacity” for circulating a survey that “blatantly lacks … methodological rigour and transparency,” the statement continued: “We categorically refute any association with this poll and cast serious doubt on the existence and ethical standards of the so-called ‘National Public Research Canada.’”
This is a position that doesn’t really require colourful adjectives to describe!
The legitimate pollster included a copy of its complaint Monday afternoon to CTV, which suggested the network retract the story, and the reporter’s entire embarrassing response: “I wrote the article at the recommendation of my boss, Dawn Walton.”
Respected Alberta pollster Janet Brown added her two bits on social media: “Strong and justified condemnation of @CTVCalgary and @ctvedmonton. Thank you @PrimeContact.”
On Tuesday afternoon, CTV published a substantial rewrite of its original story, with a new headline reading “Questions raised over survey on parental consent for abortions in Alberta,” including a note explaining that the man behind Alberta Blue Strategies, Richard Dur, is also the director of the Pro-Life Alberta Political Association.
Pro-Life Alberta is the “political party” set up to allow Albertans to get tax credits for making donations to the anti-reproductive-rights organization that is allowed to exist by Elections Alberta. As an aside, some legislative change is obviously required to remedy that situation – change that the UCP is unlikely to be enthusiastic about, since Pro-Life Alberta doesn’t run candidates against it in most ridings and in effect acts as an auxiliary to its campaign machine.
One minute before it published its revised version of Monday’s story, CTV also posted a new story that began, “A province-wide poll on parental rights for minors in Alberta seeking abortions was conducted by a company belonging to a Calgary-based conservative call centre, CTV News has learned.”
That story quoted a statement it received from Dur’s polling organization defending the survey and making clear its leader’s anti-abortion beliefs. “Anyone who questions the veracity of the results is welcome to put their money where their mouth is and see for themselves: a majority of Albertans recognize that parental rights should include consent and/or notification when their minor child wishes to undergo the irreversible surgical procedure of abortion,” it said.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and researchers were also looking into the poll.
Duncan Kinney at The Progress Report published a story saying corporate documents show “National Public Research Canada” is a subsidiary of Alberta Blue Strategies, which he described as “a conservative voter contact firm and call center run by Richard Dur.”
“National Public Research Canada is not a member of the Canadian Research Insights Council, the industry body for polling firms in Canada,” Kinney also noted, quoting CIRC CEO John Tabone saying “this research clearly does not comply” with the organization’s standards.
As reported by Kinney, Anti-Hate Canada also dug in to the metadata attached to the announcement of the poll and tied it to Alissa Golob, executive director of another anti-abortion group, RightNow.
In its rewrite of Tuesday’s story, CTV quoted Golob defending seeking parental consent for abortion. There was no mention of her possible connection to the poll.
“CTV Calgary have still not properly explained themselves for this shambolic debacle of journalism malpractice,” Kinney commented in his story.
As of this morning, there has been no apology or additional explanation from CTV for its original story and no promise to try to do better.
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