The Lisa LaFlamme story isn't what you thought it was (at least, not entirely). There's a bigger, sadder story behind the end of one anchor's career. Plus, updates from Ottawa and Alberta.
My parents watched the 10/11 o'clock news religiously. I haven't in years. The idea that the anchor person is on the way out hadn't crossed my mind...like so many ideas you both put forth, but it ,makes perfect sense.
The comment that hit home was Jen's about being a pretty 20-year-old who picked writing because she knew she wouldn't stay 20 forever. That beauty gets you in the door and brains keeps you there ....well, for a while in Lisa LaFlamme's case...is a reality that I don't think many men anyway have ever really consider...until they look back on what we've seen, and frankly, what we've thought at times. For one who thinks of himself as evolved above that, I ashamed to say that I'm not as evolved as I'd like, and something to work on. It reminded me of a MASH episode where Margaret is yelling at Hawkeye that " you measure every woman here with a yardstick 3 letters high...S-E-X". I suspect that reality is that that hasn't changed as much as it should have.
Blair and Lucki.....Trump and Greene. Not believable at the best of times. The Boss needs to go...now.
When our parents watched the news at 10/11 o'clock it was probably because they missed it at 6 and there weren't 24-hour news channels (ty CNN). I should listen to more music or some of the fascinating talk available now but I've been lazy and have yet to cut the cord. The news was on pretty much all day, every day after Trump announced he was going to run. It was MSNBC always with short hops over to CNN. Evenings were movies and such. My husband wasn't well and the tv was his main entertainment, but I swear he lived only to see Trump lose in '20. He was very very happy. He was the serious news junkie. I was the amateur.
Jen is a clever girl. And I don't think she's changed much in the years I've gotten glimpses of her. I subscribed because I've always enjoyed her work. I wasn't so familiar with Matt but now I can feel pleasantly smug that I picked him too.
Being and staying beautiful is hard work. It's not just deciding to wear make-up one day and not the next. It's a full package deal and if you are being paid to be beautiful (besides professional and skilled, photogenic, articulate, etc) all of the time, like LaFlamme you get little downtime. When you are 20 it's much easier but at 20 you don't know how beautiful you are. And no one likes to be criticized for something as shallow as a haircut or an article of clothing (or weight) but it's more open season for "opinions" now than it's ever been. People just aren't very nice anymore.
We all think things on occasion, all of us. But we don't say it out loud. It's not PC or woke (hate that word), it's simply good manners. And should we blurt something out we apologize as quickly. We aren't stifling our free speech, we are self-correcting because we are always evolving.
I remember that MASH episode :) I remember them all.
Blair and Lucki...pphhtttt. But the pressure was eased off the RCMP FUs. That was such a horrible disgusting phone call. Trump and Green and Cruz and McCarthy and Gym Jordan and Nunes (and his cow) and Rand and Gohmert and Gaetz and Boebert and Schlapp and Graham and Cotton and Gosar and so many more are stupid and nasty and worse. McConnell is simply evil.
Love the format but I'd like to hear Jen talking more. Love the comments Matt, but you 'radio rant' more than you toss the ball back and forth. I like the QR77 style radio rant, but at least for this listener, podcasts aren't the format for it.
I’m 80 and I ‘cut the cord’ about 10 years ago because a TV subscription was very poor value. I have been streaming ever since via either Chromecast or Roku. This is fine for me because, despite living somewhat beyond the black stump, I have excellent affordable internet. A few houses north of me have not. They watch TV. I understand the economic conditions that are determining the downsizing of TV content but it does bring up the question of how the aforementioned folk can be kept informed since we don’t even have a local newspaper, or remain part of the greater cultural community.
I'd like to know if CBC's Carole MacNeil retired because she wanted to or because the CBC wanted her to go. I think she was a top notch interviewer/journalist and her absence is noticeable.
Jack Webster interviewing Pierre Trudeau about a week before the 1980 election (Libs won a majority but not one seat in BC) after Joe Clark's no-confidence budget fail. Funny, far-ranging, so many issues are still issues today. Both men with pen and paper to keep track.
It was a great show. Every weekday morning at "9 am precisely" in Jack's brogue. He interviewed everyone. PET 3 or 4 times. I don't think anyone turned him down. Labour leaders, writers like Barbara Amiel (eastern media mafia:) Pierre Burton and more. He was NDP to the core and he didn't care who knew because it didn't matter to him or his guests. He had no problem chewing up Broadbent or Barrett if he thought they were out of line.
I shouldn't watch Jack's videos. There is nothing like it today and that's a shame. And he wasn't even pretty:)
You go guys! Love the “behind the scenes chatter/insight” Matt, it fills in a lot of the blanks. Gen, you will have a beautiful youthful voice till the day I die. And an inquisitive brain!! Please do not think me misogynistic.
I haven't had real TV service since the late 90's, so can barely remember TV news. That being said, TV journalism always focused on physical appearance over journalistic content. So successful TV journalists should not be surprised at their declining worth as they age.
Wow, you are amazing. You can barely remember TV news but you remember that it always focused on physical appearance. Who were the beauties from 20+ years ago Doug? Do you know there were new hires in the past couple of decades? But of course, you didn't know that. You haven't paid it any attention in so long, that you can barely remember if you ever did.
You missed my point....physical appearance has always been an attribute in TV news, much like voice on radio news. TV still conveys visuals and radio still conveys audio, so nothing has changed. Print is the only content focused medium.
Why? They aren’t comparable situations. We both know and like Jamil. I’d go on his show. But this is a different level altogether. Read Jamil’s essays on the matter. They were interesting.
There are a few reasons I put that crack in your comment section; you've underlined a couple in your response to me.
Of course they're comparable. Both individuals were Bell Media employees, both were employed under contract, both were summarily un-renewed by Bell Media, both went public regarding their dismissals, and both are critical of their dismissals. I'm sure you could find more. I'm just a 63 y/o man living in rural Nova Scotia, but finding 5 items in common was simple.
Differences: LaFlamme is a very wealthy woman. You could probably hire over a dozen hungry journalists with her salary, bonuses and benefits. LaFlamme, to my knowledge, is interested in corporate media and her place in it, i.e., she's Laurentian elite. And she's carefully curated.
Jamil Jivani is a non-practising lawyer (Yale!) who had a small, contentious radio program but is now an employee at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute. He's very interested in young Canadians and the social fabric of this country. He is not wealthy by LaFlamme standards. And he often mocks liberals.
LaFlamme was "not renewed" because Bell Media wanted someone who has less pull on finances and a much smaller salary in the Anchor's chair. After exhausting everything else that's what you and Jenn landed on, and rightly so. And also, diversity, whatever that means. According to Jivani, his contract went pffft because he was expressing opinions that made BLM activists, and therefore his bosses, pee themselves.
Let's bring Batya Ungar-Sargon into the discussion. According to her the 3 squishy pillars of social justice - sexism, racism and homophobia (now absurdly over-inflated to misogyny, white supremacy and transphobia) - in fact play smokescreen to what is actually happening: a near total domination of the social, not by bigotry, but by class, a class divide characterized by a sneering condescension by woke corporate activists (the people Melling is actually listening to) towards 1) the working class (see Convoy, Ottawa, last winter), and any person expressing opinions evern remotely right of centre, let alone centre left.
So when you characterize the differences between the two former Bell Media employees as "a different level altogether," that's what I hear. LaFlamme's contract non-renewal is so very much more important because she's wealthy and she is a celebrity. Versus a self described Black man non-celebrity who was dismissed because he's not voicing the correct Black opinions. Once more, with enthusiasm! LaFlamme's non-renewal is "on a different level altogether" due to her class and the importance you and others ascribe to it. Jivani disappeared from Bell Media with hardly a ripple because of his principles (including the now derided idea of freedom of speech) and the way he expresses them.
Now really Matt, which story is really on a different level? The one that belongs on Entertainment Tonight, or the one you would find on a Bari Weiss Substack?
You see, I think people who accuse Bell Media of sexism or (FFS) misogyny are watching the movie "Broadcast News" and instead should be watching the movie "Network." Journalism is a ruthless biz, and it's even moreso since almost all of it is being controlled financially by people who don't care about journalism. I know, this isn't news to you. But it's becoming really obvious to more and more people as journalistic princples are jettisoned for truck loads of money from the Trudeau government. The Parliamentary Press Gallery has simply walked away from their jobs vis a vis the government lest the money evaporate. I'm not telling you anything new.
Again, anyone in 2022, in Canada, in Toronto, saying LaFlamme was un-renewed because of sexism has stopped observing the world around them. Visiting upon her some sort of victim status is a tired, sick joke. She's a fucking millionaire. Anyway, you know this is a dumb take when The Guardian runs an article blaming her non-renewal on gray hair. That's not just dumb journalism, that's childishly dumb.
So yeah, you should do a long editorial on Jivani's non-renewal. I read him religiously (as it were) but have yet to find a single reason to watch anything LaFlamme has done. She's simply and singularly uninteresting.
The segment on LaFlamme I ballparked at about 2,600 words. That's almost half as long as Terry Glavin's magnum opus "The Year of the Graves," and it's twice as long as the average Paul Wells Substack post.
And lastly, there are elements of the Russian Army who rape Ukranian women for laughs or for terror, or both. *That's* misogyny Matt. Some self satisfied executives with (maybe) narcissistic tendencies in a Toronto office tower deciding to "move on" from LaFlamme is not, however you want to dress it up. Without insulting you I can't state this any clearer. This inflationary rhetoric around bigotry is an immense fail for journalism. The Line could really set itself apart by avoiding it altogether.
As for your long response, I’ll ignore the weird part about how misogyny must apparently now equal or exceed wartime mass rape, and simply note that for all the words you spilled, you didn’t notice giving the game away. It’s a different level because, despite how personal greater interest in Jamil, he disappeared without a ripple, as you put it, and LaFlamme made news across Canada and beyond. You’re welcome to feel this is outrageous. But the other-level case is easily made.
Must? I didn't say "must." I didn't even say "must apparently." You're a journalist, Matt; misquoting someone (or at least imputing meaning where it clearly doesn't belong) is usually considered bad form. Steve Paikin would be appalled.
And my dictionary still defines misogyny as "hatred of women." So we come back to this: a contract decision doesn't go the way people want, to someone who happens to be a famous woman, and the verdict - without evidence, without true inside knowledge, without access to the 3 weeks of conversations between LaFlamme, her lawyer, and her erstwhile bosses - is that the poobahs at Bell Media hate women. Generally. And without said evidence of any kind what's really important to do - in writing - is to keep repeating that accusation over and over and over again. Because everyone else (on Twitter) is.
That's fucked up, but it's SOP in today's journalistic ecosystem. As Andrew Sullivan famously said, "We all live on campus now."
Anyway, we're way off topic. I wrote "Now do Jamil Jivani" because I wanted to prick your consciences, and I succeeded within normal parameters, as the say - or don't - in "Strange New Worlds."
To paraphrase JFK, "You don't spill (see what I did there?) 2,600 words on Jamil Jivani because it is easy, you do it because it is hard." Lisa LaFlamme qua editorial was a walk in the park for you and Jen - because everyone else (on Twitter especially) was doing the same thing. And that's how your value goes down, at least for this oldish fogey on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.
Nothing but love for old fogeys, but if you raise absurd examples/comparisons, expect to be tken at your word. And again, the main difference, which you continue to gloss over, is that LaFlamme's situation got more attention because it's more interesting. You can disagree. But you're in a small minority (which is fine).
Still misconstruing my example, one, by the way, that is factually true. As opposed to yours, which isn't. It never gets old for you, does it Matt. Trust in media is plummeting and there you are, throwing logs on the fire under "feisty start ups."
You did disappear my comment. My brother looked and can't find it. Me either.
This ....was....awesome.
My parents watched the 10/11 o'clock news religiously. I haven't in years. The idea that the anchor person is on the way out hadn't crossed my mind...like so many ideas you both put forth, but it ,makes perfect sense.
The comment that hit home was Jen's about being a pretty 20-year-old who picked writing because she knew she wouldn't stay 20 forever. That beauty gets you in the door and brains keeps you there ....well, for a while in Lisa LaFlamme's case...is a reality that I don't think many men anyway have ever really consider...until they look back on what we've seen, and frankly, what we've thought at times. For one who thinks of himself as evolved above that, I ashamed to say that I'm not as evolved as I'd like, and something to work on. It reminded me of a MASH episode where Margaret is yelling at Hawkeye that " you measure every woman here with a yardstick 3 letters high...S-E-X". I suspect that reality is that that hasn't changed as much as it should have.
Blair and Lucki.....Trump and Greene. Not believable at the best of times. The Boss needs to go...now.
When our parents watched the news at 10/11 o'clock it was probably because they missed it at 6 and there weren't 24-hour news channels (ty CNN). I should listen to more music or some of the fascinating talk available now but I've been lazy and have yet to cut the cord. The news was on pretty much all day, every day after Trump announced he was going to run. It was MSNBC always with short hops over to CNN. Evenings were movies and such. My husband wasn't well and the tv was his main entertainment, but I swear he lived only to see Trump lose in '20. He was very very happy. He was the serious news junkie. I was the amateur.
Jen is a clever girl. And I don't think she's changed much in the years I've gotten glimpses of her. I subscribed because I've always enjoyed her work. I wasn't so familiar with Matt but now I can feel pleasantly smug that I picked him too.
Being and staying beautiful is hard work. It's not just deciding to wear make-up one day and not the next. It's a full package deal and if you are being paid to be beautiful (besides professional and skilled, photogenic, articulate, etc) all of the time, like LaFlamme you get little downtime. When you are 20 it's much easier but at 20 you don't know how beautiful you are. And no one likes to be criticized for something as shallow as a haircut or an article of clothing (or weight) but it's more open season for "opinions" now than it's ever been. People just aren't very nice anymore.
We all think things on occasion, all of us. But we don't say it out loud. It's not PC or woke (hate that word), it's simply good manners. And should we blurt something out we apologize as quickly. We aren't stifling our free speech, we are self-correcting because we are always evolving.
I remember that MASH episode :) I remember them all.
Blair and Lucki...pphhtttt. But the pressure was eased off the RCMP FUs. That was such a horrible disgusting phone call. Trump and Green and Cruz and McCarthy and Gym Jordan and Nunes (and his cow) and Rand and Gohmert and Gaetz and Boebert and Schlapp and Graham and Cotton and Gosar and so many more are stupid and nasty and worse. McConnell is simply evil.
Love the format but I'd like to hear Jen talking more. Love the comments Matt, but you 'radio rant' more than you toss the ball back and forth. I like the QR77 style radio rant, but at least for this listener, podcasts aren't the format for it.
He's such a guy, honestly.
I’m 80 and I ‘cut the cord’ about 10 years ago because a TV subscription was very poor value. I have been streaming ever since via either Chromecast or Roku. This is fine for me because, despite living somewhat beyond the black stump, I have excellent affordable internet. A few houses north of me have not. They watch TV. I understand the economic conditions that are determining the downsizing of TV content but it does bring up the question of how the aforementioned folk can be kept informed since we don’t even have a local newspaper, or remain part of the greater cultural community.
I'd like to know if CBC's Carole MacNeil retired because she wanted to or because the CBC wanted her to go. I think she was a top notch interviewer/journalist and her absence is noticeable.
I still miss Jack Webster.
Jack Webster interviewing Pierre Trudeau about a week before the 1980 election (Libs won a majority but not one seat in BC) after Joe Clark's no-confidence budget fail. Funny, far-ranging, so many issues are still issues today. Both men with pen and paper to keep track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u6s1henYDs
The comparisons between questions and answers is eye-opening; well, that's an understatement really. And that cool "theme from Shaft" opening music.
It was a great show. Every weekday morning at "9 am precisely" in Jack's brogue. He interviewed everyone. PET 3 or 4 times. I don't think anyone turned him down. Labour leaders, writers like Barbara Amiel (eastern media mafia:) Pierre Burton and more. He was NDP to the core and he didn't care who knew because it didn't matter to him or his guests. He had no problem chewing up Broadbent or Barrett if he thought they were out of line.
I shouldn't watch Jack's videos. There is nothing like it today and that's a shame. And he wasn't even pretty:)
“Queen of the rage quit” I’m sure there is a story there! 😂😂
You go guys! Love the “behind the scenes chatter/insight” Matt, it fills in a lot of the blanks. Gen, you will have a beautiful youthful voice till the day I die. And an inquisitive brain!! Please do not think me misogynistic.
I haven't had real TV service since the late 90's, so can barely remember TV news. That being said, TV journalism always focused on physical appearance over journalistic content. So successful TV journalists should not be surprised at their declining worth as they age.
Wow, you are amazing. You can barely remember TV news but you remember that it always focused on physical appearance. Who were the beauties from 20+ years ago Doug? Do you know there were new hires in the past couple of decades? But of course, you didn't know that. You haven't paid it any attention in so long, that you can barely remember if you ever did.
You missed my point....physical appearance has always been an attribute in TV news, much like voice on radio news. TV still conveys visuals and radio still conveys audio, so nothing has changed. Print is the only content focused medium.
Now do Jamil Jivani.
Why? They aren’t comparable situations. We both know and like Jamil. I’d go on his show. But this is a different level altogether. Read Jamil’s essays on the matter. They were interesting.
There are a few reasons I put that crack in your comment section; you've underlined a couple in your response to me.
Of course they're comparable. Both individuals were Bell Media employees, both were employed under contract, both were summarily un-renewed by Bell Media, both went public regarding their dismissals, and both are critical of their dismissals. I'm sure you could find more. I'm just a 63 y/o man living in rural Nova Scotia, but finding 5 items in common was simple.
Differences: LaFlamme is a very wealthy woman. You could probably hire over a dozen hungry journalists with her salary, bonuses and benefits. LaFlamme, to my knowledge, is interested in corporate media and her place in it, i.e., she's Laurentian elite. And she's carefully curated.
Jamil Jivani is a non-practising lawyer (Yale!) who had a small, contentious radio program but is now an employee at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute. He's very interested in young Canadians and the social fabric of this country. He is not wealthy by LaFlamme standards. And he often mocks liberals.
LaFlamme was "not renewed" because Bell Media wanted someone who has less pull on finances and a much smaller salary in the Anchor's chair. After exhausting everything else that's what you and Jenn landed on, and rightly so. And also, diversity, whatever that means. According to Jivani, his contract went pffft because he was expressing opinions that made BLM activists, and therefore his bosses, pee themselves.
Let's bring Batya Ungar-Sargon into the discussion. According to her the 3 squishy pillars of social justice - sexism, racism and homophobia (now absurdly over-inflated to misogyny, white supremacy and transphobia) - in fact play smokescreen to what is actually happening: a near total domination of the social, not by bigotry, but by class, a class divide characterized by a sneering condescension by woke corporate activists (the people Melling is actually listening to) towards 1) the working class (see Convoy, Ottawa, last winter), and any person expressing opinions evern remotely right of centre, let alone centre left.
So when you characterize the differences between the two former Bell Media employees as "a different level altogether," that's what I hear. LaFlamme's contract non-renewal is so very much more important because she's wealthy and she is a celebrity. Versus a self described Black man non-celebrity who was dismissed because he's not voicing the correct Black opinions. Once more, with enthusiasm! LaFlamme's non-renewal is "on a different level altogether" due to her class and the importance you and others ascribe to it. Jivani disappeared from Bell Media with hardly a ripple because of his principles (including the now derided idea of freedom of speech) and the way he expresses them.
Now really Matt, which story is really on a different level? The one that belongs on Entertainment Tonight, or the one you would find on a Bari Weiss Substack?
You see, I think people who accuse Bell Media of sexism or (FFS) misogyny are watching the movie "Broadcast News" and instead should be watching the movie "Network." Journalism is a ruthless biz, and it's even moreso since almost all of it is being controlled financially by people who don't care about journalism. I know, this isn't news to you. But it's becoming really obvious to more and more people as journalistic princples are jettisoned for truck loads of money from the Trudeau government. The Parliamentary Press Gallery has simply walked away from their jobs vis a vis the government lest the money evaporate. I'm not telling you anything new.
Again, anyone in 2022, in Canada, in Toronto, saying LaFlamme was un-renewed because of sexism has stopped observing the world around them. Visiting upon her some sort of victim status is a tired, sick joke. She's a fucking millionaire. Anyway, you know this is a dumb take when The Guardian runs an article blaming her non-renewal on gray hair. That's not just dumb journalism, that's childishly dumb.
So yeah, you should do a long editorial on Jivani's non-renewal. I read him religiously (as it were) but have yet to find a single reason to watch anything LaFlamme has done. She's simply and singularly uninteresting.
The segment on LaFlamme I ballparked at about 2,600 words. That's almost half as long as Terry Glavin's magnum opus "The Year of the Graves," and it's twice as long as the average Paul Wells Substack post.
And lastly, there are elements of the Russian Army who rape Ukranian women for laughs or for terror, or both. *That's* misogyny Matt. Some self satisfied executives with (maybe) narcissistic tendencies in a Toronto office tower deciding to "move on" from LaFlamme is not, however you want to dress it up. Without insulting you I can't state this any clearer. This inflationary rhetoric around bigotry is an immense fail for journalism. The Line could really set itself apart by avoiding it altogether.
Did you delete my comment? Or just dsappear it?
Neither. It’s still there.
As for your long response, I’ll ignore the weird part about how misogyny must apparently now equal or exceed wartime mass rape, and simply note that for all the words you spilled, you didn’t notice giving the game away. It’s a different level because, despite how personal greater interest in Jamil, he disappeared without a ripple, as you put it, and LaFlamme made news across Canada and beyond. You’re welcome to feel this is outrageous. But the other-level case is easily made.
Must? I didn't say "must." I didn't even say "must apparently." You're a journalist, Matt; misquoting someone (or at least imputing meaning where it clearly doesn't belong) is usually considered bad form. Steve Paikin would be appalled.
And my dictionary still defines misogyny as "hatred of women." So we come back to this: a contract decision doesn't go the way people want, to someone who happens to be a famous woman, and the verdict - without evidence, without true inside knowledge, without access to the 3 weeks of conversations between LaFlamme, her lawyer, and her erstwhile bosses - is that the poobahs at Bell Media hate women. Generally. And without said evidence of any kind what's really important to do - in writing - is to keep repeating that accusation over and over and over again. Because everyone else (on Twitter) is.
That's fucked up, but it's SOP in today's journalistic ecosystem. As Andrew Sullivan famously said, "We all live on campus now."
Anyway, we're way off topic. I wrote "Now do Jamil Jivani" because I wanted to prick your consciences, and I succeeded within normal parameters, as the say - or don't - in "Strange New Worlds."
To paraphrase JFK, "You don't spill (see what I did there?) 2,600 words on Jamil Jivani because it is easy, you do it because it is hard." Lisa LaFlamme qua editorial was a walk in the park for you and Jen - because everyone else (on Twitter especially) was doing the same thing. And that's how your value goes down, at least for this oldish fogey on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.
Best wishes,
Warren Laws
Chester, NS
@2nd_tenor
Nothing but love for old fogeys, but if you raise absurd examples/comparisons, expect to be tken at your word. And again, the main difference, which you continue to gloss over, is that LaFlamme's situation got more attention because it's more interesting. You can disagree. But you're in a small minority (which is fine).
Still misconstruing my example, one, by the way, that is factually true. As opposed to yours, which isn't. It never gets old for you, does it Matt. Trust in media is plummeting and there you are, throwing logs on the fire under "feisty start ups."
You did disappear my comment. My brother looked and can't find it. Me either.
You smell of fear.