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It’s not often as a reporter you get an inside view of a big political story.

But when a documentary about Premier Kathleen Wynne took on its own life in the media, that’s exactly what happened to me. When I was hired earlier this year as a research consultant on the film — now titled Premier: The Unscripted Kathleen Wynne and scheduled to air this Saturday on CTV’s W5 — it promised a unique perspective and unprecedented access to the premier as budget preparations were well underway.

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Then, the Sudbury byelection scandal rocked Queen’s Park and the premier’s office, all while the cameras were rolling. Later, an internal dispute between the producer, the director and TVO, which commissioned the film, led to the documentary being pulled from the provincial broadcaster.

That’s when the misinformation began to spread and I gained an interesting insight that will inform my political reporting for years to come. A narrative emerged that the premier’s office killed the film, was trying to censor it and remove any reference to the Sudbury scandal. But that’s simply not the case. What actually happened was, from the outset, that the premier’s office had the right to review parts of the film that were shot during confidential cabinet meetings to ensure commercially sensitive information was not included. Period.