NOTE: Original written by Scott Johnson - republished from www.UysFaber.com
During Canada's 41st election, the media was either exploited, greedy, or a combination of the two.
I'm going to start by pointing to the Kent Commission and Davey Report (Royal Commission on Newspapers), and particularly a statement in the section "Key Findings":
" the Commission concluded that the profession’s primary responsibility was "searching out and reporting the truth." "
I may be naive, but that sounds like a journalist's job description, and the Kent commission concurs, even if the statement is optimistic and ideological.
The voting public does rely on journalists to inform themselves about political events.
In a way, you could ask that if a politician stole a dollar, but it was never reported, did it really happen? Of course it did, but they would get re-elected!
The media's failure begin with their coverage of the reason why Canada was having an election.
The Liberals put forward and passed a motion of non-confidence in the sitting government. The stated reason for the motion and vote was the 'prima facie' case of contempt found by the Honourable speaker of the house.
Regardless of the poor tactical decision by the Liberals, miring the contempt ruling in a partisan vote, the historical event of a sitting government being found in contempt was a first for a Westminster system - globally.
The Government had literally been found withholding information from the democratically elected representatives of the people. Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like a breach of the public trust. That should have been journalistic gold.
Now to be fair, the media did cover the contempt ruling, as evidenced in this McGill analysis of newspaper reporting, but the upcoming budget with its looming deficit actually outranked the contempt coverage leading up to the drop of the writ.
Why is that important?
"Public opinion responds not to events or social trends themselves, but rather to reported events." [1]
The above quote is from an award winning University of Chicago press book, which studied American public opinion and behaviours over a 50 year period.
Like it or not, the choices of editors can sway public opinion.
In this light, it is legitimate to ask who the editors of Canada's newspapers support, and if it is representative of public opinion.
In the last three elections, editorial boards of 75% or more Canadian papers that endorsed candidates supported the Conservative party. We are all human, but this consensus of opinion should give cause for reflection, especially when looking at which stories get multiple days of exposure. I don't believe that this is some Orwellian plot, but given the harmonic editorial mindset, it becomes easy to argue that their reporting probably tended in Harper's favour rather than against it, albeit subconsciously. In fact, one can even show through the above McGill research that Harper and/or the Conservatives are mentioned first in newspaper articles 51% of the time or greater during the entire campaign, reaching 66% in week three. Harper didn't even receive 50% of the vote, but Harper was mentioned more times than both Layton and Ignatieff combined for 4 out of 5 weeks during the campaign.
Trying to stay empirical, I'll use the McGill research again, looking at the week of March 21-27. This is two weeks after the speakers ruling, and the week the Liberals pass their motion of non-confidence.
Already the theme of "coalitions" has rocketed into heavy usage, surpassing "contempt" by over 50%. "coalition" is the most mentioned political news item, even though the election is only called on the 25th-26th.
This can be partially explained by Liberal leader M. Ignatieff's stumbling out of the gate with an incoherent position on the topic. He did attempt to clear up confusion the next day, by stating emphatically that he would not enter into a coalition agreement.
Theoretically, this should have resulted in a visible tapering off of coalition coverage, but the following week (March 28-April 3) the word "coalition" appeared 449 times. That's over 50% of the articles surveyed in the McGill research. To put that in another perspective, the word "contempt" was mentioned 503 times from the period of March 14th till May 1st.
Again, to be equitable, Conservative leader Stephen Harper, as well as his entire party, used the word at each and every opportunity. The term "coalition" was being used by the Conservative Party as a form of scaremongering, as well as branding. This was clearly a marketing strategy by the Conservative party, demonstrated by repeated commercials for months prior to the election.
Given that this was a platform issue for the Conservatives, the media had a duty to analyze the CPC statements. Instead they just repeated them.
CBC personality Peter Mansbridge actually spent three of his leader interviews on the topic of coalitions, and barely challenged Stephen Harper when he flagrantly disagreed with facts. Academics and legal experts were rarely consulted or interviewed.
Meanwhile, constitutional experts were frothing at the misinformation being spouted by the incumbent Prime Minister.
Peter Russell is man often quoted in the media as a constitutional expert. He made a desperate cry for the education of the public regarding the contempt ruling, posted through this video.
Again, being fair, CBC did do one broadcast citing Peter Russell as an expert, and attempted to educate the public on how our system of democracy functions.
Just one broadcast citing an expert for the most publicized topic of the 41st election campaign.
Considering that the term "coalition" was a Conservative marketing strategy, Stephen Harper couldn't have paid for better coverage.
What makes it funnier is that Stephen Harper disdained any unscripted media contact, limiting reporter's questions, as well as fencing them off from events, as evidenced by this CTV video.
Stephen Harper played the media so well that when Terry Milewski tried to ask a question he was drowned out by the local crowd, their outburst inspired by Harpers handlers. This attempt to silence the reporter became the story, and his question become a foot-note. The question was regarding a suspected terrorist financier in the Air India bombing being courted by a Conservative candidate.
All these factors encumbered the media, allowing them no 'new' material from the Conservative Party, instead forcing the Press to repeat Harpers mantra like speech.
But that's not entirely true.
Harper didn't run a smooth well-oiled blue machine. All of the events I'm about to list below were only discovered during the election campaign (36 days). Think about that as you read the list.
Harper's campaign was marred by no-show candidates at debates, Bruce Carson (a story that still isn't over), Party Organizers being charged with election violations, a leaked auditor general's draft report that accused the Tories of misleading Parliament on G8 spending projects, Sebastien Togneri - who is under investigation by the RCMP for meddling in ATI requests - is found volunteering in Edmonton, allegations that Harper's chief spokesman peddled influence in Quebec, the aforementioned religious extremist support, the contempt issue, the release of evidence (or lack thereof) used to boot Helena Guergis from caucus, an anti-abortion Conservative candidate bragging about the defunding of an international agency that promotes family planning, and lastly speculation that a CPC contender promised immigration papers through his connections to the Minister of Immigration.
The last one was sloughed off by the media as commonplace in Ottawa. It seems complacency is common as well, since this detritus of scandals consistently received less coverage than "coalition".
At no point during the campaign did the "coalition" story lose its solid and unchallenged throne as the top media story, accumulating a massive 1290 mentions in newspapers, compared with the next closest term, "deficit" at 884.
All Four national political parties put forward "deficit" reduction plans, but only one party flogged "coalition".
Which brings us to the surprising cohesion of support for the Conservative party from newspaper editors nationwide. Private newspapers are expected, to a minor extent, to have a pro business bias. This is the nature of the beast, as they themselves are private enterprises. The pro business bias in this election was that the Conservative party was the only party offering corporate tax-cuts, which if it did not directly benefit the smaller corporation, would certainly enrich their parent conglomerates. (There are only 4 or 5 media companies in Canada)
However, considering how journalists were treated by the Conservative party, their endorsements are nothing less than a complete affront to their profession.
Given the secretive nature of Stephen Harper so often described by the media, and the recent SCC decision that the public does not have a right to access documents in the offices of cabinet ministers or the prime minister, I'd say journalists have had their jobs spun out for the next four years.
In modern slang, that's an Epic Fail.
Even a CBC political correspondent, late in the campaign, posted an open question on twitter
"Is this our fault? I know I ask this every now and then, but I'm starting to feel really guilty and responsible. Us being the media."
I believe that empirical evidence does show that journalists didn't perform their job, and failed the Canadian public.
If I still haven't convinced you, perhaps L. Martins article in the Globe and Mail entitled "Has the fourth estate lost its tenacity?" will show that my opinion is something journalists are even asking themselves.
My questions for journalists country-wide is this:
How does it feel to be used like a tool?
[1] page 340, The rational public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences by Page and Shapiro, University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (March 1, 1992)
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