When the referees don the uniforms

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Ira Wagman

There has been a lot of attention devoted to the media consortium’s decision to exclude Elizabeth May from the national leader’s debates. To be sure, there are a number of issues to be dealt with concerning the arcane rules about participation – rules that should be debated in another forum, as Paul Adams indicated below. Clearly there are political implications, too. However, there is a deeper issue here – one that has to do with the position of Canada’s broadcasters, which have gone from simply covering the story to becoming part of it.   

Remember Stockwell Day and the Reform Party’s decision that they would no longer participate in the scrums outside of the House of Commons, only to take questions in the controlled environs of a press room in the basement? What happened then? Many major media outlets said thanks, but no thanks and, as a result, the folks downstairs came upstairs – because that is where the coverage would be.   

The same thinking should have applied here. The Consortium should have taken the position that the debates will take place as scheduled, whether some, all, or none of the parties wish to participate. After all of the posturing and blustering, I can assure you that most, if not all, of them would be on the air that night. Who would pass up a chance to reach a national audience?  The decision around participation should have been left for the political parties to decide.  

What happened here was not just a case of the broadcasters being intimidated by the political parties, as my colleague Chris Waddell noted here earlier. It was something even worse. By threatening not to participate in the debates the various political parties forced the broadcasters out their position as referees and onto the playing field. In other words, they politicized them. This now gives the parties additional ammunition about how the media are biased, it also re-circulates images of media cabals, and undercuts the credibility of the organizations charged with covering the elections as a public service, however we would like to define that term. The fact that the Consortium has not come out with the details of its decision-making process doesn’t help to shed the image that there may be other things going on behind closed doors. If the press expects openness from the political parties in the name of Canadians, why shouldn’t they be as up front about their process as well? Now that the Greens are threatening to take a complaint up to the CRTC and to the courts, it runs the risk of politicizing them too.  If you think this kind of thing won’t have an effect on the election consider what happened when the RCMP announced they were investigating Ralph Goodale about income trusts during the last election. It draws attention where it doesn’t need to be. The bureaucracy and the press need to stay on the sidelines.

This is an awful position for Canada’s media to be in at the beginning of an election. Considering that many of these broadcasters now own many of Canada’s largest newspapers and radio stations, there are already issues about the extent to which Canadians can expect comprehensive media coverage from the mainstream media outlets.  

By not getting caught in political issues around the debates, the Consortium would have made a bold statement about its own position in this election — as broadcasters interested in acting as equitably as possible in the public interest. With their involvement in the Green Party decision, they have, regrettably, become part of the story. 

Ira Wagman is an Assistant Professor, Mass Communication in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton.

The election and the economy

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Faculty links

Read an assessment of the impact the economy may have on the campaign – Campaigning through a minefield.

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

All about women

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

In the last election, the Liberals likely would have won if only women had the vote.

For some reason, most pollsters haven’t been publishing information on gender so far this year. However, EKOS Research [conflict alert — I also work there] did two polls last week, using different methodologies, both showing the Tories running much more strongly among men than women. One poll showed the Tories doing 6 percentage points better among men; the other showed an astonishing 18 percentage point gap. (See both polls at www.ekoselection.com )

If the Tories did as well among women as they do among men, the election would be practically over, and they’d be heading for more than a majority: they’d have a landslide. Even closing the gap would do wonders for their prospects.

All the other national political parties — the Liberals, NDP and Greens — attract more women than men. So while the Tories have been very successful at aggregating the men’s vote, the women’s vote is dispersed among the opposition parties. If one of them were able to bring the women’s vote home as the Tories do with the men, it would transform the electoral landscape in this election, and probably beyond.

Maybe that’s why we were hearing about child care from the Liberals this morning — and why Elizabeth May was quick to point out that she was excluded from the leaders’ debate by a pack of male leaders and male broadcast executives.

Paul Adams, a former political reporter with the CBC and Globe and Mail, is a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

Infinity of mirrors?

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Jeff Sallot

One of the most intriguing phenomenon in the early days of this federal election campaign is how mainstream media are paying attention to online media.

Last night CBC TV’s Susan Ormiston told us on The National she’ll be looking at how the election is playing out in cyberspace. Her page on the CBC News web site urges those with interesting digital footage to send it in.

I awoke this morning to reporter Chris Hall’s item on the CBC Radio morning newscast telling me that political bloggers are being flooded by posts from people who have something to say – and to share with the rest of the world – about the fact Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has been shut out of the TV debates.

The morning’s Ottawa Citizen has a piece by Canwest’s David Akin reporting that some web-savvy Conservative activists are launching a web site with video footage of Stephane Dion looking something less than prime ministerial.

I get to the office this morning and turn on CBC Newsworld to find reporter Julie Van Dusen talking about a Liberal website called Scandalpedia, an attack site that will go after the Harper Conservatives.

And this just in, CBC Newsworld anchor Heather Hiscox is talking about how the new Liberal web site featuring Dion looking prime ministerial has just gone live.

Jeff Sallot, a former Globe and Mail political correspondent and Ottawa bureau chief, teaches journalism at Carleton University and is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

Unnamed source/smear

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

The Globe’s Michael Valpy is one of the most revered figures in Canadian journalism, and rightly so, but he slipped a bit below his own high standards today by quoting a “senior Liberal” dissing Dion in an article about a new Liberal puff-piece on their leader. This “source” added no information, just an acid quote, and evidently doesn’t have the guts to put his or her name to the jab. Could this “senior Liberal” be a supporter of one of the other leadership candidates, or an adviser no longer in the inner circle? Don’t look for any information in the article.

There’s a place for unnamed sources: when they put information before the public that is not obtainable any other way. And when we are told enough about the source make an evaluation of how seriously to take the information. But this is not what’s going on here.

Here’s the passage:

“But what it [the video] won’t show is the Stéphane Dion that many party members say they know: a man whose personality, as one senior Liberal put it this week, is far removed from the romantic abstraction – of the humble little engine that could – that won him the Liberal leadership. “He is absolutely the arrogant, stubborn know-it-all,” the Liberal said.”

Paul Adams, a former political reporter with the CBC and Globe and Mail, is a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

Well, at least we won’t have to watch Law and Order re-runs

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Elizabeth May is out…wow.

Unnoticed in the hoo-ha, however, was the fact that the consortium of broadcasters who control the debates scheduled the English-language outing for October 2, the same night as the vice-presidential debate in the United States.

So the Canadian people won’t be subjected to re-runs that night after all! And the networks won’t take a revenue-hit on the American shows they simulcast. I suppose you could say this is in the interest of all Canadians, couldn’t you? Hmmmm.

Time for a national debate commission, with clear rules and the public interest as its mandate.

A former political journalist with CBC and the Globe and Mail, Paul Adams is a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

The election and the economy

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Faculty links

Read an assessment of the impact the economy will have on the campaign – Campaigning through a minefield.

The leaders’ debates

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

Of course Green Party leader Elizabeth May should be in the televised leaders debates. 

But there’s another important argument for her inclusion, beyond all the antiquated rationalization about whether the Greens should be in because they have or have not elected an MP. 

It’s not just the fact that party has polled more than four percent of the vote nationally in the past two elections. Even leave aside the bizarre incongruity that 90 percent of the viewers to the English-language debate can’t even vote for one of the leaders in the debate, Mr. Duceppe, as his party doesn’t run candidates where they live.

The Greens should be in the debate because they are a publicly-financed party just like the other four. Since Jean Chretien changed party financing laws, any party that gets two percent of the vote nationally receives 43.75 cents from the federal government every three months for every vote it won in the last federal election.

In the quarter ended June 30, the Bloc Quebecois received $758,350.39 from the government of Canada and the Liberals got $2,187,074.37. The Conservatives topped the list with $2,623,890.17 while $1,264,370.74 went to the NDP and the Green Party obtained $324,231.20.

That subsidy also explains why the other parties don’t want the Greens in the debate. Every vote Ms May’s party takes from one of the other four costs that party almost $2 a year in lost income. It doesn’t sound like much but it adds up quickly. The best way to minimize the risk she will inherit the cash they think is theirs, is to keep her off the stage.

The television networks didn’t have the courage to stand up to that. In the end they have shortchanged the group to whom they should owe their primary loyalty – their audience.

The networks should set the rules, invite all five leaders to the televised debates and make clear from the outset the debates will proceed regardless of who attends. After all that’s always been a primary role for the media, holding to account those who are spending public dollars.  

Then it would up to each party to decide whether to be accountable by participating or suffer whatever consequences might flow from deciding it was above scrutiny. 

The ease with which the parties intimidated the networks, further undermines media credibility at a time when it is already under widespread assault. 

In fact, this sorry episode shows that televised debates are now such an integral part of federal election campaigns, control of the rules and management of the debates should be taken from the networks. The debates should be run by an independent organization as happens with Presidential campaign debates in the United States.

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

Be careful with ‘Best PM’

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

Elections are all about forcing voters to choose. So it’s no surprise that pollsters do the same in the questions they ask and the media focuses on those choices in their stories. Sometimes though, forcing a choice can hide as much as it reveals as elections are also about trying to change voters’ minds

Stephen Harper has a wide lead in every recent poll when Canadians are asked which party leader would be the best Prime Minster.  In last week’s CBC’s poll, for instance, it was 39 for Harper, 13 for Dion, behind NDP leader Jack Layton at 15. At the Globe and Mail Mr. Harper led Mr. Dion 46-22. On that basis maybe the election’s already over.

What those results don’t indicate is how willing voters might be to consider someone else as PM.  For example instead of asking who would be the best PM, ask voters to rate each of the leaders as a Prime Minister on a scale of 1 to 10. Using this measure Stephen Harper may get an 8 and Stephane Dion a 4. Alternately Mr. Harper may get an 8 but Mr Dion a 7.5.

Both ways of asking the “best PM” question show Mr. Harper in the lead but the second way of posing the question reveals something else. A wide gap suggests Mr. Harper is fairly secure but if asking Canadians to rate the leaders on a scale reveals there is little to choose between them, it might not take much of a misstep by Mr. Harper for voters to start thinking of Mr. Dion as an acceptable alternative. 

Just before election day, forcing a choice among poll respondents makes sense. At the outset though, testing voters’ flexibility about best PM is likely to reveal more about the directions the campaign might take.

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

BQ surprise early runner in framing the ballot question

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

Who would have thought the Bloc Québecois would get first dibs on how the 2008 election is framed? But they have.

A crucial issue in any election is how the ballot question is eventually “framed” by the media, the parties and the public. Any election is about many things to many different people, of course: leadership, ideology, change, health care, local candidates, the economy, farm policy, the environment, abortion, and so on and so on.

However, at some point, many elections resolve themselves into a dominant media narrative, which is shared to a degree by many members of the public. The dominant “frame” in elections of 1984 and 1993 was about change at the top: whether to “throw the bums out”, in other words. 1988 was about free trade, of course, and the 2006 election ended up being largely about government ethics and accountability.

Almost unconsciously, the media seek a simple frame, or narrative, within which they can situate a variety of stories, in part because it makes their job (and the readers’) easier by reducing distractions and keeping the main story clear.

The parties have a vital interest in which frame the media pick up and run with, of course. That is what they call “framing the ballot box question”. But this year, the media have had trouble in the early running figuring out what that dominant frame should be. The question of whether there should be an early election didn’t have legs. Some tried out the idea that this election is about the economy, but that hasn’t stuck either. Briefly, the election seemed as if it was going to be about leadership, just as the Tories would like: contrasting their guy with the Liberals’.

Remarkably, however, the early front-runner for dominant frame has turned out to be: will Harper’s Conservatives win a majority. I say remarkably because the polls have shifted quite quickly. Two weeks ago, they had the Tories and Liberals in a close race; but last week, the Tories suddenly jumped into majority or near-majority territory, while the Liberals slumped.

“Battle begins for elusive majority,” was the headline in The Globe and Mail the morning after the election call. The lead article in La Presse, using a new poll as evidence, suggested the Conservatives are already likely headed to a majority.

Now let’s look at the parties and see how this suits each of them:

The Tories: Nope. They fear that, as in the past two elections, voters who believe Harper may be about to form a majority will pull back in fear of his alleged hidden agenda”.  Harper keeps claiming he expects no more than a minority – damn the polls. The Conservatives would prefer to talk about “leadership” which they think is a winner for them.

The Liberals: No, not them either. They would benefit from an anti-Tory majority backlash, of course, but as an aspiring party of power, it hardly helps them when the media dismisses their party as possible winners, and takes some sort of Tory victory for granted. They’d like the election to be a referendum on Harper’s “dark side” – and the environment, of course.

The New Democrats: Jack Layton wants the election to be about a clash of fundamental values. He is talking about becoming prime minister at the end of all this. In reality of course, the NDs have their sights on rallying the now-divided left of centre voters to their cause and displacing the Liberals as the alternative party of power. And if that means a Tory majority for a while, that’d probably be OK with them.

The Greens: It’s the environment, stupid.

And so we have the Bloc Quebecois: Gilles Duceppe was the only leader yesterday to talk openly about stopping a Tory majority. In fact, he talked so little about sovereignty (one reference), and so much about Afghanistan, social programs and women’s issues, he may be in danger of picking up left-leaning votes in Saskatchewan. For the moment, he is setting himself up as Canada’s bulwark against a rampant Conservative majority.

Well done, Gilles!

Paul Adams, a former political reporter for the CBC and Globe and Mail, is an assistant professor of journalism at Carleton, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.