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.

Read this or die, political junkie!

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Jeff Sallot

And so the battle for your time and attention begins.  The combatants are not just the politicians, but also reporters, editors, TV anchors, bloggers and other assorted old and new media types, myself included. (Stay with me on this.)

The competition is going to be doubly intense the coming weeks because we have a national election campaigns running here in Canada at the same times as the U.S. presidential campaign approaches its climax. 

Canadian TV news execs met with officials from the political parties the other day to work out schedules for the leaders’ debates that would not conflict with the TV presidential debates. They succeeded for the most part. But one of the Canadian debates is going to fall on the same night as the U.S. vice presidential debate. Political junkies are going to have to make a tough choice.  (“Honey, should we watch Harper and Dion tonight or Palin and Biden?”)

Judging by the weekend editions’  front pages, the two national dailies seem to have different takes on what their audiences want – or need – in terms of political coverage. The National Post’s front featured four photographs of Sarah Palin, including an intriguing shot of her with a bloody caribou she bagged somewhere in icy Alaska. The headline read: “Is Sarah Palin an enemy or hero of feminism?” She’s certainly the hero of Post photo editors.

Writing from deep in the American heartland, Conrad Black, the Post’s founder and former owner, had a full page inside to explain why the U.S. presidential contest is “the most important election in the world since the rise of Ronald Reagan in 1980.”

Over at The Globe and Mail, where I once worked, the weekend front was dominated by the Canadian election, as were the first ten pages of the news section. The Globe is also using  the print edition to direct political junkies to its election web site.  Editor Edward Greenspon says the web site will be able to “dig deeper” in political coverage than will the hard copy Globe.

Scalping?

A sidebar to Greenspon’s column promises that the web site will provide all the political news  you can handle with links to the latest “headlines elsewhere.” This “News from Elsewhere” is a nifty little device pioneered by some of the national Sunday papers in the U.K. The final editions of the Sunday papers would carry a summary of the major stories running in their competition. This used to be called scalping when it was done without crediting the competition, and it was frowned upon. It’s now a regular feature of cable news networks. TV talking heads will hold up the front pages of the morning papers, sometimes faxed or emailed in PDF format to the TV newsrooms from the papers themselves. 

And so there it was on the Globe’s politics web page Saturday morning, the links to stories  in the Sun papers, the Canwest papers, CBC, Canadian Press, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, and so on.

The bean counters in the business offices of major news organizations are going to love this. I can hear them now: “Why are we sending political reporters to Halifax to do stories when we can just link to the Chronicle Herald?” And the political reporters are going to hate it. Is this a new form of scalping? News gathering on the cheap.

One Stop Shopping

It seems to me  Globe editors need to clearly explain to readers their criteria for linking to these particular stories. Is the Globe validating the accuracy or newsworthiness of these stories? Probably not. But will they link to a juicy Frank Magazine-type rumour-laced report that their own reporters can’t nail down (maybe because it isn’t true) but is making the rounds at warp speed in the online world?

Editors  recognize the competition for your time and attention is intense, and they want their outlet to become one-stop shopping for consumers of political news.  One Globe website reader, using the screen name Bingo Bingo, posted this note: “One stop shopping? Sorry, I feed on media like a mouse, a little here, a little there, so I avoid lethal doses of poison.”

(Astute readers will note I have just scalped a delightful quote from the Globe website. You read it here first.)

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.