Positive thoughts about negative ads

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Susan Krashinsky

Conventional wisdom has it that Canadians have a low tolerance for negative campaign tactics. While negative ad campaigns are commonplace for our neighbours to the south, it’s often said Canadians are quicker to cry foul at such attacks.

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Journalists and “off-colour” jokes

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Notice the journalists squirming just a little with the Gerry Ritz story? Death by a thousand cold-cuts etc…

On Mansbridge’s At-Issue panel last night, Andrew Coyne asked who can say honestly they haven’t made a tasteless joke themselves, and everyone sagely nodded agreement.

Newsrooms are the original home of the tasteless joke, of course. When I was little, my aunt Madeleine, who was one of the few women in the Winnipeg Free Press newsroom would regale us over Sunday dinner with a joke whose meaning had clearly passed her entirely by. My Dad would take her aside and give a brief explanation, which would bring an appalled look to her face and a vow never to repeat such a story again — until the next Sunday dinner.

In the years since, the influx of women, and people of colour into newsrooms has reduced the number of explicitly sexual and racist jokes — and even homophobic jokes are probably in decline as more and more reporters are “out”. But there are no dead people in newsrooms, and usually no grieving relatives, and I think it is somewhere in the media stylebook that dead people are pretty much fair game — so long as none of this gets into the newspaper or on air.

If you collected all the newsroom September 11 jokes and published them, the whole profession would probably have to resign in disgrace. There goes the entire MSM — whoosh. Bloggers, with your gentle sensibilities: fill the vacuum.

The fact is, not everyone does make a habit of joking about dead people. Maybe you can say journos do it as a psychological release because of the stress of their jobs — I’m sure medical residents do it too. Or maybe we’re just jerks.

But I know my mother never makes jokes like that. I know my aunt would never knowingly do so. Who knows? The world may be filled with these people. Journalists just don’t include any of them in their circle of close friends.

Maybe that’s why we’ve never had a journalist appointed as Minister of Agriculture. 

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

Mike Miner writes:

I just had to check:

Joseph-Aldric Ouimet, Minister of Agriculture July 13, 1895 – December 20, 1895

“After being educated in a seminary, and a brief career as a journalist, Ouimet became a lawyer. He was first elected to the House of Commons at the age of 25.”
-Wikipedia

Mike
Carleton, BJ 2000

I note his short tenure — PA

Corrections and carbon tax

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

There’s just something about carbon taxes that seems to attract corrections. Here’s today’s Toronto Star:

“The word “taxes” was omitted from a Sept. 13 article about the Green Party. The sentence should have read: She (Elizabeth May) spoke passionately about reducing greenhouse gases, described the challenge as a huge economic opportunity for alternative energy sources, and argued the party’s proposal for a “carbon tax” would be offset by cuts to income and payroll taxes.”

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.

Weekend Assignment Desk

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Reporters: Ever have a weekend assignment editor who wanted you to abandon the news and do a story on some hobby-horse of his? Of course you have. But if not, I offer my services free of charge (and free of obligation).

Here’s the hook: Tzipi Livni was just elected head of Israel’s Kadima faction and will now try to negotiate a coalition to install her as the next prime minister.

Here’s the background: For the last decade, starting with Stockwell Day, followed by Paul Martin, and carrying through to Stephen Harper, Canadian political leaders have been falling over each other trying to prove they are not only supporters of Israel but more or less uncritical supporters of its government. Conservative ministers have even started saying we are Israel’s “allies”; not just friends or supporters, but allies — with its hint of military cooperation. Like maybe the Israelis can help patrol the arctic, and we can reciprocate if things get sticky with Iran.

Here’s your assignment editor’s hobby-horse: To the extent that most Canadians think of the Middle East there is a degree of consensus (not unanimity, for sure) on several things. Consensus that may or may not be founded in sound understanding, admittedly.

• Israel has a right to exist as a predominantly Jewish state within peaceful, defensible borders
• As a general rule, little Israeli and Palestinian children shouldn’t be blown to smithereens, no matter how important the point you are trying to make or the military objective you are trying to achieve
• Strenuous, sincere efforts at negotiation should always take precedence over the use of force.
• Canadians probably shouldn’t get too deeply involved in this sticky mess, on one side or the other.

Here’s the Big Question: Why does Canadian policy seem to coincide with public opinion only on the first point, and increasingly diverge on the others?  Maybe its all political puffin poop, but then that’s the story!

Assignment: Big thumbsucker for Sunday’s paper — unless there’s news.

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

Ooops. Wrong number

Posted by jsallot under Election 2008, Election 2008 Faculty links, Election 2008 Media commentary

JEFF SALLOT

The Ottawa Sun’s Greg Weston reports Nanos Research poll numbers today suggesting Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are on track for a majority.

Reporting from the campaign trail in Quebec, Weston says Nanos found that even among Liberal voters 38 per cent indicate they “are OK with the prospect of Harper’s having a majority.”

Say what?

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What Stephane Dion hears

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Amanda Truscott

Stéphane Dion’s trouble with English is not the result of a hearing problem, according to a prominent Toronto audiologist – though some other experts are not so sure.

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No time for politics

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Laura Stone

He’s been in Canada for 20 years, and became a citizen in 1992, but Jose Campos can count the number of times he’s voted in federal elections on one hand.

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Where have all the Liberals gone?

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

Liberal votes are clearly scattering to the winds as the party retreats from its historic levels of support. But where are all those wayward Liberals landing? The chart below is taken from EKOS Research’s latest sounding and addresses that question.

It is a bit tricky to read, but bear with me. The banner at the top shows people who say they voted for the various parties in 2006. The columns underneath indicate where those people say they are now in terms of current voting intention.

Voter Retention

Look first at the CPC column. I said column, not row – that’s how you get confused. Among declared 2006 Conservative voters, 84% say they intend to vote Conservative again this time – the highest vote retention of any of the parties. So the Tories are holding their ’06 voters for the most part. The leakage goes in various directions: 6% to the Liberals, 5% to the NDP; and 4% to the Greens.

Note: when the Conservatives lose voters, therefore, it does not affect their opponents differentially – each of the other national parties gets a bit of the honey, meaning none of them (and certainly not the Liberal Party) emerges  from the pack on the basis of this shift. Note also: there are virtually no respondents claiming they voted Tory last time, who now plan to vote for the Bloc.

Now look at the LPC column. The Liberals aren’t doing well at all. Only 62% of those who say they voted Liberal last time are planning to repeat – the lowest retention rate of any of the parties, which is perhaps not surprising given that they are the ones whose support has eroded most since ’06.

Where have all the Liberals gone? The other parties have picked them, every one. (Apologies to post-boomers). Interestingly the wayward Liberal voters have split almost equally right and left. Eighteen percent have gone to the Conservatives. So the Conservatives have been the single largest winner from Liberal weakness. However, the 19% who have vamoosed off to the left have gone to the New Democrats in sizeable numbers, but also to the Greens – meaning their impact is dissipated.

In other words, in sum these trends benefit the Conservatives. The Conservatives have the highest retention rate in terms of their ’06 voters; they are winning over about half the wayward Liberals from ’06; and they benefit also from the fact that the half of the straying Liberal flock they haven’t captured are splitting in two different directions once they leave the old Liberal pasture.

In the case of the other parties, the margins of error are getting a little high to read too much into them, but it looks like the NDP is holding onto a large number of its ’06 voters. Surprisingly, perhaps, those who have moved seem to be heading to the Liberals. But the New Democrats, Liberals and Greens all seem to be picking up voters straying from the Bloc — in total more than twice as many heading to the Conservatives. (This fits with a thesis I first heard enunciated by Chantal Hébert, that the Bloc already had its right-leaning voters leak in 2006, and the low-hanging fruit is now the left-leaning Bloc voters.)

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

A politician, a journalist and Rick Mercer walk into a bar…

Posted by jsallot under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

JEFF SALLOT

Politicians have been providing the raw ingredients for comedy for ages, and we are the richer for it. What would the Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes be without the biting political humour?

Many pols learn  to play along. Remember Bob Rae skinny dipping with Mercer? Or Stephen Harper reading houseguest Rick a bedtime story before tucking him in for the night for a sleep over at the official res?
Comics playing politicians can also be hilarious. Did you catch Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin the other night on SNL?

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Two interesting pieces

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Keith Boag had an interesting piece last night on The National in which he argued two things:

1. That despite the very real economic issues in the Canadian economy  and turmoil in the financial markets, unemployment remains low in historical terms and that the two elections in recent decades that have turned on economic issues — 1984 and 1993 — both occurred in periods of high unemployment; and
2. The Canadian government actually has relatively few levers to deal with the sources of economic instability at the moment — at least at a macro level. (Of course, it is possible to spend money on particular sectors — intervening at the micro level, as it were; and it is possible to act to alleviate the consequences of economic distress.) He doesn’t address this, but I think there is some evidence that voters increasingly understand that governments have fewer economic levers than they once did, which may be part of the explanation for the general fall in the salience of politics in the West.   

 In this morning’s Globe, Brian Laghi has an interesting piece arguing that the reason the the Liberals have lost their mojo may be in part because they have allowed their traditional appeal to the centre-right to atrophy, so that they have become just another party of the left. The old saw about the Liberals governing from the right and running campaigns from the left had something to it: of course the governing part is what gave them the bona fides with many voters and supporters to tilt left at election time.

[Conflict alert: both Keith and Brian are former colleagues and friends. But you know what, that shouldn’t be held against them.]

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