{"id":1362,"date":"2011-03-30T08:31:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T13:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1362"},"modified":"2011-03-30T12:53:07","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T17:53:07","slug":"here-we-go-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1362","title":{"rendered":"Here we go again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elly Alboim<\/strong><\/p>\n

The decision by the networks to exclude Elizabeth May from the Leaders\u2019 Debates goes to the heart of the media\u2019s sense of hubris in election campaigns.<\/p>\n

Elections always feature a continuing struggle between media and political parties for control of the agenda. Media take on for themselves the role of arbiter of the truth and organizer of the hierarchy of importance of issues. In doing so, they work under two often contradictory values \u2013 loudly proclaiming the importance of accessibility and transparency and insisting on what they call news value in determining what they cover. Implicit in their narrow definition of news value is that the issue be interesting and\/or entertaining to their audience, a judgment they insist is their excusive purview to exercise.<\/p>\n

In the debates (and I\u2019ve been party to those discussion many times), media organizers and producers worry first and foremost about the \u201cwatchability\u201d of the debates and how to make it \u201cgood TV.\u201d Although they cloak the discussion in high-minded discourse of making it accessible and interesting to viewers to foster increased democratic participation, it really is about applying game show and sports entertainment values to the process. They prize direct confrontation and angry conflict. Boring and incremental discussion doesn\u2019t cut it \u2013 hence the rules on thirty second answers and the reportorial focus on \u201cknock-out punches\u201d and winners and losers in the coverage of the debates themselves. It isn\u2019t really clear why that is important to them \u2013 after all there are no commercials to sell and no inter-network competitive urges to satisfy. But they can\u2019t seem to stop themselves from being driven by production values because that is what they do every other day of their professional lives.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is the only possible explanation for the decision they have made. May represents what is clearly a legitimate fifth party in Canada. It garnered 6% of the vote. She was in the debates last time. It is a common sense proposition that anyone who received a million votes has a right to be heard. It is not hard to justify her presence over other small party leaders.<\/p>\n

Election debates are important. Beyond the obvious, they are the only time Canadians can share a campaign experience in real time and in an unfiltered way, allowing them to discuss what they\u2019ve seen and heard with friends and families. For media organizations to restrict that process seems entirely antithetical to what they proclaim to be their goals of accessibility and transparency. It is particularly hard to understand on the part of the public broadcaster which was part of what was described as a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n

To exclude her is to invite yet another examination of why we as a society delegate to television networks the right to decide issues like this.<\/p>\n

Elly Alboim is an Associate Professor of Journalism and a former Parliamentary Bureau Chief for CBC TV News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elly Alboim The decision by the networks to exclude Elizabeth May from the Leaders\u2019 Debates goes to the heart of the media\u2019s sense of hubris in election campaigns. Elections always feature a continuing struggle between media and political parties for control of the agenda. Media take on for themselves the role of arbiter of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,17,18,19,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-election-2011","category-election-2011-campaign-strategy","category-election-2011-faculty-links","category-election-2011-media-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1417,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions\/1417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}