{"id":1560,"date":"2011-04-15T20:19:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T01:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1560"},"modified":"2011-04-15T20:46:37","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T01:46:37","slug":"a-counter-intuitive-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1560","title":{"rendered":"A counter-intuitive thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Waddell<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the week, according to the way campaigns are usually covered, media attention should focus on post-debate public opinion polls. The search is on for any movement in the polls and every move is accentuated as the media looks for evidence to build a narrative of a closing race heading into second half of the campaign.<\/p>\n

The problem this time is that so far the polls really aren\u2019t moving. There are differences between the results reported by individual polling companies but within each poll there has been little change since the campaign started, a trend the debate didn\u2019t change.<\/p>\n

So the search for news means the media campaign spotlight turns to other issues – Helena Guergis, G20 spending, Afghan detainee documents – reprises of stories from the last parliament that opposition parties played hard today.\u00a0 That was done despite the fact that there\u2019s no evidence that there was a significant public response that hurt the Conservative government the first time these issues came around.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For that to be different this time, the public would have to be following the twists and turns closely enough to know what\u2019s changed and what it means.\u00a0It is just as likely that many voters hearing Guergis, detainees and the G20 thought it was more of the same noise they found so irrelevant in the last parliament that turned people off all politics rather than towards the opposition parties.<\/p>\n

It would be ironic if coverage the media believes shines the spotlight on past Conservative misdeeds in fact leaves the public thinking politicians are at it again – talking about things that don\u2019t matters to voters or affects their lives so what\u2019s the point in voting.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives with their demonstrated ability to energize their supporters and get them to the polls would be the \u00a0most likely beneficiaries if the result is more people stay home.<\/p>\n

Christopher Waddell is director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. He is a former reporter, Ottawa bureau chief for the Globe and Mail and a former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and executive producer-news specials for CBC TV News.\u00a0You can follow him on Twitter @cwaddell27<\/em>
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Christopher Waddell This is the week, according to the way campaigns are usually covered, media attention should focus on post-debate public opinion polls. The search is on for any movement in the polls and every move is accentuated as the media looks for evidence to build a narrative of a closing race heading into second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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-1560","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\/1560","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}