{"id":66,"date":"2008-09-09T13:52:17","date_gmt":"2008-09-09T18:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=66"},"modified":"2008-09-09T20:31:56","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T01:31:56","slug":"when-the-referees-don-the-uniforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"When the referees don the uniforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ira Wagman<\/strong><\/p>\n

There has been a lot of attention devoted to the media consortium\u2019s\u00a0decision to exclude Elizabeth May from the national leader\u2019s debates. To be sure, there are a number of issues to be dealt with concerning\u00a0the arcane rules about participation \u2013 rules that should be debated in\u00a0another forum, as Paul Adams indicated below. Clearly there are\u00a0political implications, too. However, there is a deeper issue here \u2013\u00a0one that has to do with the position of Canada\u2019s broadcasters, which\u00a0have gone from simply covering the story to becoming part of it. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Remember Stockwell Day and the Reform Party\u2019s decision that they would\u00a0no longer participate in the scrums outside of the House of Commons,\u00a0only to take questions in the controlled environs of a press room in\u00a0the basement? What happened then? Many major media outlets said\u00a0thanks, but no thanks and, as a result, the folks downstairs came\u00a0upstairs \u2013 because that is where the coverage would be. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The same thinking should have applied here. The Consortium should have\u00a0taken the position that the debates will take place as scheduled,\u00a0whether some, all, or none of the parties wish to participate. After\u00a0all of the posturing and blustering, I can assure you that most, if not\u00a0all, of them would be on the air that night. Who would pass up a\u00a0chance to reach a national audience? \u00a0The decision around participation\u00a0should have been left for the political parties to decide. \u00a0<\/p>\n

What happened here was not just a case of the broadcasters being\u00a0intimidated by the political parties, as my colleague Chris Waddell\u00a0noted here earlier. It was something even worse. By threatening not\u00a0to participate in the debates the various political parties forced the\u00a0broadcasters out their position as referees and onto the playing field.\u00a0In other words, they politicized them. This now gives the parties\u00a0additional ammunition about how the media are biased, it also\u00a0re-circulates images of media cabals, and undercuts the credibility of\u00a0the organizations charged with covering the elections as a public\u00a0service, however we would like to define that term. The fact that the\u00a0Consortium has not come out with the details of its decision-making\u00a0process doesn\u2019t help to shed the image that there may be other things\u00a0going on behind closed doors. If the press expects openness from the\u00a0political parties in the name of Canadians, why shouldn\u2019t they be as up\u00a0front about their process as well? Now that the Greens are threatening\u00a0to take a complaint up to the CRTC and to the courts, it runs the risk\u00a0of politicizing them too. \u00a0If you think this kind of thing won\u2019t have\u00a0an effect on the election consider what happened when the RCMP\u00a0announced they were investigating Ralph Goodale about income trusts\u00a0during the last election. It draws attention where it doesn\u2019t need to\u00a0be. The bureaucracy and the press need to stay on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

This is an awful position for Canada\u2019s media to be in at the beginning\u00a0of an election. Considering that many of these broadcasters now own\u00a0many of Canada\u2019s largest newspapers and radio stations, there are already issues about the extent to which Canadians can expect\u00a0comprehensive media coverage from the mainstream media outlets. \u00a0<\/p>\n

By not getting caught in political issues around the debates, the\u00a0Consortium would have made a bold statement about its own position in\u00a0this election — as broadcasters interested in acting as equitably as\u00a0possible in the public interest. With their involvement in the Green\u00a0Party decision, they have, regrettably, become part of the story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ira Wagman is an Assistant Professor, Mass Communication in the School\u00a0of Journalism and Communication at Carleton.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ira Wagman There has been a lot of attention devoted to the media consortium\u2019s\u00a0decision to exclude Elizabeth May from the national leader\u2019s debates. To be sure, there are a number of issues to be dealt with concerning\u00a0the arcane rules about participation \u2013 rules that should be debated in\u00a0another forum, as Paul Adams indicated below. Clearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-media-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","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=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}