Will we never learn
Once again, it's time to beat ourselves up over our federal election coverage

A familiar pattern seems to emerge after every federal election. Journalists, political scientists, historians and others ring their hands over the inadequacy of the coverage. What to do, they collectively wonder? Perhaps, the next time, media outlets should pay less attention to polls and devote more resources to covering issues such as the economy and practical ways to stimulate it, the environment and health care reform. These are questions that occupy peoples' concerns more than behind-the-scenes maneuvering of spin-doctors.

Well, another federal election has come and gone and, yes, true to form the pattern has manifested itself once again. It seems as though the news media, especially the national outlets, can't resist the personality politics they claim to dislike. With a newly-minted Canadian Alliance leader, Yesterday's Man (Jean Chrétien), Joe Who (Joe Clark) all competing for the big prize, the temptation to frame narratives with these personalities as the main characters was irresistible. There's nothing wrong with personality-driven narratives. It's just that these stories tend to dominate the coverage, as some critics have suggested they did during this most recent campaign.

That the campaign turned nasty should surprise no one. That news outlets seemed to fall into the same trap of relying on coverage dominated by polls and personalities should be cause for a more vigorous postmortem, hence Media magazine's assessments from Nova Scotia, Quebec and Alberta.

In his piece, Bruce Wark casts a satirical eye at the ways in which polls and the incessant interpretation of their results drove the coverage. Then he concludes with this amusing, yet prescient observation: "If only we could muster the courage to change the constitution to give the pollsters, the pundits, and our most senior political journalists the power to decide the final outcome. That way, we'd get the right results, 20 times out of 20!"

From his vantage point in Quebec, Mike Gasher was able to observe a seemingly different dynamic. Reacting to the lack of substantive debate coming out of the camps of the only two parties that voters indicated matter in the province, the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois, journalists focused on the issues. Gasher writes: "With a week to go in the campaign, for example, the Montreal Gazette ran a front-page story on the issue of the environment, with reaction from each of the major parties and an environmental 'report card' in which the party platforms were assessed. This was followed a few days later by a half-page report in Le Devoir discussing the relevance of environmental issues to the election campaign. These features were not the product of spin doctors, but of editors and reporters who felt they deserved some ink."

The assessment from the West was mixed, from criticism of the Alberta media for failing to challenge the policies of the Canadian Alliance, to praise for papers such as the Lethbridge Herald. According to Gillian Steward's account, that "newspaper invited readers to write in with questions for the candidates and then ran the questions and each candidate's answer. During the last two weeks of the campaign Ask the Candidates ran up to three times a week. The newspaper also featured a full page of election coverage that included local issues and candidates each day of the campaign."

Unfortunately, Steward notes, the national media's obsession with poll results overshadowed gallant efforts to stick to the issues. And those poll results, which led to contradictory and confusing headlines, drove coverage in a way that detracted from serious discussions of the issues. Steward quotes one political scientist, who says polls have become so predominant that it's time for journalists to start questioning the role they play. Are they replacing old-fashioned reporting? Do they keep reporters from talking to ordinary voters? Are they suppressing voter turnout? These are all valid questions that must be answered.

We also have a slightly more positive story to tell. In the last edition of Media magazine, we featured the ordeal of Journal de Montréal crime reporter Michel Auger. He had been shot in the back six times. Miraculously, he survived. Now, three operations later, he's back and ready to work again. I caught up with Auger at a recent event in Ottawa sponsored by the National Press Club and transcribed an excerpt of an informal talk he gave rapt breakfast audience. At the time I wrote this column, Auger still had three bullets lodged in his body. Still he says he feels fine. And on that colder-than-usual December morning, the crime reporter was in great spirits. However, he was feeling anything but fine shortly after 11 o'clock on September 13, the morning he was shot. "I picked up my pager to phone 911," he recalled for his audience. "I laid down on the pavement and phoned. Those were the two longest minutes of my life, waiting there. While waiting, I had time to check out if I was paralyzed."

We hope you enjoy this edition of Media magazine. And as usual, please feel free to contact me david_mckie@cbc.ca or davidmckie@home.com to complain about what you read or suggest story ideas.