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Media gong show

The weekly editorial for the 100 Mile Free Press.

This week the Conservative leadership race finished up and, other than the fact that there is a wide range of varying opinions within the Conservative Party, one thing was crystal clear; national media did an absolute shit job of covering the race from start to finish.

Following the results, The Toronto Star ran with the (self-incriminating) headline “Canadians ask: ‘Andrew Who?’” Something which was happily repeated on the CBC.

When it comes to national news, Canadians generally look to the bigger news outlets; those that can afford to have reporters attend and cover the races. When those fall short, we have a publically funded broadcaster to fill in the gaps.

So the question has to be asked. How, following a race that lasted about six months, did we end up here?

The answer is pretty straightforward: way too much coverage was given to the wrong things.

Around the Quebec City and Edmonton debates, the focus often wasn’t on the substance and policies discussed at the debates but rather on Kevin O’Leary not attending. In another instance, lots of time and many a story were dedicated to discussing Kelly Leitch’s videos. Even then, much of the discussion wasn’t on the content of the video but on the production value.

Retrospectively, this was a lot of time to spend on two candidates, one of whom dropped out before any voting took place and another who accumulated a mere seven per cent of the vote on the first ballot and finishing sixth.

It’s not hard to figure out why this happened. Controversy draws more eyeballs and brings in more advertising dollars. With the state many large newspapers are in within Canada, having laid off hundreds of journalists in recent years, one can hardly blame them for trying to get every little bit out of the can they can possibly get.

However, this is where you’d expect our national broadcaster to step in. Dissapointingly, the CBC’s coverage wasn’t much different from that of other news outlets. With The B.C. Election, I would argue they did a great job. They had riding profiles available online of each candidate. On the radio, they interviewed each of the local candidates as well as fairly balanced airtime and coverage.

Sure with some digging, you can find a story on each of the candidates, but that’s just it. With the NDP leadership race having just gotten underway, it’s not likely the major newspapers will change their approach. However, it would be great if CBC takes some lessons from their own B.C. election coverage because it was a heck of a lot better than the Conservative leadership race coverage. Maybe then, at least in that case, Canadians won’t be left scratching their heads as to who just became the leader of one of Canada’s major political parties.