Media Bias
Media bias was brought up in the comments section of a previous post so I thought I'd write about the differences between anti-conservative and anti-liberal media bias in Canada. (I was about to call it "left-wing" and "right-wing", but on second thought, that wouldn't be very appropriate)
I agree that the media isn't uniformally pro-Liberal... obviously it is not. Sometimes even the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail publish anti-Liberal editorials. The difference though was summed up in one of Mark Steyn's Western Standard articles from a few months ago when he said the Liberal Party's slogan is essentially "Vote for the Crooks, not the Fascists". And that's really so true. Whenever the media takes on the liberals, it's usually for corruption, incompetency, lack of an agenda and things of that nature. Whenever the media takes on the conservatives, it's almost always about gays, abortion and implicit allegations of racism. Canadians can stomach corruption and mediocrity far more than they can stomach supposed "extremism", and here's the problem, I really don't think that the media really believes the charges of extremism. I really don't, and if they do, they're just as guilty for being biased because of their stupidity.
In June, the first article ran about abortion during the election was a completely manufactured piece and was not a real story at all. I remember opening up The Globe and Mail one morning and I saw an article about Rob Merrified, a Conservative MP from Alberta who supposedly said that women should receive counselling (or something like that) before receiving an abortion. Now firstly, he never even said that at all. He was called by an aggressive reporter who ASKED him whether women should receive counselling in order to have him repeat a long-standing, public position on the issue. Paul Martin stated that same position that very day at a school, but no one cared. The Conservative MP caused a minor uproar.
Also, as demonstrated when Joe Volpe said that Stephen Harper would not want anyone but people who look like Stephen Harper living in Canada and when Judy Sgro claimed that the opposition was out to get her because they were "against immigration" and when stories like that appear, the media makes no effort to tell both sides of the story. The charges of racism aren't even allowed to be refuted. They're treated as completely legitimate and realistic charges that don't even NEED refutation, because they're so obviously true. This was the case in the Joe Volpe article that I linked to a few weeks ago. No refutation.
So yeah, that's the crux of the problem. If I was less informed, I'd vote for the libs in a heartbeat. If I lived in Europe, I'd vote for the parties that were less racist before I'd weigh their economic agendas and that's because racism IS far more mainstream in European society and it's not very mainstream in North American society at all.
The vast majority of conservatives know that if elected, they will not meaningfully enact legislation regarding abortion at all. They believe that they could probably revert the definition of marriage back to its traditional version, but how extreme is that? The definition hasn't even changed yet. And as for racism, c'mon. I honestly can't understand why people even believe that stuff.
Update: Forgot to make one last point: a lot of journalists, in my opinion, don't intend to be biased at all. However, there is a natural "conflict bias" within all of the media (which is a good thing). For the Liberals, the conflict bias leads to corruption, incompetence and all that other sort of stuff while even for an unbiased reporter, the conflict bias for the Conservatives ultimately leads to so-con issues. So... that's unfair, because as we know, it's better to be a crook than a fascist... but there's not much anyone can do about that for the time being. Unbiased reporters will obviously be influenced by their journalistic peers and by their bosses, even if those bosses are unbiased themselves. Conflict sells; and until conflict regarding the Conservatives can centre around non-so-con issues, then media bias will hurt the Conservative far more than it'll hurt the Liberals.
I agree that the media isn't uniformally pro-Liberal... obviously it is not. Sometimes even the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail publish anti-Liberal editorials. The difference though was summed up in one of Mark Steyn's Western Standard articles from a few months ago when he said the Liberal Party's slogan is essentially "Vote for the Crooks, not the Fascists". And that's really so true. Whenever the media takes on the liberals, it's usually for corruption, incompetency, lack of an agenda and things of that nature. Whenever the media takes on the conservatives, it's almost always about gays, abortion and implicit allegations of racism. Canadians can stomach corruption and mediocrity far more than they can stomach supposed "extremism", and here's the problem, I really don't think that the media really believes the charges of extremism. I really don't, and if they do, they're just as guilty for being biased because of their stupidity.
In June, the first article ran about abortion during the election was a completely manufactured piece and was not a real story at all. I remember opening up The Globe and Mail one morning and I saw an article about Rob Merrified, a Conservative MP from Alberta who supposedly said that women should receive counselling (or something like that) before receiving an abortion. Now firstly, he never even said that at all. He was called by an aggressive reporter who ASKED him whether women should receive counselling in order to have him repeat a long-standing, public position on the issue. Paul Martin stated that same position that very day at a school, but no one cared. The Conservative MP caused a minor uproar.
Also, as demonstrated when Joe Volpe said that Stephen Harper would not want anyone but people who look like Stephen Harper living in Canada and when Judy Sgro claimed that the opposition was out to get her because they were "against immigration" and when stories like that appear, the media makes no effort to tell both sides of the story. The charges of racism aren't even allowed to be refuted. They're treated as completely legitimate and realistic charges that don't even NEED refutation, because they're so obviously true. This was the case in the Joe Volpe article that I linked to a few weeks ago. No refutation.
So yeah, that's the crux of the problem. If I was less informed, I'd vote for the libs in a heartbeat. If I lived in Europe, I'd vote for the parties that were less racist before I'd weigh their economic agendas and that's because racism IS far more mainstream in European society and it's not very mainstream in North American society at all.
The vast majority of conservatives know that if elected, they will not meaningfully enact legislation regarding abortion at all. They believe that they could probably revert the definition of marriage back to its traditional version, but how extreme is that? The definition hasn't even changed yet. And as for racism, c'mon. I honestly can't understand why people even believe that stuff.
Update: Forgot to make one last point: a lot of journalists, in my opinion, don't intend to be biased at all. However, there is a natural "conflict bias" within all of the media (which is a good thing). For the Liberals, the conflict bias leads to corruption, incompetence and all that other sort of stuff while even for an unbiased reporter, the conflict bias for the Conservatives ultimately leads to so-con issues. So... that's unfair, because as we know, it's better to be a crook than a fascist... but there's not much anyone can do about that for the time being. Unbiased reporters will obviously be influenced by their journalistic peers and by their bosses, even if those bosses are unbiased themselves. Conflict sells; and until conflict regarding the Conservatives can centre around non-so-con issues, then media bias will hurt the Conservative far more than it'll hurt the Liberals.
posted by Japnaam Singh at
12:01 AM
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