If it’s true the public gets the government they don’t deserve, then the media is at least partly to blame.
It’s taken four weeks and a 800-plus-point bloodletting on the floor of the Toronto Stock Exchange, but suddenly the economy has become an election issue.
Perhaps now the media will have something to decode at tonight’s televised debate. Not a certainty, though, given how much time the fourth estate has spent chewing on the daily diet of public opinion polls this election season.
The Tories are trying like hell to ignore the economic meltdown south of the border. “Canada is not the United States,” the PM says. Turn, exit stage right for the Boy in the Bubble.
Nary a follow-up from the media gaggle, content, it seems, to keep sucking on the Tories’ steady-as-she-goes-in-these-uncertain-times stump.
No need to distill the particulars ably presented by Harper at photo ops every day. Where is that election platform anyway? Deconstruction has no place in the coverage of this campaign when there’s a gaffe a day to fill news holes.
Polls have become the new propaganda of the media. They tell us we’re moving inexorably toward a Tory majority.
One told us last week that Canadians favour the PM’s plan to put 14-year-olds who break the law behind bars for life. Seventy-three per cent of Ontarians agree.
If a poll says so, then it must be. Harper can do no wrong, as long as he looks decisive doing it. Where’s the media to parse the methodology, question the questions?
Too distracted by polls, we’re watching a horse race, not an election. Maybe the idea is to actually influence public opinion, not necessarily reflect it. In other democracies, polls are prohibited during election campaigns due to a strongly held belief that they actually drive voters further into apathy. They demotivate. Maybe that’s the idea.
Is it a coincidence that the media giants paying for all those public opinion surveys flattering to Harper also happen to have a conservative political bent?
Sex for political favours (see Julie Couillard), payoffs in brown envelopes (see Mulroney-Schreiber), muzzled and fired officials, the election financing scam: evidence of Harper’s callous rule is all there. Just don’t count on the media to tell you about it. They’ve been calling this election over since day one.
Harper kicked off his campaign back then by saying the Tories are “only making promises we can keep.” No one in the media seemed to notice it’s the same line he used to kick off his campaign in 2006. One sorry Accountability Act and 30 broken promises later….
enzom@nowtoronto.com
