The Corporate Media

In chart form, your corporate media at work in the 2008 Canadian Federal election:

Here's how the people voted (click to enlarge):



And here's how the media voted:



Over 60% of Canadians voted for the Liberals, NDP, Bloc or Greens and yet, in the entire country, there were only 2 daily newspapers (with any sort of circulation), The Toronto Star, and Le Devoir, that were in alignment with this overwhelming majority of Canadians voters.

I know this is obvious to anyone who pays attention, but I think putting it in chart form makes it extra clear that the media might just be a little out of touch with, and further right than, the population at large. Who could have guessed that wealthy corporate types might be more right wing than average Canadians?

Hornby Bike Lane / Reaction to NDP Governments

Some good news upon my return to Vancouver - I see that city council is going ahead with the separated bike lane on Hornby Street. Given the waffling of the provincial government on the HST, it's nice to see a government forging ahead with a plan despite a swell of ungrounded, yet hysterical opposition.

Speaking of hysterical and largely ungrounded opposition, the Globe and Mail has an excellent post from Gerald Caplan documenting the hysterical opposition that Bob Rae's government faced from business groups and the media when they governed Ontario in the early 1990's. It's too bad that Bob Rae and the NDP conceded so much ground to their opposition, even to the point of not implementing public auto insurance in Ontario. The concessions got them exactly nothing in the way of fairer treatment from the media or less hostility from the business community, so they might as well have stuck to their guns.

Most One Sided Comment Thread Ever...

The 'liberal' media at work.

I've heard the theory expressed that the Republican party is in a death spiral in that, as moderates leave, the remainder becomes more wingnutty, which drives away more moderates and so on, until you end up with pretty much just crazy people in the party (i.e. the current situation), but it hadn't occurred to me until now that the same dynamic might play out in the media as well.

The Media, The View from 1878

Some fodder for the post I'll likely never write on the death of the newspaper industry:

"Use of the smallest dishonesty. The power of the press consists in the fact that every individual who serves it feels only slightly pledged or bound to it. He usually gives his opinion, but sometimes does not give it, in order to help his party or the politics of his country, or even himself.

Such little misdemeanors of dishonesty, or perhaps only of dishonest reticence, are not hard for the individual to bear; and yet the consequences are extraordinary, because these little misdemeanors are committed by many people at the same time. Each of these people says to himself, "For such petty services I live better and can make my livelihood; if I fail in such little considerations, I make myself impossible." Because it almost seems that writing one line more or less, and perhaps even without a signature, makes no difference morally, a man who has money and influence can turn any opinion into the public one. Whoever realizes that most people are weak in small things, and wants to attain his own purposes through them, is always a dangerous human being."

(from Human All Too Human, by Friedrich Nietzsche)

Bad News

A little more John Ralston Saul today, this time, from his Doubter's Companion (A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense) - the definition of Bad News:

Those who have power always complain that journalists are only interested in bad news. "But if the newspapers in a country are full of good news, the jails are full of good people."

Elsewhere, bad news comes as light relief from the unrelenting rightness of those with expertise and power. They insist that they are applying the correct and therefore inevitable solution to each problem. And when it fails they avoid self-doubt or a public examination of what went wrong by quickly moving on the next right answer. Bad news is the citizen's only available substitute for public debate

Media Failure

The front page of today's Vancouver Sun trumpeted the results of a poll showing that:

"Results of the wide-ranging survey, conducted exclusively for Canwest News Service and Global National, paint a picture of a population gripped by fear that is largely giving the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt -- for now -- to lead the country in such uncertain political and economic times. "Overall, this is breaking quite clearly to the government as opposed to the coalition," said pollster Darrell Bricker.

Fully 60 per cent of those interviewed said they opposed replacing the government with Liberal-NDP coalition supported by the Bloc Quebecois, compared with 37 per cent who favoured the idea."

In case you're wondering what the wording of the question was, it asked if Harper should remain in government"because of the severe economic situation the country faces and the fact the Liberals and NDP have entered into an 'unholy' deal with the Bloc separatists."

The other alternative offered was that it was "proper that a smooth transition of power to the coalition take place if it is apparent the government will be defeated and that the economic policies brought forward by the coalition, and the agreement of support and stability from the separatist Bloc Quebecois, will be good for the country."


More of the standard right wing media (and polling) bias in this country.

Perhaps even at 58 cents, CanWest is overvalued.
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A postscript, memories of the last time I mentioned Ipsos Reid

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Hat tip to BigCityLib

Keep Dancing

Over at Hullabaloo, Digby catches Fox News in a classic media failure two-step, doing a story on why there's been so little coverage of the Downing Street Memo (without of course ever wondering if their own lack of coverage of the issue might be at all connected). Surprisingly, she seems to treat this as an isolated incident rather than recognizing it for the organizing principle of modern media that it is.

Anyway, in case you missed it, the Downing St. Memo is written evidence - from over half a year before the invasion of Iraq actually occurred - which makes it look like the Bush administration had plans to go to war in Iraq and to say they had to because of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and that everything which happened between then and the outbreak of war was part of a pre-planned campaign in which the truth of the claims underlying going to war were irrelevant aside from providing a public basis for the invasion.

Unsurprisingly, people are wondering why the media would rather provide endless coverage of Michael Jackson and runaway brides than talk about how the President and his aides deliberately misled the American public to get them to support going to war.

On the one hand, I could be charitable to the media and say that this isn't really news because everyone who opposed the war already pretty much figured this is what happened and everybody who supported the war either figured the same or didn't really care enough to pay attention. So the fact that there is now some written evidence isn't going to affect what anyone thinks¹.

But on the other hand, I'm guessing that if there was new written evidence supporting the allegations which have been made against Michael Jackson, the media would have provided blanket, inescapably-thorough coverage so I think what we are looking at here is simply an (even more egregious than usual) failure of the media to cover what is actually a pretty big story which could be very damaging to the President. Somewhat odd behavior for a 'liberal' media which is out to get the Republicans.


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¹The fact that this second group is large enough that Bush was re-elected helps explain why people around the world (including in the U.S.) are getting increasingly nervous that America is looking to carve their own unique path down the well worn slope on which civilizations have slid from relative stability and peace into crisis.

Fear of a Green Planet

Note: Cross-posted to the e-group

It looks like some of the recent high poll results for the Green Party are setting off some mainstream alarm bells. Check out this article by Mary Janigan in Macleans.

On the one hand, the article does a good job showing how Green support has risen and tracing it to increased environmental awareness, disenchantment with the mainstream parties and most of all, the Green party moving to the political centre by eschewing the unnecessary divide between environmentalism and market-oriented economic policies.

But on the other hand the article is almost comical in its fear of a big green tidal wave swamping the country.

The increased support for the Greens is, "both remarkable and unsettling"

and also, "Canadians should be very sure that they are voting for the Greens' relatively radical platform" because "The stakes are high".

Voters should also remember that, "until we clean up the contract-tendering system itself, every party will eventually be suborned by power."

And a final warning to finish off with, "voters should be sure the Greens' evolving amalgam of the practical and the highly problematic is what they really want. Accidents do happen."

You hear that Green voters? - be careful or we'll accidentally elect a majority Green government - it's happened before! ok, it's never happened, but it could happen! Think twice before you destroy us all!

It's good to see smart policies being rewarded and Canadians having more options at the ballot box. I don't think there's really much 'risk' of us electing a Green government next election, but I am hoping to see the party continue to make strides and hopefully win a seat or two.

The Institutionalized Centre for International and Canadian Studies of Public Policy Development

"I was walking down the street
When I thought I heard this voice say
Say, ain't we walking down the same street together
On the very same day
I said hey senorita that's astute
I said why don't we get together
And call ourselves an institute"¹

Observant readers will have noticed that I have added a second dropdown box to the sidebar, this one listing a number of Canadian think-tanks. To honour the occasion (and to add to my extremely meagre store of knowledge on the subject) I decided to take a brief look at think-tanks in Canada.

I probably had think-tanks on my mind after reading Tim's post at 'Pints of Drivel', on a 'This Magazine' story that compared the total annual funding for some 'progressive' and 'conservative' tanks:

c - conservative, p - progressive

Fraser Institute - c- $6.4
Public Policy Forum - c - $3
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) - p - $2.87
Institute for Research on Public Policy - p - $2.83
Canadian Policy Research Networks - p - $2.7
C.D. Howe Institute - c - $2.4
The North-South Institute - p - $2.2
Canada West Foundation - c - $1.9
Caledon Institute of Social Policy - p - $1.1
Montreal Economic Institute - c - $0.825

Looking at the list you can see that the Fraser Institute dwarfs the others in funding with more than double the funding of the CCPA, the highest funded progressive Tank. But reading through a report on Think Tanks from the Institute on Governance (IOG) (itself a think tank) I came across this quote,

"In Canada, according to recent estimates, there are something in the order of 50 organizations that could qualify as think tanks, with a collective budget of roughly 77 million. These range in size from Conference Board of Canada, whose $23 million annual budget and 118-member staff put it in a league of its own, to the tiny Pearson-Shoyama Institute with a mere $150,000 to spend."

Now that report was written in 2001, and since then the annual revenue for the Conference Board has risen to $29 million (according to their annual report) and who knows how many more think tanks have been founded. I've only linked to what seemed to be the more prominent ones in my dropdown box, but a more complete list can be found at HillWatch.com.

In case you're wondering about this Conference Board which seems to account for over a quarter of all think tank revenue in Canada, it was founded in 1954 as a branch plant of the New York - based National Industrial Conference Board and became a separate Canadian entity in 1980. It's mission is to

"build leadership capacity for a better Canada by creating and sharing insights on economic trends, public policy and organizational performance."

(Aside: You can tell they're serious by the fact that they have correctly made use of both a vision statement and a mission statement). Plus, if you're looking to jump into the tank, they seem to be doing a lot of hiring (or maybe they just don't update their job list too often - I hate it when companies do that).

At any rate, there's lots of think tanks in Canada, and if you visit some of their websites, you quickly realize that they are all fairly similar. Some hold conferences, many have some sort of regular publication, they almost all have mailing lists you can subscribe to, they all would like you to contribute money to them and they all regularly produce lots of reports (publications as they like to call them).

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So we've identified some of the bigger players in the Canadian think tank game, but let's step back a moment, and think about what a think tank actually is and why it exists.

Broadly speaking, it's seems as though think-tanks have one (or both) of two main goals:

1) To make money by selling research/conference policy expertise and
2) To influence public policy decisions

The overlap and potential conflict between these two goals seems to be an issue that think-tanks take seriously as most of them make strong claims to be non-partisan and independent and not beholden to those who pay the bills so that they just write/say what their financial backers want people to hear. For example, the first three points that the Conference Board makes in its self-portrait is that:

"We are:

* We are (sic) a not-for-profit Canadian organization that takes a business-like approach to its operations.
* Objective and non-partisan. We do not lobby for specific interests.
* Funded exclusively through the fees we charge for services to the private and public sectors."

Still with the broad-speak, think tanks generally seem to take two approaches to meeting their goals:

1) Targeting business and political leaders directly
2) Targeting the general population via the media

According to the IOG report,

"One academic interviewed said in all seriousness that some institutes measure their success by the number of mentions they get in the Globe and Mail"

The biggest concern I have with think tanks, and I'm guessing I'm not alone here, is that on the one hand, the think tank can be seen to be just providing a service to a market of people who have an interest in getting an expert opinion on policy issues. But on the other hand, think tanks often seem to be funded based on donations and foundations for the purpose of furthering the policy objectives of the people doing the funding. Which is fine, and not particularly different from how political parties are funded in many jurisdictions, but it does raise the prospect of policy being, to an extent, auctioned off to the group which contributes the most money to hire the most experts to write the most reports to feed to the most media to influence the most people to influence the most politicians.

Which, depending on the civic-mindedness of the wealthy members of society, could lead to a skew in favour of policies which favour the wealthy who have more money to buy policy with. Obviously there's nothing new to what I'm saying, I'm just pointing out that think tanks are one more area where we need to work to preserve a balanced market of ideas, and one more reason why democracy doesn't function well alongside huge disparities in wealth.

On a lighter note, I was somewhat surprised to find out that think tanks qualify as registered charities². Apparently offering opinions on public policy issues is charitable work, so I've been doing more charitable work lately than I thought. Which brings me to my next section: If a think tank is just a bunch of people who write down their ideas about politics on a website, how does it differ from a blog?

Blog vs. Think Tank

Clearly there are some obvious differences in terms of total revenue, number of people on staff and the average level of prestige of 'tankers' vs. 'bloggers' but what I'm more interested in here is the differences in approach towards analysis of public policy between think tanks and political blogs.

Goals:

This is the one area where political blogs and think tanks are similar in that they both have influencing policy as a primary goal. In addition they both focus on the media as a tool for getting their message across. One difference is that, while both groups share the goal (mostly) of generating revenue, this is more of a realistic goal at present for most think tanks whereas for the vast majority of blogs generating revenue is a pretty remote possibility which doesn't really influence their approach in any way.

Policy / Politics:

Most (all?) think tanks draw a pretty strict line between policy and politics and try to refrain from crossing over into talking about partisan politics. A cynic might suggest that this is just because they want to be able to sell their services to as many parties as possible but it's more likely due to the fact that much of the value of a think tank's work is ostensibly derived from its objectivity, so to meddle in politics would call into question the value of every report and piece of advice the tank produces.

Meanwhile blogs happily mix policy and politics all the time with some blogs being overtly partisan while others will support whichever politician/party is taking what they consider to be the right approach on a particular issue. Either way, there are few bloggers who will hesitate to offer a positive or negative opinion of any party or politician.

Community / Linkages:

While the term blogosphere is an awkward one, there's no doubt that blogs form a community in some ways. Many of the commenters on blogs are people who have their own blogs, most blogs link to a number of other blogs, blog posts almost always provide links to whatever it is they are talking about, and many bloggers join together into blogging groups or clubs.

By contrast, think tanks are striking in their attempt to seemingly pretend that all the other think tanks do not exist. Whereas you can't spend 5 minutes reading a blog without being reminded of the existence of other blogs (either by a link or a reference or a comment or whatever), you could spend hours surfing the website of just about any think tank without ever being made aware that the particular tank whose site you're on is not the only one in existence. Not only that, but think tanks have also been quite slow to adopt the approach of providing links within their reports to the things they refer to.

Interactivity:

Some think tanks have online forums on their site, and there is the odd poll, but I have yet to see one that allows comments on its reports or which asks readers for help with questions the 'tankers' might have. In short, blogs are a lot more interactive than think tanks.

Writing Style:

Think tanks tend to be written in a somewhat academic style whereas blogs are much less formal although of course this varies from blog to blog. In practice this means that when a think tank writer wants to refer to something they said before they write something like: 'Previous studies have shown that yada yada yada (author et al, 2004)' and when a blogger wants to do the same thing, they generally write something like: 'like I already said back in December', with a link to the original post.

Another difference is that think tanks tend to go in for thoroughly (or at least moderately) researched 'reports' of significant (5000 words plus) length while blog posts vary from reasonably long to brief summaries of issues to one sentence links to other items of interest and the level of research varies wildly both from blog to blog and from post to post within a given blog.

And of course, think tanks generally try to maintain a tone of objectivity (even when they're being anything but) while bloggers tend to wear their opinions and biases on their sleeves.

Topics Covered:

While they often cover a pretty wide range of topics, think tanks pretty consistently stay on topic, where the topic is public policy issues. Unlike in (generally) political blogs, you are unlikely to learn anything about think tank members jazz collections, sports team preferences, vacation plans etc. by following the think tank website. Of course some blogs try to hold the line, but even they find themselves slipping from time to time.

Product Range:

In addition to producing reports, many think tanks generate revenues by holding conferences and also perform work on contract for government and business. By comparison blogs are generally limited to their online writings in terms of products on offer.

Name Length:

After trying to squeeze all the think tank names into my sidebar I couldn't let this go. Blogs (even this one) generally have shorter names than think tanks. In addition, blog names are much less likely to include the words 'institute', 'policy', 'public', 'international', 'centre', or 'development'.
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Actually, after comparing blogs and think tanks, I'm a bit surprised there isn't more interaction between them. Certainly the think tanks could learn from blogs in building a better community, making better use of links, allowing more interactivity, and writing shorter, less formal pieces which are more accessible to the general public rather than relying on friendly reporters to columnize their work. For their part, blogs could benefit from the expertise of think tanks, the research and statistical analysis they can perform, and the thoroughness with which they address a topic.

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I realize I haven't gone into much detail on any of the Canadian think tanks but there's just so many that the prospect is a little daunting. I think an interesting way to compare the various tanks would be to take a fairly high profile issue that many of the tanks have addressed (e.g. Kyoto Accord, The Budget, Child Care, etc.) and compare their approach, what conclusions they reach and how they reached those conclusions. Another day perhaps.

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>¹ From 'Gumboots' on Paul Simon's 'Graceland' album.

² Since most think tanks are charitable organizations, you can look them up here. (via Darren Barefoot).

The Conservative Media - Part 2

Since I'm on the topic of media bias, I thought I'd go back and take a look at the one good information source I know of regarding media bias in Canada: the Observatory on Media and Public Policy, based out of McGill University, which tracked reporting in 7 newspapers during last year's Federal election.

If you like going to the source, I recommend downloading the spreadsheet (link at the site) with the nuts and bolts of their analysis.

(Aside: If you'd prefer to read a really dull, myopic viewpoint of the election campaign as it unfolded, I recommend reading the discussion from their 'roundtable' of pundits.)
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During the campaign there were 2,113 articles written about the election in the 5 English newspapers studied (The Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun).

Of those 2113, 1,711 (81%) mentioned the Liberal party. Out of those 1,711, there were 34 (2%) with positive mentions of the Liberal party and 342 (20%) with negative mentions of the Liberals, giving a 10 to 1 ratio of negative mentions to positive.

Meanwhile, for the Conservative Party, the figures were 1592 (75%) total articles, including 82 (5%) positive mentions and 159 (10%) negative mentions, for a roughly 2:1 ratio of negative to positive.

The NDP garnered (4%) positive mentions and 7% negative mentions, while the Bloc had the most favourable(!) coverage of any party from the English language papers at 4% positive, 5% negative (although they were only mentioned in 15% of stories).

Of course there may be any number of explanations for these results including the media rooting for the underdog, the media following poll shifts, a general unwillingness to praise the governing party, poorly/well run campaigns and so on. Still, it seems hard to say that media bias was anything but harmful to the Liberals.

It's interesting to look at the numbers by newspaper:

The Calgary Herald mentioned the Liberals in 76% of its election articles, with 0%(!) containing positive mentions, and 23% containing negative mentions (note: they did have one article with a positive mention, but it still rounded down to 0%).
Meanwhile they mentioned the Conservatives in 77% of their articles, of which 8% had positive mentions and 4% had negative mentions.

Globe and Mail: Mentioned Liberals (85%), positive 1%, negative 17%
Mentioned Conservatives (75%), positive 2%, negative 11%

National Post: Mentioned Liberals (81%), positive 1%, negative 35%(!)
Mentioned Conservatives (69%), positive 13%, negative 4%

Toronto Star: Mentioned Liberals (85%), positive 4%, negative 15%
Mentioned Conservatives (79%), positive 2%, negative 19%

Vancouver Sun: Mentioned Liberals (77%), positive 1%, negative 15%
Mentioned Conservatives (76%), positive 4%, negative 10%

Together, the Herald, Post, Sun and Globe combined to write 1305 articles about the Liberals with a grand total of 11 including positive mentions. Meanwhile the Post and Herald alone combined for 55 articles with positive mentions of the Conservatives.

So what does it all mean? - well, not a whole lot without having more elections to study, but next time you hear someone say how the media were out to get the Conservatives you may want to have a little chuckle. Also, you can see just how far out in bias land the Herald and the Post are while the Globe and Sun were closer to the Centre (although still anti-Liberal). Of all the papers, the Star was the closest to having equally negative coverage for both the Liberals and Conservatives, but it did have a slight pro-Liberal lean (vs. the Conservatives).

There's lots more info in the spreadsheet such as a breakdown by issue ('Accountability' got by far the most press, followed by Health Care, Social Issues, Tax Cuts and finally International Issues), a breakdown by type of coverage (52% horserace, 43% issues, 4% other - how sad is that?) and a daily tracking of all the articles (not to mention the raw data itself in case you feel like doing your own analysis.)

If only there were more of this kind of data available...

Right Wing Media Bias, The Irony of it All

Great column (behind the subscriber wall) by Lawrence Martin in the Globe today.

He starts by contrasting the media reaction to the recent Missile Defense pullout to both the media reaction in the 1980's when Mulroney said no to Star Wars, and to popular opinion (which is against the Missile Defense plan).

"The media, to the tune of about 90 per cent, ripped the Martin government to pieces over its decision to reject Washington's missile-defence plan. The people went the other way; they favoured the decision in polls by a 20-per-cent margin, which, in political terms, is a landslide.

Flashback to the mid-1980s. Like today's Liberals, the Mulroney government said no to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars. The people applauded and, unlike today, there was no collective media hissy fit."

This leads him into a convincing argument that, while the Canadian population remains largely centre-left, our newsprint media has moved well to the right.

"The journalism culture underwent dramatic change in the mid-1990s when the country's biggest newspaper chain, centrist-leaning Southam, changed hands. The media empire is now owned by CanWest Global, which makes no secret of its pro-American, conservative tilt."

and

"Another big change from the days of liberal media came with the continuing expansion of the conservative tabloid Sun chain to become Canada's second-biggest newspaper group."

furthermore,

"National newspapers are major agenda-setters, both for print media and television. Canada has two. One, the National Post, is firmly on the right; the other, The Globe and Mail, is slenderly conservative.

The portsiders can always boast of having the Toronto Star. But even it pummelled the Martin government on missile defence, and some see the paper as moving to the centre. At Maclean's, a former editor of the National Post is now taking charge. At Policy Options, formerly a very liberal magazine, two former cronies of Mr. Mulroney run the show."

Martin really nails how the right-wing papers are out of touch with the population in their 'don't make dad angry or we'll all get grounded' coverage of Canada-U.S. affairs,

"On missile defence, the media tone was remarkably hostile. The issue was examined not so much on the basis of what Canadians think but on what the Bush administration would think. It was as if — after 138 years of existence — we were still strapped down to a client-state mentality wherein the driving imperative was approval from a higher authority."

So I'm wondering. Do people with centre-left views just prefer to read right wing papers? Or does a vastly higher percentage of right wing folks buy newspapers vs. centre-left folks?

Or maybe there's a market out there for more centre-left journalism (perhaps it's not so surprising the Star has the biggest circulation in the country) but the newspapers are willing to sacrifice the profits they could make by filling it because it doesn't suit their owner's agenda - which would be more than a little ironic since one of the main agendas they're pushing is that government shouldn't interfere in markets because pursuit of profit leads to the greatest good rather than pursuit of principle.