“Liberal” media bias.

I\'m always hearing of how biased the media is in its reporting, that the media always tries to portray the Liberal party in the best light. I\'ve noted that the same people who complain about this supposed bias also are remarkably quiet when the media appears biased towards the Conservatives. A lot of this has come out in the past few weeks with the Gomery inquiry. The Conservatives, faced with a wounded Liberal party, don\'t just drop the ball, but aren\'t even looking when it get passed to them. The media, fresh from the feeding frenzy that the Liberals created with Gomery, sense fresh meat when the Tories completely misread public opinion and begin to self-destruct. Not only do they self destruct, the do it in public with Stephen Harper lurching from media blunder to media blunder. Naturally, since you can\'t blame the leader, blame the media.

The event that caused me to write about this is the release of a public opinion poll yesterday. Now, since I read two newspapers and not just one, I actually found out about the poll. The Calgary Sun, the bastion of journalistic integrity that it is [sarcasm mode off], published the results of a Canadian Press poll that showed the Liberals 14% higher in the polls nationally than the Conservatives. Nationally the Tories are also a scant 3% ahead of the NDP. In fact in Ontario, the Tories are BEHIND the NDP. Not exactly a good news story for the Conservatives. The fact the Sun published it is interesting as their editorial slant is generally quite conservative.

What is interesting is that the “Liberal” media, in the guise of the Calgary Herald, didn\'t even bother reporting that. Interesting in that when the Conservatives are on top of the polls, that is usually near the front of section “A” if not the front page. So for a supposedly Liberal outlet, they can\'t even bring themselves to print a small story, buried in the back pages of news that is only mildly good for the Liberals, but disastrous for the Conservatives.

This leads me to one of the reasons I think a lot of people outside of Alberta find the Conservatives scary. The Conservatives can\'t tolerate dissent. Black and white thinking only allows them to see people as either for them or against them. If you say anything critical about them, no matter how small or trivial, you are obviously against them. This is why papers like the Calgary Herald don\'t print anything that could be construed as criticism of the Conservatives (other to complain that they\'re not being conservative enough). The editorial board uses the same black and white thinking, which unfortunately turns their paper into little more than a party newsletter when it comes to political issues.

People outside of Alberta see this inability to see two sides of an issue and that scares them. Most Canadians (outside of Alberta) are moderates politically. This means that they have some ideas that are conservative in nature and some that are liberal in nature. This worked well for both the old Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals as they tended to the political centre. With the takeover of the Conservatives by neo-conservative forces however, the Conservative party took a huge swing to the right, alienating much of their traditional support base. This is made even worse with their “you\'re either completely for us, without question or against us attitude.”.

It is this attitude, I think, that scares most people outside of Alberta. It\'s like the party is telling its prospective supporters that if they support the party, the party will then tell them how to think. This doesn\'t sit well with most people and is part of what is turning Canadians against the Tories. If the Tories don\'t want to be looking up at the NDP in the polls, they\'ve got to learn to be more inclusive. Elitism may make those in the elite feel good about themselves, but it isolates them from everyone else, and in a system where they don\'t have power, will keep them from getting it.