Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Don't you people read newspapers?

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:18pm - 16 Comments

Jeff Jedras considers the Prime Minister’s YouTube interview, and similar forays by the leader of the opposition.

What didn’t we get? Questions on the horse race. On polling. On electoral gamesmanship. No “will you force an election” or political “whose is bigger” questions. To judge by nearly every press conference I’ve seen with Harper and Ignatieff, with nearly every pundit panel on the political talk shows, with most analysis pieces from the columnists, you’d think electoral chicken and the horse race is the issue of most concern to Canadians.

When Canadians get the chance to question their political leaders directly, though, that’s not what we get. We get questions on issues of policy that are important to them for a rainbow of reasons.

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  • http://intensedebate.com/people/Nich Nich

    … and questions that they ultimately do not answer except with boilerplate, half truths or intentional misdirection/non sequitur… which is difficult for reporters to write about.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/psiclone psiclone

    judging by the way media pundits are panning this interview – Harper is definitley onto something

  • http://twitter.com/markgreenan @markgreenan

    Hmmm, and there are still journalists wondering why their industry is in such flux …

    Great piece by Jeff.

  • MacLean's Regular

    Excellent and fair point. I've been lamenting for ages how journalists frame interviews with politicians in terms of what's important to the politicians and their parties, while substantive issues of public interest are treated as distractions at best.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/Douglass Douglass

    They did no such thing. Your slander is disgusting.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/Douglass Douglass

    Policy will always trump with the average citizen. We like or dislike politicians and political party's based on how they affect our lives.

    Well said Jedras.

  • MacLean's Regular

    "Libs a few weeks when they demanded Canada kill third world babies"

    Is MacLean's</Ii> simply going to let this vicious libel hang there?

  • kcm

    ".. when they demanded Canada kill third world babies but msm barely mentions it"

    That' the kind of misrepresentation you crave of regular folks? It may even be one reason why msm choses not to just take their cue from regular folks. It's certainly a good reason for having a media that attempts to provide context, even if it isn't nearly often enough.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

      "It's certainly a good reason for having a media that attempts to provide context, even if it isn't nearly often enough. "

      Harper/Cons say they want international conferences to focus on women health issues and all Libs contribute to debate is their desire to help mothers in developing nations murder their babies. What context do you need, exactly?

      And am I am surprised that my comment was deleted because it was fairly milquetoast compared to what others get to write around here without censor.

      • kcm

        Was your comment deleted, i didn't see anything up? Not a fan of censoring anyhing here myself ; unless it's a stupid, pointless personal attack – that doesn't sound like you at all.

        "…and all Libs contribute to debate is their desire to help mothers in developing nations murder their babies. What context do you need, exactly?"

        If you can't see anything wrong with that statement then i guess i've made my point.

        • kcm

          Well, except for the fact it was a stupid, pointless attack on the liberals.

      • Holly Stick

        jolyon, the point of having safe abortions is to avoid deaths by unsafe abortion. Like here:

        "…Gynaecologists at Kenyatta say the hospital receives between 10 and 15 women daily, all suffering from consequences of unsafe abortion.

        Patients sometimes go to the hospital with rotting wounds around the cervix, perforated uterus and injured abdominal cavity suffered in desperate attempts to procure abortions.

        Some of them push coat hangers in the cervix, some use sticks, while others use crochet needles to induce abortion. Studies have shown that others drink detergents, overdose themselves with particular drugs, or sometimes resort to herbal products, some of which have in most cases led to death.

        According to government estimates, more than 860 women procured unsafe abortions yesterday, and a similar number will do it again today, and again tomorrow. In short, 316,560 abortions are procured unsafely every year, where 20,000 of the women end up in hospital beds, while 2,600 of them die…."

        http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/If%20its%20l…

  • kcm

    It's not the questions themselves that is the problem JJ, it was the quality of the answers. Just about nothing that we hav'n't heard ad nauseum in the house.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/TwoYen TwoYen

    If journalists asked questions about what real people wanted to hear about, we'd have more articles and stories about health care.

  • kcm

    Oops…tense dissonance…

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/BCerInToronto Jeff Jedras

    The answers are certainly nothing to write home about, I agree. But if we can get better questions, that may just lead to better answers. Now, people don't care as much when the politicians evade, because we're not overly invested in the question. If they evade questions we care about though, then maybe we're engaged, then maybe there's a consequence for that evasion. If nothing else, it would make more more interesting journalism.

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