Maclean's Article... No not that one.

I recently read an article in the September 29th edition of Maclean's magazine, in the opinion section called "How journalists get in the way of the election" by Andrew Coyne. Coyne critiques the media's coverage of the federal election as "reporting about reporting, campaigns about campaigns" and that "we are all in mortal peril of disappearing up our own backsides." He says that journalists spend way too much time reporting about polls, telling our readers or listeners who's ahead or behind over and over, speculating on on polls and then "whatever space we have left we devote to the strategists." All in all, Coyne believes that too much coverage is devoted to the fluff of campaigns and frontmen and not enough to the actual policies, issues and important questions that result from an election. I won't go on and on about what the article actually says but if you're interested, read it for yourself.

Although I don't usually agree with Maclean's magazine, I think I could have wrote Coyne's article myself... that's how strongly I agree with most of what he says. Coyne writes that what people really want to know about an election is "who are these people and what are they going to do to us?" Plain and simple. As both a voter and a journalist, I couldn't agree more. Especially when it comes to polls. By the time you take into account such factors as margins of error and sample pools, they're pretty much useless. Maybe a poll every two weeks would be okay, especially if it's a well-done poll that is actually somewhat accurate and indicative of which direction popular opinion seems to be heading. Wait, is it actually possible to use the words "accurate" and "indicative" in the same sentence as the word "poll"? I'm not sure.

As a young First Nations woman living in Saskatchewan who is both a voter and a journalist, I must say I am always disappointed with the media's election coverage. None of the coverage speaks to the issues I actually care about like resource revenue sharing between the federal and provincial governments and the First Nations or post-secondary funding for First Nations students. Instead, time is wasted on topics like what sort of vegetable is Stephen Harper or (last federal election) what label is Belinda Stronach's outfit/ who's hockey pro husband is she stealing. Who gives a crap? As a voter, I want to know about their policies, opinions about war, ideas for solving Canada's problems etc. As a journalist, I sure as hell wish more of us would start writing about those topics. If I want to know about fluff, I'll turn on ET Canada or just find some other way to mindlessly destroy brain cells.

Or if media coverage continues its recent trends, I'll just flip open any newspaper or turn on any channel...

Maclean's website, if you're interested, is: http://www.macleans.ca/