Kelly McParland: Should Stephen Harper be nicer to the media? | Full Comment | National Post
"I was reading this week that Canadian political campaigns are boring for the people who have to cover them.
The leaders, surrounded by yes-people, fly around the country making the same statements over and over. They use the same applause lines, announce the same announcements, issue the same denunciations of their opponents. Day after day. For the poor travelling press, stuck in the back of the plane or bus, scratching for something new to send their editors, it’s very tedious.
They don’t like it. They want it to stop. They want politicians to campaign differently, to be more interesting.
So I’m wondering how they could do that, and why.
There are, after all, good reasons why politicians campaign the way they do. Mainly it’s because, despite television, and radio, the internet, tweeterdom, and Facebooklandia, not to mention constant communications every second of the day via cellphone and those little bluetooth devices people stick in their ears — despite all that, voters still persist in firewalling themselves from politicians and what point it is those politicians would like to make. Because most people just aren’t interested and don’t really want to be bothered.
So, to crack the wall of indifference, politicians have to put themselves in the face of the public and repeat the same lines over and over, until they succeed in penetrating a few skulls. And thy have to do it again and again all over the country, because if people in Moncton don’t want to hear what politicians have to say while they’re actually speaking in Moncton, they really don’t want to hear what they have to say if they’re speaking in Salmon Arm or some other godforsaken place.
Politicians do it because they have to. Reporters, now there’s a different bunch. They want the politicians to spice things up: say something different at every stop, for instance. Be controversial. Make bold pronouncements. Answer all their questions.
If politicians complied, it would be great for reporters. They could immediately attack the politicians over the absurdity of their bold pronouncements, the inadvisability of stirring controversy, the confusion created by constantly bringing up new issues. They’d ask endless questions constructed to elicit juicy responses, and then crucify the candidate for being dumb enough to respond. The politicians would get hammered; the reporters would get great stories.
No one knows how unfair the press is better than the press. The only thing they consider more unfair is people who won’t talk to the press. It really bugs them (maybe I should be saying “us”, having been a member for 35 years). Stephen Harper got royally flayed by a certain left-wing Toronto newspaper when he limited his daily question quota to five. Reporters hoped to ask stuff like: “Why are you such a secretive, micromanaging, paranoid, anti-Democratic abuser of Parliament? Oh, and I have a follow-up”. Who does he think he is evading legitimate questions like that?
Late in the campaign, when people actually started paying attention to him, Jack Layton also started dodging questions. He didn’t get flayed as much as Mr. Harper (even after it was discovered he can’t tell a sleazy bawdy house from Sheila’s Neighbourhood Family Back Rub Emporium) because reporters like Jack and didn’t want to spoil his day. Michael Ignatieff was desperate for attention, and thus willing to talk to anyone; he got very sympathetic treatment as a result, even though it was increasingly obvious that Canadians didn’t share the press’s high regard.
Having thought about it, it makes perfect sense to me why politicians don’t run their campaigns the way the travelling press would like them to. They’d never get elected if they did. They’d get great exposure for a while, and have lots of interviews lined up. Then the pundits would get bored (all at the same time) and start writing articles denouncing the guy they’d been lauding the week before. That’s just how the business works. And I think Stephen Harper figured it out a long time ago."
National Post
"I was reading this week that Canadian political campaigns are boring for the people who have to cover them.
The leaders, surrounded by yes-people, fly around the country making the same statements over and over. They use the same applause lines, announce the same announcements, issue the same denunciations of their opponents. Day after day. For the poor travelling press, stuck in the back of the plane or bus, scratching for something new to send their editors, it’s very tedious.
They don’t like it. They want it to stop. They want politicians to campaign differently, to be more interesting.
So I’m wondering how they could do that, and why.
There are, after all, good reasons why politicians campaign the way they do. Mainly it’s because, despite television, and radio, the internet, tweeterdom, and Facebooklandia, not to mention constant communications every second of the day via cellphone and those little bluetooth devices people stick in their ears — despite all that, voters still persist in firewalling themselves from politicians and what point it is those politicians would like to make. Because most people just aren’t interested and don’t really want to be bothered.
So, to crack the wall of indifference, politicians have to put themselves in the face of the public and repeat the same lines over and over, until they succeed in penetrating a few skulls. And thy have to do it again and again all over the country, because if people in Moncton don’t want to hear what politicians have to say while they’re actually speaking in Moncton, they really don’t want to hear what they have to say if they’re speaking in Salmon Arm or some other godforsaken place.
Politicians do it because they have to. Reporters, now there’s a different bunch. They want the politicians to spice things up: say something different at every stop, for instance. Be controversial. Make bold pronouncements. Answer all their questions.
If politicians complied, it would be great for reporters. They could immediately attack the politicians over the absurdity of their bold pronouncements, the inadvisability of stirring controversy, the confusion created by constantly bringing up new issues. They’d ask endless questions constructed to elicit juicy responses, and then crucify the candidate for being dumb enough to respond. The politicians would get hammered; the reporters would get great stories.
No one knows how unfair the press is better than the press. The only thing they consider more unfair is people who won’t talk to the press. It really bugs them (maybe I should be saying “us”, having been a member for 35 years). Stephen Harper got royally flayed by a certain left-wing Toronto newspaper when he limited his daily question quota to five. Reporters hoped to ask stuff like: “Why are you such a secretive, micromanaging, paranoid, anti-Democratic abuser of Parliament? Oh, and I have a follow-up”. Who does he think he is evading legitimate questions like that?
Late in the campaign, when people actually started paying attention to him, Jack Layton also started dodging questions. He didn’t get flayed as much as Mr. Harper (even after it was discovered he can’t tell a sleazy bawdy house from Sheila’s Neighbourhood Family Back Rub Emporium) because reporters like Jack and didn’t want to spoil his day. Michael Ignatieff was desperate for attention, and thus willing to talk to anyone; he got very sympathetic treatment as a result, even though it was increasingly obvious that Canadians didn’t share the press’s high regard.
Having thought about it, it makes perfect sense to me why politicians don’t run their campaigns the way the travelling press would like them to. They’d never get elected if they did. They’d get great exposure for a while, and have lots of interviews lined up. Then the pundits would get bored (all at the same time) and start writing articles denouncing the guy they’d been lauding the week before. That’s just how the business works. And I think Stephen Harper figured it out a long time ago."
National Post