The six Alberta PC leadership candidates in Hinton on May 20, picture grabbed by The Eagle, Hinton 97.5 FM. Below: The Tyee. But what’s with all the wildlife where a mighty wind should blow?Here’s a thought for your holiday Monday: Now that the federal election is over and the Progressive Conservative leadership race is again the most important political story in Alberta, where the heck did the media go?
In case you missed it – and if you depend on conventional media for your news coverage, you likely missed it – the leadership campaign is now under way.
There have been all-candidates’ meetings in two Alberta towns, one near Whitecourt on May 18 and the other in Hinton on May 20. Both times, all six declared candidates bothered to show up: Doug Griffiths, Doug Horner, Gary Mar, Ted Morton, Rick Orman and Alison Redford. So, obviously, they thought it was important.
But the reaction from the people who have the resources to cover this important story properly? Zzzzzzzzz…. Indeed, it hasn’t registered at all, apparently.
There’s something wrong with this picture. With six interesting candidates in the race, every one of them capable of doing the job at least as well as the premier they are trying to replace – and at least three more reputed to still be considering a run – there should be plenty of media interest in what’s certain to be an important and sometimes exciting story.
You’d never know it from the half-hearted coverage the contest has received since the federal election campaign ended. What happened at those two all-candidates meetings, for example? One seems to have been covered only by the editor of a subscription-only legislative newsletter, the other only by a local radio station.
Maybe the media’s waiting to be sure that all the candidates who are going to run are in the race.
Maybe they’re suffering from post-federal-election political fatigue syndrome (PFEPFS, pronounced “Peffipiss”).
Maybe they’ve decided that with the selection not scheduled to take place until September – or October if it goes to a second ballot – it’s just too soon for this story to be interesting.
However you explain the lacklustre news coverage, there’s no excuse for the profitable mainstream media operations on whom most Albertans still depend for their news just to abandon the field on a story that is already developing in important ways.
I say this not to take a cheap shot at the media – though I confess I’ve been willing to do this from time to time and I expect I will do it again – but because there’s simply no point at which this leadership contest is not important.
After all, whoever wins will become the premier of Alberta. Notwithstanding what you’ve heard about the right-wing opposition, the winner will probably be the premier for a very long time. So anything the candidates say – even at this early date – is important to Alberta voters, who still have to depend on the mainstream media for most of their news.
Back in the day, major media companies would have sent out their B Teams to get stories like this that were important, but not quite yet on the front burner. Today, it’s hard to shake the suspicion there is no B Team, and precious little left of the A Team.
There are limits to what bloggers and “citizen journalists” can do to fill the obvious gaps in media coverage in this province. They are not being paid for their efforts, after all, and frequently have to fill their days with real work. The candidates themselves, of course, will only be too happy to provide us with on-line “news” about their activities.
If Alberta’s commercial media will not do their job, someone is going to have to come forward to do it.
British Columbia’s Tyee has provided a model to the rest of Canada of how an on-line news source funded by progressive elements in society can be a success.
The coverage of the important Conservative leadership race – or, rather, the lack of it – illustrates one of several reasons why we need an on-line news source like The Tyee here in Alberta.
And just a suggestion: we should call it The Chinook.
This post also appears on rabble.ca.
I am one of those that did not know this race had already started. Not surprising, politics in Alberta is as uninteresting as when I lived under a dictarship when the votes had only one choice. There is really no politics in this province. These 40 years of the same unreleting drive for the monopoly of ideas has now bloomed and the results were to be expected. If there is a writer out there on the subject of the End of Politics this province is the place to be.
Or maybe, just maybe, the northern Alberta media is ready to wait another week and instead cover THE WILDFIRE DEVASTATION OF A TOWN.
Wow, the eagle put attendance at the Hinton forum at just 50 people. I'm sure the Conservatives are thankful the big papers didn't bother to show up.
I thought I detected just a hint of sarcasm in Anonymous No. 1’s suggestion the media may not be covering the Conservative race because the Slave Lake Fire is a more important story. If so, this commenter’s news judgment is most certainly right. But back in the day, the commercial media would have had sufficient manpower to cover more than one major story at the same time, and it is not a healthy thing for our democracy, such as it is, that this is no longer so.
One reader suggested to me in an email that the media may be reluctant to cover the race at this early stage because there are two other provincial leadership contests on at the same time – the Liberals’ and the Alberta Party’s. But, if so, this is ludicrous on the face of it, because the leader of the Conservative Party race will be the premier of Alberta, and the leaders of the other two have no chance of holding this office, now or in the foreseeable future.
Speaking as someone who has never supported the Conservatives, it is still fair to recognize that the Conservative leadership contest is a far more important news story by any measure.
My correspondent also suggested that the leadership platforms are still too vague and platitudinous, and candidate behaviour still too polite, to attract media interest, suggesting that coverage will pick up as the opportunity for juicy 10-second clips grows. This is undoubtedly true, but the fact that this is so does not speak well of the way the media is doing its job.
"British Columbia’s Tyee has provided a model to the rest of Canada of how an on-line news source funded by progressive elements in society can be a success."
David, I'll prefer my journalism funded by the profit-motivated advertisers of Lincolns and La-z-Boys over the allegedly altruistic compulsions of undisclosed secret patrons ("progressive elements" if you prefer) any day.
Well David you are absolutely right that the media is not doing its job. To be more precise, the media, whether they like it or not, has caused most of what is happening today in the political system. The fact that they do not have the manpower to do a better job, I am sorry to say, but tough luch, neither do most of us working in other fields. I still remember in the 80s and 90s when the outsourcing and the fad to cut rgardless, the media, not yet threathened by the Internet, kept helping the process along and brain washing people that we had to cut jobs to be become more competitive and less fat….blah blah blah. The media loved it. I still remember reading articles calling public employees 'the check grabbers'. Now it is their turn and I for one am not sorry at all, because in that period where they were the enablers of a bad economic system that took us where we are, I lost my job twice, was outsourced without compensation and changed careers to survive. I certainly wish them good luck doing that.