Canadian Election Newspaper Bias

In a post of mine on Stephen Harper for BlogsCanada, some people who I assume are Harper supporters posted comments over the negative media bias against Harper. Jim Elve (the BlogsCanada owner and site admin) added a comment that contained a link to a Globe and Mail article, where data was collected to show that Harper had averaged less negative coverage than the other party leaders. In fact, in the National Post, Harper averaged positive coverage. (click here for the full article)

McGill's Observatory on Media and Public Policy has studied positive and negative mentions of the major parties and leaders in the news and commentary of seven leading dailies through the first 10 days of the campaign. The results show marked differences among the papers.

The Liberals are getting beaten up everywhere, but especially in the National Post where the average net coverage is —37 per cent. This percentage is based on the per cent of positive mentions minus the per cent of negative mentions -- a score of 0 per cent would be perfectly neutral. Le Devoir (-32 per cent), La Presse (-30 per cent), and the Calgary Herald (-25 per cent) were close behind the Post. The Toronto Star and the Globe & Mail were at -21 per cent and —19 per cent respectively. The Vancouver Sun was kindest at —10 per cent.

The Conservatives are getting better press than the Liberals across the board. The Calgary Herald and the National Post led the way with +12 per cent and +6 per cent respectively. The Toronto Star (-12 per cent) and Le Devoir (-11 per cent) were most critical of the party while the Sun, La Presse and the Globe were basically neutral.

As one would expect, coverage of the leaders closely mirrored coverage of the parties. Le Devoir was particularly hard on Liberal leader Paul Martin (-32 per cent) and the Post was both particularly warm to Conservative leader Stephen Harper (+12 per cent) and hard on NDP leader Jack Layton (-32 per cent).

Now this doesn't come as any surprise to me. All the newspapers mentioned have political biases, based largely on what they see as their intrisic appeal to a particular readership. It is interesing to note, however, that the National Post appears to be the most clearly partisan among mainstream newspapers.

Early on in the election campaign, Harper seemed to be treated uniformly gently by the press, especially considering a number of his past stances on issues like Iraq. I think part of the problem for the gentle coverage was the abyssmal performace of the Liberals, and part was the lack of an attack by the NDP on the Conservatives. I also think that is starting to change. Since the Globe article above was printed, an effort to shine a light on Harper's social conservatism is beginning to develop.

It will be interesting to see how the various newspapers, and the mainstream media in general, respond to the lack of balance that has largely favoured Harper so far. Will they continue to treat him gently or will they start asking harder questions, and keep asking them if Harper tries to skirt them as he has done so far in the campaign?