Journalism Today and Same Sex Marriage

I think this column in today’s Los Angeles captures much of what is wrong with contemporary journalism. It is about Iraq but it could be about anything. The excerpt I like follows: As thorough as The Times' reporting has been, it often reads as if written by acrobats in pain — skilled professionals twisting themselves and their copy into knots as they strain to "balance" what they are actually seeing with the sometimes fantasy-based spin of both Iraqi and U.S. officialdom….Somewhere along the line, American newspapers jumbled and polluted the concept of being objective. Objectivity, maybe better called truth-telling, should be the cherished goal of all reporters and editors.

Meanwhile back in Canada…

The Canadian news media’s coverage of the same sex debate I find quite irritating. It is quite obvious that the bill to be tabled this week will pass. The NDP and the Bloc, with 73 votes between them, will vote for it with one or two exceptions, offset on the other side by the Conservative caucus, again with a the handful of exceptions such as Belinda Stronach. The Liberals could have 30-35 defections and the vote would still pass easily, which is exactly what will happen. But in their endless pursuit of ersatz drama most media treat it as a close contest. Harper’s opposition is entirely about playing to his base, which would be furious with him if he did not put up a show of opposition.

There has not been much media play of this Environics poll, which indicates that public opinion supports the bill 54-43. It is split along age and regional lines with the greatest support for the legislation coming from Quebec and B.C. and the 18-29 age group and opposition from those over 60 and Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. This Ipsos-Reid poll suggests it would have little impact on a possible election, although I note that the Liberal move up to 41% here appears to be at the expense of the NDP who are at 13% in this survey. As I don't have a subscription to Reid I can't see the details but the lead question in the survey asks respondents if they want an election based on this issue (71% don't), and then it appears that they asked if there is one anyway, who will you vote for. Compared to this Leger poll from last spring, the Environics results suggest public opinion is moving towards support for same sex marriage.

New Federal Poll

The new year is well upon us and the House Commons returns to work in just under two weeks with a budget probably coming in February. Ralph Goodale is consulting opposition parties about the budget’s contents to avoid a vote of non-confidence. Just in case the budget is defeated and an election results, what should we expect?

A poll released recently by Environics has the Liberals at 37%, the Conservatives at 29%, and the NDP at 20%. The Bloc is at 47% in Quebec with the Liberals 29%, four points below the last election.

When run through my seat forecasting model (based on the 2004 results) the poll suggests the Liberals would win with a minority. The results are Liberals - 137 (compared to 135 last June), Conservatives - 77 (a drop of 22 from last year), NDP - 34 (15 additional seats) and the Bloc - 59. In this scenario it is the NDP that holds the balance of power.

My gut hunch is that between elections polls tend to overestimate Liberal support in English Canada and understate it in Quebec (the so-called hidden federalist vote). This poll nonetheless strongly suggests that a majority government is not in the cards.

Tsunami and AIDS

It has been gratifying to see the strong humanitarian response on the part of the rest of the world to the tsunami disaster in Asia. However, it appears to take a singular dramatic turn of events to bring out this impulse in all of us. The AIDS epidemic is the equivalent of the tsunami on an ongoing basis. To his credit, this point was made recently by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In Canada the person who has made the greatest efforts to bring the AIDS epidemic in Africa to public awareness is Stephen Lewis, who has established a foundation with the objective of "easing the pain of HIV/AIDS in Africa".

Media and the Tsunami

There has been a good deal of criticism of western leaders including Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, suggesting they displayed a slow response to the Asian tsunami crisis. See here and here, for example. George W. Bush was among the slowest to respond, although his insensitivity will surprise no one.

I am not going to comment their behaviour but rather the immediate media response. On the day it happened I did notice that CNN, a critical media outlet for breaking news - around the world, not just in the U.S. - paid little attention to the story, devoting much of its schedule to the usual blather. See the headlines on this segment of CNN, for example, about 12 hours after the earthquake and tsunamis occurred. There are interviews following the headlines about the disaster, but CNN did not deem it worthy of inclusion in its lead headlines.

CBC Newsworld, although it was a statutory holiday here (unlike in the U.S.), did provide live reports and updates as best they could deliver them - mainly phone interviews.

We live in a world where all reality is validated by media. I wonder if any of these leaders might someday admit they were unduly influenced by CNN's slack response?

American Prospect on U.S. Election 2004

There are two new articles in the current issue of the American Prospect on the election worth reading. The first, Movement Interruptus, is an overview of the campaign and the results by the Emerging Democratic Majority authors, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.

The other, the Democrat's Da Vinci Code, is a review of successful local campaigns by Democrats in red states. I think it helps give some insight into the complexities of American politics that the blue state/red state axis oversimplifies.

Final Bush Margin

The U.S. election is over. Bush won but the votes, until recently, have continued to be counted. In the end the margin was close: just 2.46%. A proper recount in Ohio would no doubt make it closer.

Final official June 28 2004 election results

Elections Canada has now published the final official results of the June 28 2004 federal election. This has allowed me to perform a little experiment. We all know the actual outcome on voting day differed significantly from the final pre-election polls in terms of the vote percentages. Suppose those last polls had accurately captured the final outcome. What might the distribution of seats have looked like? Using the final results as the base, I have calculated the seat outcome that would hypothetically have occurred.

It is first worth pointing out that almost all of the difference between the last set of polls and the final vote shares was in Ontario. The final poll in Quebec by Léger Marketing, for example, was almost dead on. I have used for the calculation the Léger poll in Quebec, and a weighted average of the final four national polls (Ekos, Ipsos-Reid, Compas & a national Léger Marketing survey, which differed from the final Léger poll in Quebec both in its numbers and the fact that it was completed a day earlier) . I can justify using the last Léger poll in Quebec because there was a trend towards the Liberals during the last week in Quebec, which the final Léger poll appeared to capture.

The result that we might have seen, if opinion had not moved in the last few days (to repeat, almost entirely in Ontario), was: Liberal – 114, Conservative – 109, BQ - 54 NDP – 30, and Other – 1.

The results by province are almost identical in the projection to the actual in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta and B.C. The calculation shows the Conservatives losing 16 seats in Ontario, offset by gaining 6 in Saskatchewan, while the NDP wound up losing 7 seats in Ontario and another 4 in Saskatchewan. I think the differences in Saskatchewan can best be explained by polling error rather than late movement, which I think clearly accounts for what happened in Ontario.