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Thursday, March 06, 2008

Sloppy media coverage of Alberta election

I found out rather late that Alberta's Premier Stelmach was elected with a huge majority. That I found out at all is certainly no thanks to the mainstream media, which doesn't treat this story as particularly newsworthy.

Interestingly, both national and local media for the most part made it clear they were less than pleased with the outcome ... and their sloppy, biased coverage of the election and the campaign put one in mind of the Keystone Cops.

Graham Hicks is one of the few Alberta columnists who didn't have a knife poised to stick into the man known as Steady Eddie. And, Hicks had the guts to go up one side of his mistaken, misguided, and far from impartial colleagues .... and down the other.

His dressing down would be quite amusing if the reason for it wasn't so infuriating. While the MSM's snub is no doubt due primarily to partisan political preferences, a person can be forgiven for suspecting that the sneering behind it comes from a lingering anti-Ukrainian bias.

Since this isn't a political blog (and I mention this election outcome only because it's a media issue involving a self-identified Ukrainian Canadian), I'll leave you to get the details from the source and decide the source of the media's disdain.

Hicks' article is here, and there's more at his blog (here).

UPDATE: A Toronto journalist munches on a slice of humble pie here. (Would some "ice cream with laughter" enhance the flavour of crow any?) Apparently, however, most media are still in denial, particularly at the CBC, where they seem pretty parochial as well as partisan.

H/T to Kate McMillan at Small Dead Animals for this additional amusement courtesy her "Amazing Kreskin School of Journalism" posts.

(I know it's not very nice to gloat, but sometimes a person just can't help it.)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

>That I found out at all is certainly no thanks to the mainstream media

Oh, you are so right here. I will remember that long faces of some journalists who made live post-votes translation from Alberta Legislature :-) Media don't like Steady Eddy seems like... But who cares - people still want him to be Premier of Alberta.

Anonymous said...

>>"Stelmach was a stumble-bum Ukrainian farmer..."

And this is really wierd, I admit. My regret only this ... columnist has no room for comments.

Pawlina said...

Yes, quite the delicious irony to have voters prove the MSM so wrong, and en masse yet!

FYI ... Graham Hicks has a blog where you can leave comments. He is a fabulous reporter and I'd recommend adding his blog feed to your RSS reader.

Anonymous said...

I used to like Graham Hick's columns ... then I grew up.

Pawlina said...

That's nice, dear.

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