Tory approach to media a self-fulfilling prophecy

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/08/2015 (3166 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For me, the best part of political rallies is the stuff that happens before the speeches, before the stage-managed chants and the rah-rah rock music.

It’s the moments when you find yourself chatting with a lady in a wheelchair who is so dang excited to see her party leader she doesn’t mind being boxed in behind the media pen, her view obscured by a wall of cameras and a tangle of cords. It’s the chance to finally meet a candidate from rural Manitoba you’ve only ever spoken to on the phone. It’s the non-specific fun of hanging around — the gossiping, the finding out who’s door-knocking for whom and who’s running where, the gauging of hopes in each riding, the how-was-your-summer-what-about-that-latest-attack-ad banter with partisans you’ve covered for years.

There was none of that at Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s rally in Winnipeg earlier this month. And there was so much of it at NDP Leader Tom Mulcair’s rally last week that it was a blast to cover, and then the source of some overdue reflection. The contrast between the two events was so stark, the relationship with the media so different — in ways big and subtle and specific to Manitoba — it merits more analysis.

Part of this strong contrast is structural, the outcome of already much-kvetched-about physical limitations imposed by the Conservatives on reporters. At the Harper rally, reporters were asked to arrive an hour early at the secret location and then cloistered in an anteroom. To leave required some sweet-talking and an escort. I avoided the media quarantine until the last minute, hoping to chat with a few candidates and backroomers as they trickled in. Stuck at the back door, I saw virtually no one I knew. I had a few seconds with Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa MP Bob Sopuck before Conservative operatives started hovering and the conversation fizzled. Once the rally began, reporters were confined to a fenced-off pen. It was impossible to wander the room, see who was there and visit. At one point, I tried to chat with folks standing along the media pen’s metal railing. One Tory who looked familiar made it clear he would rather have a root canal than speak to me.

At the NDP rally, there were no physical restrictions on reporters. No party staffer even took my name.

(This is certainly a careful attempt by the NDP to cultivate the contrast so reporters like me will note it, even though it’s very likely the Liberals and NDP will adopt much of Harper’s media control if they form government.)

The contrast was also a function of the crowd at each event. The NDP event was open to anyone, and it was a sea of faces familiar to reporters — the army of young NDP staffers who roam the halls of the legislature, city councillors and their assistants, candidates past and present, union leaders, the directors of inner-city non-profits, indigenous activists, student leaders, academics, local pundits and tweeters, environmental activists, artists.

The jam-packed room at the RBC Convention Centre was the physical manifestation of the grip the NDP enjoys, after 16 years in power, on the province’s political machinery and on its civil society. For me, it was a veritable shmooz-a-palooza.

The Conservative event at the Tijuana Yacht Club was invite-only, meant for loyal campaign volunteers, the ones who do the quiet grunt work, not the party’s local elite. From my limited vantage back by the bar, I saw almost no provincial Progressive Conservative MLAs, few provincial strategists or backroomers, few people from the business community.

At one point, I spotted a Conservative friend at the back of the crowd and mouthed: “You’re the only person here I know.” It was mostly true.

Perhaps most worryingly, as the same Tory friend later pointed out, the contrast between the two rallies was also a function of like gravitating to like. I am a youngish woman. I live in the inner city. I go to the Fringe, not Winnipeg Jets games. Countless surveys indicate the Tory base is older men who live in suburban or rural ridings. In my day-to-day interactions, I am more likely to cross paths with those who would attend an NDP rally than a Tory one. This is an unavoidable function of neighbourhood connections, of personal interests, of family relationships, of hobbies and hangouts, and perhaps even generational.

In my case, this is the bias Conservatives frequently complain about. It’s not ideology so much as interest, experience and lifestyle. But any attempt to acknowledge it and correct for it is thwarted by the Conservative approach to the media, which creates a stark imbalance in information, in access to candidates and political staff, in the ability to develop relationships of trust and mutual respect. Fair coverage becomes functionally impossible. The cycle perpetuates itself. The inevitable outcome is a demonization of journalists, even those willing to recognize their own limitations, and a political culture based on less information, not more.

Both the party and the public suffer as a result.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @mawwelch