Canada Election 2011: Media loves Harper’s song and dance

Another wave of "left wing media", as the paranoid, delusional right questions coverage of the Conservatives. It seems unless there is blanket condemnation of the Liberals and absolute fawning over everything Conservative, we lack fair, balanced reporting! The facts never support the accusations, IN FACT studies of both the 2004, 2006 elections showed overwhelming positive coverage for the Conservatives, negative for the Liberals, if anyone has a logical backing to "bitch", it’s the left not the right in this country. And yet…

McGill is once again doing detailed analysis of political coverage, and GUESS WHAT, shocker of shocker- get your head out of Harper’s ass conbots- you side is doing REMARKABLY WELL, again. Sorry to sound shrill, but the inability to incorporate facts into the theory, it all gets tiring. The problem, the right wing expects coverage to mirror their beliefs, failing to realize the center is called that for a reason. From their perspective the center, even slightly right of center looks like the left, an amazing disconnect.

Fair observers would agree, in terms of the "campaign", the Liberals have run a good one. Also true, if one had to pick a side, who has had the most "bumps" on the trail, again fair to say the Conservatives win on this score. Let’s look at McGill’s analysis so far:

If the Liberals’ plan was to attract attention, it worked. “Not only are they getting more coverage,” says Soroka, citing an increase in Ignatieff’s “first mentions” in news stories—up from 18 to 23 per cent between March 28 to April 2, compared to the previous week; Harper, meanwhile, fell from 68 to 62 per cent—”It’s also better coverage.”

Ignatieff nearly caught up with Harper in the degree of positive coverage in the 794 stories analyzed last week. He scored a “net tone” of 0.94 compared to Harper’s 1.06. That’s a big improvement over the previous week (March 21 to 26) when he was at 0.47, compared to Harper’s 1.04 and Layton’s 1.58. (Layton fell to 1.37 this week; the sample is not big enough to grade Gilles Duceppe.) Net tone is calculated by a computer program that looks at the words found near each leader’s name in a story and, using a dictionary of 6,500 words, determines whether the sentence is negative or positive.

Great news for the Liberals! Ignatieff is now getting over 1/3 as many mentions as Harper. In addition, we are doing SO well, that we’ve almost matched Harper in positive coverage, ALMOST, we "nearly caught up". Week one, heavy, heavy advantage for Harper, but week two ALMOST the same! Now, take those objective figures and compare them with the HOWLING right and their claims that the media is so pro-Liberal, out to get Harper, it actually hurts. You see NO basis in fact, again if anyone has a right to be suspicious it’s our side of the aisle. Everyone agrees Liberals running best campaign, everyone agrees Harper has been on the defensive, off message for a few days at least, and STILL he is able to hold a slight advantage. Amazing, isn’t it? What does it tell you, and who looks the fool for complaining? Maybe, just maybe, next week the Liberals can get SAME coverage, or dare I dream BETTER coverage. If so, it would be the first time in the last "four elections in seven years".