This weekend in Toronto the NDP is set to crown Canada's newest leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. It has been a long campaign and one overwhelmingly cast as boring by commentators. Being a conservative but a political junkie first and foremost, I've been reading all I can about it but I couldn't bring myself to sit through more than little snippets of the six leadership debates. Through all of the articles I've read and all the news panels and reports I could not help but get an overwhelming sense of certain trends in the consensus media's coverage.
When I say consensus media the term's meaning is twofold. Firstly, I mean to highlight the approaches, ideas, and narratives that the majority of reporters, commentators, and columnists have and, more particularly, what they have in common. Secondly, the term is used to point out the nature of media coverage in the country. The way that there tends to be a consensus amongst the major news organizations (some outlets and journalists more than others) on ideas and narratives concerning politics. This is a common criticism around the world and it comes variously from the right and the left. Most often in Canada this argument is put forth by conservatives. In the past the National Post had a reputation as portraying an image of existing outside this consensus. Today the Sun newspapers (we don't have one in BC as the Vancouver Sun is part of Postmedia) and Sun News Network are aggressively marketed in this way. What is of interest to me today and, frankly, has me annoyed is not how the 'consensus media' is portraying the Conservative Party –as is often the issue amongst bloggers of my sort– but how it's portrayed the NDP leadership race.
I mentioned it before but it bears repeating that coverage of the race has overwhelmingly centered around how boring and long it's been. I find this to be a completely useless observation. First of all I challenge anyone –reminding you that I am obsessed with politics...I sit down with a bowl of popcorn to watch election coverage– to find me when Canada has ever had an exciting leadership race. In my relatively few years observing Canadian politics I've watched one Alliance, one PC, one Conservative, three Liberal, and one other NDP race. None were exciting. None had anything particularly scandalous, headline grabbing, or dramatic like American races often do. They have all been remarkably similar in their blandness to the average Canadian. That does not change the fact that they were all important. They were all integral to the functioning of one of the most advanced democracies in the world. When party members elect their leaders they are making historical decisions; they are effecting who our potential PM's are and sometimes directly who our PM is.
Understandably the media looks for winners and losers. The outlets like to follow dramatic narratives and get people riled up. This often leads them to portray a race as existing between a few front runners or, when it comes to parties, between two key diabolically opposed players. conservatism vs. liberalism fits this narrative perfectly in the US. For most of Canada's history it has served as a convincing framework as well, though less tidily and (mostly) without the diabolical elements. Thus media has tended to focus more attention on the leadership races of the supposed 'front-runners': the Conservatives and the Liberals. This is surely the way Canadian media would prefer to go on covering politics. But history has a habit of forcing change upon unwilling participants. The NDP became the Official Opposition after last election. As the official opposition it is the NDP's responsibility to represent Canadians in opposition to the Conservatives. In other words it is their job to behave as the official critics and to help government to function optimally through presenting the Conservatives with criticisms that can be used productively or as points of ultimate opposition on which voters can decide. The Official Opposition is integral to our democracy functioning as is the Leader of the Opposition.
Clearly the NDP leadership campaign has deserved in depth coverage from the media beyond superfluous observations of its perceived boringness. It has not received this. The NDP is being treated by the consensus media as it has been in the past; on the sidelines. The NDP leadership race has received extremely little attention; robo-calls and Bob Rae's musings on just about anything are presumably of more importance. The consensus media found every opportunity to cover the past two Liberal conventions. I'm quite sure they found these races vastly more exciting. I'll tell you why: most individuals that make up the 'consensus media' are liberals and often Liberals. They fear that the NDP may be replacing the Liberals in the bi-oppositional framework that they themselves perpetuate. Or, at least, may be complicating things by creating a truly three-way battleground.
The fact of the matter is that there are important ideas being debated in this race. Ideas that can, and will, impact the direction of our country. The candidates offer us very different images of what Canadian politics may look like in the years to come. The most prominent of them is Thomas Mulcair. He is likely to move the party more into the center, keep the NDP competitive in Quebec and, ultimately, move the NDP convincingly into traditional Liberal territory. Given that Harper has been doing precisely this from the right this fundamentally threatens the Liberals as a party. As the Leader of the Opposition whoever's crowned on Saturday will play a prominent role in shaping the debate and political direction of this country. He or She will be the primary political figure in opposition to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives and in this way will influence the Government's policies as well. Despite the Liberal's and the consensus media's attempts to shape the political landscape it is quite likely that whoever is crowned leader on Saturday will be the primary alternative to Stephen Harper in the next election. This likelihood increases immensely if Mulcair becomes leader.
Obviously the implications of the NDP leadership race that finishes this weekend are far more important than the consensus media would have us believe.
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