Canada Today
I wish to add to my first post, expanding my response to the election.
The first thing I would like to do is to refer you to the coast of Araska, where my brother has done and outstanding job of responding to the election. (Please see the links in the margin) Having spent several hours this morning reading the news online, encountering the same voices comments posted on the Toronto Star web page, it was neat to see Geoff's responses to them (as I largely agreed). I would like to note that surprisingly the Globe and Mail readers responses to some of the stories about the election were far more pro-liberal, longer and more thoughtful.
Over the past few months my opinion of the media has taken a turn for the worse. During the Kashechewan evacution, I saw first hand, how the media skews the story and reports incorrect information. I was able to observe this, partly because I had more background knowledge than the average reader, and partly because I read every story I could get my hands on and noted glaring contridictions in technical facts published. I was also disappointed at the media's failure to tackle the story at any depth or include research. There has been a lot of evolution in the relationship between the federal government and the First Nation's People, and the media did not give much credit for the progress that has been made. The emphassis on pointing fingers and attacking the government in power, may have helped Kashechewan directly and put Native issues into the consciousness, but overall I think the shallowness of it hurt the First Nation's cause by focusing on their weaknesses rather than their strengths.
I was also unimpressed at the media coverage of the election in gereral. Perhaps I have unfair expectations for journalists, but I think they should put more effort into telling both sides of the story in a researched context. I know that there is a bottom line, but news should be more than sensationalist entertainment - it should be a reliable source of information.
In terms of the election coverage, I think that the media tended to shift the focus towards sensational aspects of the campaign. I would have liked to have seen more articles comparing the parties stances on different issues. I wonder if the media's tendancy to cover sensational stories, changes how politicians campaign?
At any rate, I seemed to have slid away from discussing the election. The truth is that the results are neither good or bad, just the sum total of Canada's voting. I think that it is a result that I reassures me about my fellow Canadians. We aren't becoming an uncaring, right wing country, nor a stagnant one. Even though the Conservative's won, they had to stick to the middle road to win a "shaky minority". No one won big, no one lost big . . . and the story should have a most interesting plot line.
My title to the previous post relates to the fact that I don't like how Harper played the game. I felt he was too busy trying to topple Martin to do his job as a politician. I think think this is sort of devine Karma that he will have to "put himself in Martin's shoes" and see what it feels like to be the leader of a minority. I think it will be a good growing experience for him.
Cheers,
Jennith
The first thing I would like to do is to refer you to the coast of Araska, where my brother has done and outstanding job of responding to the election. (Please see the links in the margin) Having spent several hours this morning reading the news online, encountering the same voices comments posted on the Toronto Star web page, it was neat to see Geoff's responses to them (as I largely agreed). I would like to note that surprisingly the Globe and Mail readers responses to some of the stories about the election were far more pro-liberal, longer and more thoughtful.
Over the past few months my opinion of the media has taken a turn for the worse. During the Kashechewan evacution, I saw first hand, how the media skews the story and reports incorrect information. I was able to observe this, partly because I had more background knowledge than the average reader, and partly because I read every story I could get my hands on and noted glaring contridictions in technical facts published. I was also disappointed at the media's failure to tackle the story at any depth or include research. There has been a lot of evolution in the relationship between the federal government and the First Nation's People, and the media did not give much credit for the progress that has been made. The emphassis on pointing fingers and attacking the government in power, may have helped Kashechewan directly and put Native issues into the consciousness, but overall I think the shallowness of it hurt the First Nation's cause by focusing on their weaknesses rather than their strengths.
I was also unimpressed at the media coverage of the election in gereral. Perhaps I have unfair expectations for journalists, but I think they should put more effort into telling both sides of the story in a researched context. I know that there is a bottom line, but news should be more than sensationalist entertainment - it should be a reliable source of information.
In terms of the election coverage, I think that the media tended to shift the focus towards sensational aspects of the campaign. I would have liked to have seen more articles comparing the parties stances on different issues. I wonder if the media's tendancy to cover sensational stories, changes how politicians campaign?
At any rate, I seemed to have slid away from discussing the election. The truth is that the results are neither good or bad, just the sum total of Canada's voting. I think that it is a result that I reassures me about my fellow Canadians. We aren't becoming an uncaring, right wing country, nor a stagnant one. Even though the Conservative's won, they had to stick to the middle road to win a "shaky minority". No one won big, no one lost big . . . and the story should have a most interesting plot line.
My title to the previous post relates to the fact that I don't like how Harper played the game. I felt he was too busy trying to topple Martin to do his job as a politician. I think think this is sort of devine Karma that he will have to "put himself in Martin's shoes" and see what it feels like to be the leader of a minority. I think it will be a good growing experience for him.
Cheers,
Jennith
posted by Jennith at 10:15 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Jenn, if you want to make it easy for people to get back to one of my posts, there is a "link to this" link at the bottom of each one. It actually pop's you into blogger, and lets you post on your site a back link to my site. Which then shows up on my site as a link to yours. Nefarious eh? You can set that up in one of the setting menu's of blogger.
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