Posted by Sudbury Northern Life
Toronto – A party that used to complain its leader would need to walk through this city naked to attract attention from its news media seems to have found a less embarrassing solution: choosing a woman leader.
The concern was expressed by New Democrats about Howard Hampton and was thoroughly borne out in the eight months’ race to succeed him until they chose Andrea Horwath, who now has media lining up to interview her.
The NDP organized 44 meetings across the province at which four competent MPP-candidates spelled out their ideas for winning an election and improving government and tested each other on the same platform.
The Toronto daily newspapers, which claim to inform residents across the province, attended no more than three or four of these meetings between them — the skimpiest coverage of an Ontario leadership campaign this reporter can recall in more than four decades of covering such events.
Papers where the meetings were held reported them, which was fortunate for their readers. Voters should know what a party — that was in government only 14 years ago — would do if it gets back.
The Toronto papers could argue the NDP, with only 10 of 107 seats in the legislature, is a long shot to return to government soon and they had to cover competing political events.
These included the possible defeat of a federal Conservative government and former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory’s failed attempt to obtain a seat in the legislature, but no-one today would dispute they reported more twists and turns of these than they were worth.
Some Toronto papers reported candidates announcing they were running, but usually little about who they were and what they thought.
One paper interviewed candidates and reported briefly on them and others ran assessments of who would win, but with negligible information on their policies and almost invariably dominated by the theme the NDP will not matter for the foreseeable future.
One Toronto paper ran an editorial suggesting the best choice would be Horwath, but spelled her name wrongly each time it mentioned her, which does not inspire confidence it knew much about her.
Another assessed the candidates and their policies, but left out Gilles Bisson, saying he had not replied to its request for information. Bisson advocated fundamental changes in the party, and anyone could have known these by scanning papers outside Toronto, as this writer did with no apologies.
Two Toronto papers tried to justify their lack of interest by claiming the NDP race was boring and lackluster, but it produced more interesting issues than events in the legislature.
These included Michael Prue’s suggestion his party look generally at the issue of funding faith-based schools and not merely the Conservatives’ proposal to expand funding to others, as well as Roman Catholic schools, that cost them the 2007 election, which most politicians now are too frightened to contemplate.
One Toronto paper ran an editorial suggesting the best choice would be Horwath, but spelled her name wrongly each time it mentioned her...
New Democrats are appalled, not so privately, by the Toronto media’s scanty coverage of a campaign they had counted on to boost their party with the public. Candidates in a recent Conservative leadership race had only to call rivals “pale pink imitation of Liberals” to win headlines.
The Toronto media atoned slightly around the convention by getting excited particularly at the prospect a party could have that rarity, a woman leader, and Horwath has refused to criticize media now.
This shows political smarts, because politicians rarely win by complaining about media and she will have to deal with them every day.
But she should not feel secure in this relationship, because there is a lot of history that shows the media’s infatuation with a woman leader can be no more than a passing fancy.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
