The Globe seems to be hanging farther to the right as the weeks go on.
Perfect example this morning with two stories of two leaders written in two very distinctive ways.
Tories surge on Harper’s leadership
Canadians in overwhelming numbers say Stephen Harper is the most decisive federal leader with the clearest vision of where he wants to lead the country, according to a poll that suggests the Conservatives may now have the winning conditions needed for a spring election.
Leader tested by splits in caucus on issue
Political analyst Robin Sears, a chief of staff to former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae, said Mr. Dion has yet to make clear what his leadership style will be.
“There seems to be a pattern of staking out a hard position and then being forced to backtrack from it,” he said, listing Mr. Dion’s comments on Canada’s Afghanistan mission and his dual Canadian-French citizenship as examples. “Whether you’re a new leader or old, that ain’t a good idea.”
Interesting so in one camp they have managed to make hardline, stick to your guns leadership look inspiring and in the other insipid.
Makes you wonder if Bourque was underhanded or just honest.
Actually, in all fairness, the problem being pointed out in the second quote isn’t that Dion exhibits “hardline, stick to your guns leadership”, it’s that he starts out there, and then “backtracks”. The stories themselves probably give more context, but the quotes you have given here are clearly both saying the same thing, that Harper’s strength is that he’s decisive and has a clear vision, and Dion’s weakness is that he backtracks and prevaricates. Now, one might disagree with that analysis, but the two quotes are clearly making the same point, not opposite ones as your “inspiring vs. insipid” comparision implies.
I do love your comparison of the Globe to Fox News though.
Now excuse me while I go read about how the Blogging Tories think the Globe is Canada’s Air America.
It strikes me that the Globe and Mail is not a “Liberal” paper by default, but rather the newspaper of power in “Upper Canada.” For most of the past decade and a half, thats meant being a Liberal paper, to a degree, but only because Liberals were the party in power. I’m not surprised to see a move to the right, really … I tend to see it instead as jumping to the winning horse.
“I do love your comparison of the Globe to Fox News though.
Now excuse me while I go read about how the Blogging Tories think the Globe is Canada’s Air America.”
🙂
Elron it may well be jumping horses and yet what sad commentary.
I am naive enough to believe that newspapers should be about truth, for good or bad regardless of party line.
Sadly the majority of media is pseudoinfotainment and a progressively less interested populace just follows their lead.
The dog doesn’t wag the tail, the tail doesn’t wag the dog, the fleas wag the dog.
Well, I tend to agree that newspapers should report the truth, but its also true that the “truth” is always defined by your perspective on things. Because newspapers are organs of humanity, they are biased in the same way all human communication is … we tend to frame our descriptions of the world in terms of our own pre-conceptions.
Realizing that allows us to get to the truth, as we would define it, by looking at the same story from a variety of perspectives. I read the G&M, as well as the Calgary Sun, and often the National Post as well as the Calgary Herald. That gives me the Upper Canada conservative position (National Post), a more grassroots conservative position (the Sun), a western liberal perspective (the Herald) and finally the perspective of the paper of power (G&M). Through reading the same stories in all these different sources, I’m able to parse out what I consider to be “spin” and leave only what I consider to be “truth.” But one of the key points to make is that the way I parse that is going to be, by definition, different from the way you parse it.
I do agree that much of what passes for news these days is closer to entertainment … its pretty telling when the best news show on TV, without joke, is produced by Comedy Central …