Thursday, January 12, 2006

Costs and benefits

Based on the press yesterday, it's no wonder the NDP (and Libs) waited so long to release a full platform, and it'll be tough to blame the Cons if they decide never to release one. After all, one would think that the full platform would give rise to some focus on the substantive contents - yet CanWest's coverage talks more about price tags than about any of the NDP's or Libs' actual platform planks, while the headline to the CP/Canoe article presents the NDP platform as nothing more than the cost of already-released promises (though the article itself at least deals with some of the policies involved).

While there were obviously other events going on yesterday which were bound to steal some headlines, that's no reason why the actual coverage of the released platforms had to be in such negative terms. And the result could be a perverse incentive for the Cons to avoid releasing the same information in hopes of thereby avoiding similarly-negative coverage - which could send Canadians to the polls without full information about the cost of electing the heavy favourite.

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