Distorting the story

The CP's story on federal party fund-raising has received plenty of attention. But one element that's largely gone unnoticed is that the article reflects an all-too-familiar example of the media focusing on the Con/Lib dichotomy even where the effect is to confuse how the story is reported.

After all, based on the actual fund-raising standings (which see the Cons well ahead of the pack, followed by the NDP, Libs, Greens and Bloc in that order), one would figure the NDP would receive the second mention within the article, along with at least as much discussion of its methods as is given to the Libs and Cons. But instead, the headline, lead-in and article text all give first priority to the Cons and Libs - with the NDP (and its total more than double the Libs') mentioned only as a relative afterthought:

Stephen Harper's Conservatives raised almost 10 times more money from 10 times more donors than the Liberals in the first three months of 2007.

Even the NDP — historically the poorest of the three main national parties — managed to raise twice as much money as the once-mighty Grits.

According to quarterly fundraising results, posted Tuesday by Elections Canada, the Liberals managed to raise only $531,141 from 4,365 donors.

By contrast, the Tories vacuumed up almost $5.2 million from more than 45,000 contributors. The NDP scooped up $1.2 million from almost 15,000 donors.

For those looking for another problematic part of the article, the same scenario arises between the Greens and Bloc - as the Greens' fivefold advantage in fund-raising still only earns them mention after that given to the Bloc's numbers.

Now, it would be fair enough to say that the amount of money raised in any given quarter likely won't have much direct impact on future election results. But rather than even making that case to justify the shape of the article, the CP seems to take as a given that the reporting has to reflect the media's usual order of party discussion - even if that order makes no sense in light of the issue being reported on.

And that only hints at just what both the NDP and Greens are fighting in their respective efforts to move up in the federal party standings...no matter how much money they can raise compared to their competitors.