Sunday, June 11, 2006

On self-reinforcing bias

Robert commented a couple of days ago about the near-complete lack of media coverage of the NDP's Greener Homes Strategy. It's certainly outrageous that the plan received as little attention as it did, but put in context the media blackout looks even worse than at first glance.

After all, based solely on the lack of coverage of the article one could always argue that the NDP hadn't put the media on notice or highlighted the issue...if not for, well, the fact that such a view would be dead wrong. The NDP mentioned its impending series of proposals several days in advance, and followed up the release of the strategy with further measures to keep the party's proposal in the public eye.

But it gets worse. At the same time the media was happily ignoring or spinning the NDP's major policy announcement, the Ottawa Citizen's Susan Riley was complaining about a supposed lack of opposition in Ottawa, particularly based on the "fitful" work by the NDP and the Bloc on Kyoto. For those keeping track at home, the NDP's allegedly fitful work included
asking multiple questions about Kyoto during the week's Question Periods and commenting on both National Clean Air Day and World Environment Day, in addition to unveiling and following up on its own plan.

In other words, not only is the media utterly failing to pay attention to meaningful policy suggestions, but it's also blaming the NDP for that failure. And with that apparently happening at the same time as editors swallow without question Stephen Harper's editorial suggestions and the Libs receive daily attention for their leadership race, there shouldn't be any doubt which federal party is getting the short end of the stick.

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