There are fifty-seven stories posted on cbc.ca’s index. In the title, sixteen stories identified Dalton McGuinty or The Liberal Party, while eighteen mentioned John Tory or The Conservative Party. That is thirty-four of fifty-seven stories available directly relating to two parties, which is a whopping sixty percent.
There are twelve parties on the ballot, so it appears that this medium is severely coverage-biased towards these two parties, and the other parties are being neglected. Two of twelve is about fifteen percent, so if it was completely fair, it would feature four or five stories per party. Actually, there are only headlines directly about four parties (Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, and The Green Party). That means eight whole parties have received zero headlines, which seems completely unfair.
It seems like a bias, but really, Liberal and Conservative parties have controlled Ontario for the past twelve years, with only one other party winning in the nineties (NDP). I believe that these two parties are so overwhelmingly popular compared to the rest of them with The Liberals winning the last election, and the apparent Conservative onslaught lingering for October’s election, that this is perfectly justified. Last election, The Liberals gained 46.45 percent of the popular vote, while the Tories took 34.64 percent. Together, this is over 80 percent of the popular vote.
By this standard, cbc.ca should have devoted forty-six of fifty-seven stories to these parties. Thirty-four stories is a modest number by those standards. cbc.ca remains unbiased and looks out for the public’s best interest, but fail to give the little parties attention they so desperately need to raise popularity for their party’s own causes.
-Jesse Ferguson
305 words