The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Are journalists meeting the challenge of covering debates and protests?

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

Canadian political leaders have debated since 1968, but do journalists cover these election spectacles appropriately?  And how about those semi-violent protests - are they covered too much or too little?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, the election issue, today's segment, The Reporters. Tim Horton's Smile Cookie Week is back, starting September 13th. For one week, the iconic chocolate chunk cookies topped with a pink and blue smile will be available at Tim Horton's restaurants across Canada. 100% of the proceeds from each Smile Cookie will be donated to local charities and community groups in each restaurant's neighborhood. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Smile Cookie campaign has raised more than $60 million

for charities, hospitals, and community programs across the country. Grab your Smile Cookie from September 13th to 19th only at Tim Hortons. And hello there. Yes, we are at the critical point. You know, in the next few hours, in the next few days, the last two election debates between the leaders,

one in French, one in English. And the country will get their perhaps best opportunity to make judgments about these people and what they say they will do if they're elected and their party becomes the government. Now, you may have said, since this election was called in the middle of August, you know, I haven't been tuned in. I'm not really watching. I'm not listening. I was on summer holidays.

I don't need to listen to this stuff. Well, you know, every citizen has the right to vote. Every citizen over the age of 18 has the right to vote. Every citizen over the age of 18 has the right to vote. And coming with that right is a certain responsibility to kind of understand what's at stake, what the different parties have to say. So you may have checked out for the last three weeks, and I'm sure a lot of Canadians have, for the very reason that this has been summer.

But kids are back to school now. And you have the opportunity this week to listen to these leaders and what their parties have to offer. And what better way than in a debate? Sometimes debates get out of hand, like the last one. But, the last English one. But, you know, you still get a sense of who these people are. So if you can, you should watch these debates, or listen to them. So that's Wednesday French, Thursday English.

Now, if you follow the polls for whatever value you place in polls, there's one thing that's been clear in the last three or four days because they're all very much the same. It's a close race. Virt virtually tied in every poll so you see some with the conservatives ahead by a point some with the liberals ahead by this one out this morning liberals ahead by two points but basically they're all within the margin of error. It's a virtual time at the moment.

So, as the old saying goes, every vote counts. Right? Every vote counts. And if you doubt that, let me give you a little history. Here's your fun fact for today. Three times in Canadian federal

elections, two candidates have tied on election night. One vote would have made the difference. So when were these, Mansbridge, you say? 1887, in the riding of Joliet. The returning officer had to cast his vote. That decided the winner. In 1896, same thing.

Two candidates each got 1,502 votes. The returning officer cast his vote, and the winner was declared. 1963, Pontiac to Miskaming. Two candidates, the conservative and the liberal, each got the same number of votes. Once again, the returning officer cast his vote, and a winner was declared.

There have been eight ridings, won by just one vote in federal elections. In all, there have been 22 ridings, by just one vote in federal elections. In all, there have been 22 ridings won by fewer than 10 votes. Now, one thing's different today. Now, the returning officer doesn't get the deciding vote anymore. If it's a tie, you have to have a by-election. So does one vote matter? Absolutely.

One vote can matter. Keep that in mind as you look ahead to the next few days. Debates and then 10 days roughly to Election Day, September 20th. You can play a role. You should play a role. You're Canadian. You can't whine and moan about government if you don't even partake in voting day.

Alright. Debates. Demonstrations. Two key issues that confront reporters, journalists who cover these stories. How are they doing? How are they meeting the challenge? What is the challenge of covering those two issues?

Well, that's why on Tuesdays we get together with Althea Raj, former Bureau Chief of the Huffington Post in Canada. She's about to be named. In fact, it could be any minute. She's about to be named. In fact, it could be any minute. She's about to be named in her new position, and it's a good one, with a different news organization.

Clearly, they've been listening to her on the bridge, and they said, we've got to get this person. Anyway, listen for that. It's coming up. And Rob Russo, former Bureau Chief of Canadian Press in Ottawa, former Bureau Chief of the CBC in Ottawa, also former Canadian Press reporter in Washington covering the White House. So you've got a lot of

experience there in these two, and we're going to talk to them about the issues I just mentioned and that's coming up all right let's get at it althea and rob are both in ottawa today just a couple days away from the english language debate only 24 hours away from the second French language debate. And I want to talk about debates, not what you expect in these two particular ones, but in what challenges confront journalists on these. We've all done enough of these. Some of us have done far too many debates, but we always seem every time to face the same kind of challenges and often fall into the same kind of traps in trying to cover what is clearly a major moment in any campaign. And this will be no exception to that rule.

Rob, why don't you start us? What's the biggest challenge that journalists are confronted with in covering these debates? It's usually the immense pressure to either declare a winner or a loser, or to somehow characterize beyond what our powers of observation and recall give us, to characterize some sort of outcome. And I say that because we're all under deadline pressure. All three of us have worked in mediums where we have to instantly produce an account of what occurred. And I think journalists get into trouble when they stray from using their powers of observation and recall into

the attempt to declare a winner. the truth is we don't know. We get it wrong, except for very, very rare occasions, and I'm sure we're going to refer to them later on. We often get it completely wrong compared to the audience. And I'm reminded, I'll go back just maybe 14 or 15 years, in the 2004 debate, Paul Martin against Stephen Harper, Stephen Harper running for the first time, everybody's ganging up on Paul Martin.

He's had a terrible, terrible six months going into the campaign. The sponsorship scandal is breaking. All of this stuff is happening. They're all ganging up on him. And after the debate, everybody has declared Martin the loser. And he and his own team declared him the loser as well

48 hours later in comes the research and david hurley who was running his campaign walks in and tells everybody we won the debate and and they're all stunned that they won that we we won the debate and nobody knows why the audience, they make up their own mind. Well, that was a rarity, right? That everybody could get it so wrong. But I take your point. I mean, there is this enormous pressure, you know, to say something definitive about what had happened.

Now, columnists, they can do that. That's their job. You know, they write opinion. But the reporters who are covering the day-to-day story are supposed to look at it differently. You know, I can remember some of the early debates I covered. We had all gathered together before the debate started and say, you know, we are not going to declare a winner

in the first minute after this thing's over. You know, we're going to wait, let the people do what they do, and we'll get their response first. No CBC journalist is going to say so-and-so won the debate. Well, you know, the first one that we did in a big way was 84, and that was the you had no option moment, and everybody kind of crowded in on that. But, you know, it's really hard not to say

out of the gate especially when it seems obvious to us um you know who won who didn't win you can declare stumblers you can call people they stumbled they begged for some sort of response they had no response but to declare a winner and a loser is a dangerous territory for somebody who isn't in the opinion business right now i'll see you what's your take i think it's a dangerous business to declare a winner and a loser even if you're in the columnist business because i think we tend to watch things in the lens that we have seen the rest of the campaign which which is we're completely immersed in it. So those surprising moments to us, the know, not completely immersed in it,

not reading 50 stories about what's going on in the campaign trail and chatting with the friends that are on the other buses. I think the challenge, frankly, is how to be fair to all the parties involved in the debate. It's two hours. That's pretty intense. There's usually three to five, I'd say, telling moments for each political party in that debate. How do you accurately reflect what happened? I think that's the challenge. I watched a debate last week, and then I read lots of comments from the debate, and I was struck how those would not have been the telling moments that I would have selected. And what was telling for me was the stuff that was surprising to me.

And I'm not sure that those were the same takeaways for, you know, analysts who mostly cover provincial news who were covering federal news more intensely than they had usually. So I would say the fairness aspect is the one that I think is, as a reporter, is most difficult. What about the format on these things? Because there have been so many different formats since the first one in 68. But the last one seemed to be universally panned

by just about everyone as the worst possible. Just the English. Just the English. I'm sorry, you're quite correct. The English-language debate was brutal. I mean, it truly was kind of a train wreck. Now, the problem was it had huge ratings. And so the television networks and the debate commission, you know, who love ratings and the debate commission who wants more and more people engaged in an actual debate have more or less gone with the same format, although they've added a moderator, which I don't know how that's going to work with five journalists and a moderator and everybody asking questions and, you know,

It's going to be the French format, essentially what they've selected for the English debate, the French format from last year or 2019. Sorry. I keep thinking of the election from last year. So journalists ask questions and they'll be a moderator, which is a kind of a blend, a hybrid of what they've got, which has a whole bunch of people on stage, which my small brain, which knows a little bit about news

and not a lot about anything else, will be very, very confused by, I think. Particularly given that this format arose, why? Why do we have a whole bunch of them on stage? It's because in what used to be called the consortium, before ditched the name because it made them sound like an evil empire. The television networks came together and set the format for the debate. And then they wanted all of their anchors on. Right. Yes. I'm sure Peter is an exception to this rule, but there is a certain amount of we got to get our own people on.

We got to get some airtime. Our people, our stars need to shine. And that doesn't make for a good debate, a great debate. If you go through the history of great moments and debates, the moderator played absolutely no role in them other than often to be silent and to allow the debate to go on. And that isn't the instinct of a reporter or of a television journalist or of an anchor. They want to be part of it. It's very, very difficult for them to help themselves. Peter, you can cuff me in the ear if you think i'm wrong but to have four or five of them on doesn't also lead to the practice of a deductive series of questions getting at a certain point a certain amount of information uh for the voter uh so i think that there are problems with with a

multi-headed um moderator or anchor format yeah you know i tend to agree when i look back and think of the ones that you know i the 79 debate was really good moderated by david johnston from mcgill university at the time you know since then has become a governor was the governor general for a while um but uh and that tvi debate last week althea that was pretty good and i mean the moderator was you know he could challenge me perhaps some of the questionaries he went in on but he allowed them to debate and he ensured they did debate and he didn't let it get out of hand uh the problem with the last one was it was totally out of hand the whole time um so you know i don't know how this one one will unfold but i'm more of the opinion of the single moderator or at you know if you're going to

involve journalists you know they used to be because they used to just be the three networks on the english side that they'd worry about global ctv and cbc the senior political journalists from each one of those networks would be sitting on kind of a little panel and ask the odd question but rob's exactly right i mean the best moments are ones where you don't see anybody but the leaders those are the ones that are sort of in the archives in the vault of debates althea um so i don't disagree so and i will also say that um i should recall to the listener that I was involved in the 2019 debate as a debate moderator. I don't actually know how that came to be.

My understanding was that the three networks could not agree on an anchor. And that's how everybody ended up being a moderator um including myself and the toronto star um chose susan delacorte because they were also you know they didn't have a tv anchor to put on the stage um from like the behind the scenes perspective i think what's difficult when you are basically a moderator for like 10 minutes of the debate is there's also no sense of continuity. So, you know, you, I didn't, I think I was second. I watched part of Lisa Laflamme's like moderating of the debate and then she was gone, she her part was also on a select topic and then I think it was me um but if something happens like one of the things that happened in the debate last time is we ran heavy and they told me that the clock was now going to be like 45 I'm going to give

again I'm going to give this as an example because because I don't remember exactly, but let's say they were given 60 seconds to respond. And now the show was too heavy. And it's like live television, you actually have to be out at your two hour mark. Now the leaders only had 45 seconds to respond. And I remember at one point, Elizabeth May was like, but we're supposed to have longer to respond. And I had to say, well, I'm sorry, but now you only have 45 seconds to respond. And the problem with that is they have timed their response in debate prep to be 60 seconds. So now they're like having to say on the fly, like, oh, what can I say in this specific amount of time? And I didn't know how like I kind of had to like tell her like straight up as if i would tell her if we were you know in the quarters of the commons like well i'm sorry but right now

you only have four beyond my control i don't have um anything to do with this um i understand why the networks especially the networks view it basically as a branding exercise i mean it's a really unique opportunity. You're in front of like 19 million Canadians. It's the largest audience you'll ever have to say, these are my best people. And, you know, if you like what you see, you can watch the news at 530 or 11 o'clock or 10 o'clock. But I agree. I think it is much more simple. I think it's actually fairer to the audience and fairer to the leaders to have someone who can say, you know, like, you didn't have enough time to answer

on this. I'm giving you more time to answer on this and like really kind of steer the ship. And, you know, we had Steve Paikin, who was not tied to any of the main networks um host debates I don't know why they can't pick somebody that would be seen as as neutral and acceptable to the consortium but the real reason and Rob talked about it is is branding yeah and they can't agree I'll just say one thing about the timing thing I think it's just like it's so brutal of the Canadian television networks to say we agreed on two hours and we can't go over one second because we're running a little late. We have to be off at the two hour mark. That's just crap. their networks and and and the pressure to get off can run over 5 10 15 minutes in some cases on debate nights it's because they understand that this is kind of important um but for the canadian

networks to use that as an excuse i think is and put people like you you know we were trying to hide that fact that you weren't in that one last time but to put people like you in that position of having to tell them normally we've only got 45 seconds now although i've never i've never seen elizabeth may go according to a script anyways she could easily go 45 instead of 60 but no that's not my. My point is they should be flexible if they have to be or cut in a different manner. They were trapped by the fact they had to go to all five anchors because of all the five networks or five news organizations.

Yeah, five partners. Yeah, I mean, that was the problem. Or normally you would just say, okay, drop the last section. Well, they couldn't do that. Anyway, Rob? The other thing that's notable about TVA's debate compared to the debate that took place in 2019 is that there were two fewer people on the stage.

There was no Green Party leader on the stage during the TVA debate, and Maxime Bernier wasn't there either. And that reduces the possibility of the Tower of Babel, which is when you get four, five, six people all speaking simultaneously, trying to speak over each other, trying to get the moderator's attention and losing the audience. Another moment, that's one of the things that happened in 2004 to Paul Martin, and he managed, unbeknownst to himself and his own people, to look prime ministerial

and a little bit above that. And that's what ended up helping them, according to some of their research. So, you know, we will have a little bit more of that probably on Thursday night. But the TBI debate was notable for that. You know, Pat, it isn't timing as much as really it's wit. You know, the best moments were often unscripted. Some of them were scripted, but they happened very quickly. And I'm thinking of a debate hosted by Steve Bacon, who did an excellent job in 2011,

when Michael Ignatieff went on about why he should have the job. And Jack Layton interrupted him and said, let me get this straight. You've been in Parliament about 35% of the time. You want a promotion? If you're going to apply for a promotion, you better show up for work. That didn't take 45 seconds. It took about a dozen seconds.

It was very, very effective. And that gift had nothing. But that, Rob, was scripted. That was practiced from the Jack Lee encampment. Those golden moments are all practiced. Like the Trudeau moment in the tvi debate where he is talking about i mean he got

it wrong because it was page 96 in the french platform but page 90 on the english debate in the english platform where trudeau goes hard at aaron o'toole on the gun stuff like those are moments that are practiced that the trudeau going hard on aaron o'toole on private health care was practiced the errand going hard on justin trudeau on um general vance and the sexual harassment in the military these are all moments that the parties try to think about oh what is my golden moment and they they practice them thoroughly rehearse uh, but it doesn't take 45 seconds. The most famous one, that you had an option, sir, was probably a dozen seconds as well. And was made, I think, most powerful by John Turner's inability to stumble out a few words in response. Right. Can we talk about the fact that there is only only one english debate because i you know i understand why the liberals wanted to

have a debate consortium because that stephen harper in 2015 did not want to do an official leaders debate and so they wanted to ensure that there would be like still a consortium debate but the idea that because we have one official consortium debate, now he gives an excuse usually to the incumbent prime minister not to agree to more debates, I think is really quite shameful, especially now that everybody's kind of getting their media consumption

in bite-sized pieces and targeted messages on Facebook and here and that. I feel like what we've seen so far from the French networks, we've had the round table with kazo canada and now the ffs with tibia and the french is getting another uh official debate this week has been really illuminating in terms of the party leaders and they're like who they are as people and they're positioning i mean it's a real shame that in the rest of the country we don't have that

yeah you know listen if there was one debate a week i think you know first of all audiences would drop because they just do as things are are repeated that's true um but um but i still think it would be more of a public service than the a time charade that takes place with the dropping out of the sky from the aluminum tube, as Rob so aptly put it at the beginning of this campaign, to speak usually in front of, you know, partisan crowds that are partisan in your favor. Speaking of which, we're going to take a little break and talk about the partisan crowds who are not in your favor and some of the kind of things that have happened,

including just yesterday in London, Ontario, where there was a rock throwing or stone throwing situation that followed the prime minister. I want to talk about that and whether we're covering those things right. Let me quickly take a break and then we'll be right back on that. Starting September 13th, Tim Horton's Smile Cookie Week is back. From September 13th to 19th Let me quickly take a break and then we'll be right back on that. over $60 million. And in 2020 alone, Smile Cookie Week brought in $10.6 million

while helping over 500 community organizations. You can participate by grabbing your own Smile Cookie at Tim Hortons restaurants across Canada from September 13th to 19th. This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. bridge back with althea raj and rob russo both in ottawa this is the reporters segment on the bridge's special election coverage okay i mentioned this issue that happened yesterday in london ontario uh where a number of angry protesters and they've we've seen this on a number of occasions already following uh justin trudeau around um and it uh this time it uh it it kind of got out of hand not to the point at which anything

was cancelled in terms of an event but it got out of hand in that at least one person was throwing stuff and it appears to be gravel or stones or small rocks something and you know there's been a flurry of activity around that in terms of journalism that's been sort of the main story on the morning shows this morning not anything that trudeau said specifically about policies or attacking the other parties or what have you but it was all surrounding this moment i want a sense from from both of you as to whether we're are we covering this kind of thing right obviously you can't ignore it but should it get the kind of attention it's getting and is the attention that it is getting the right attention rob

um let me go back to the first week of the campaign and and uh um the people i worked with at cbc decided to do a story on a lone protester who had followed the prime minister from Ontario to British Columbia, I believe. And I thought that that might've been a little excessive. This was one guy. Yes, he clearly was money and, or maybe had people backing him to dog the prime minister. And we all know the parties do that going all the way back to Judy Lamarche and the Truth Squad, for those of you who are as old as I am.

But I thought that was a little excessive. The people who are now turning up regularly at Trudeau's rallies, though I think represent a dedicated core of Canadians. We can disagree with them. Certainly I do in terms of vaccines and science, but should they be covered? Yeah, we need to try to understand why people feel this way. I think we ignore them at our peril,

but we shouldn't try to give them more influence or prominence than they probably have. And if I talk to pollsters, they say they represent about 10% of Canadians. That's not an insignificant number, but it's not the number that's going to make the difference, I think, in an election. They probably vote one particular way in most instances. Now, the incident last night about the Prime Minister getting pelted with some small stones. At that point, I'm not sure that it's a blazing headline. I'm not sure we break into regular coverage if we're running all news channels. I don't think we do that. The Prime Minister was unhurt.

Nobody was hurt. We show the pictures again. What I used to say to print reporters, use your powers of observation and recall. Don't report what you don't know, report what you see, what you hear and what people tell you, if you could verify it, but no more than that and allow viewers and listeners and readers to make, make up their mind. Okay. I've got more questions on this but i want to first of all get althea's general reaction to the question of how we're dealing with this well i feel like your question

is assuming something and i'm not sure what it is that you're assuming what is it what what do you feel the coverage has lacked or been i'm not i'm not i'm not assuming anything yet i just want to get a general sense from you as to how we deal with us with this kind of a story which is happening almost on a daily basis well i think you have to cover it. It's right there staring at you in the face. It is the thing that reporters getting off the bus are greeted with wherever they go. And frankly, right now, you know, the liberal leaders agenda is not publicized. It says like this morning's announcement said, you have to tell the liberal media team that you want to cover the event by seven o'clock. And then you have to tell the liberal media team that you want to

cover the event by seven o'clock and then you have to be at the said location in montreal at 7 45 like that is not a lot of time for local news agencies to scramble their people and send them to the location so i you know for this suggestion on social media that the liberals are leaking their campaign schedule so that protesters can assemble ahead of time i think it's a little bit rich um i to go back to rob's point about the the man who travels from interior to bc like to me the question was because he said it like who is paying him and that question still i have not heard the answer to that question he said to the answer are you being paid he responded maybe well that's kind of important. Like, is the People's Party of Canada paying you? Is the

third party group paying you to follow around the prime minister? Like, those are absolutely valid question. I don't really care about this particular man's background. But if there's a third party who is organizing the protests, that is absolutely legitimate questions that we should be chasing down. My question also looking at the protest is frankly, why the Prime Minister's protective detail and local police are not creating more of a barrier. I find that really surprising, like the images that we see, the fact that the protesters can get so close to the bus um i i don't know if that's the liberals like staking their ground that they actually want to have those shots of him meeting in the crowds but it seems really surprising to me having traveled with several prime ministers that that is being allowed to happen all right well you know i think your answer uh makes it

easy for me to ask the follow-up question, which is, are we being aggressive enough in trying to determine the answers to some of the questions that you've just posed? behind this or is this just individuals uh exercising to a degree their right to protest and you know yell and scream in a campaign event not the throwing of rocks not the punching not the obscene gestures uh but everything else are we being aggressive enough and trying to find out the answers to some of the questions you ask well i think the quick answer is no because otherwise we would know the answer to those questions and i think on the protesters um i think for sure there is organic protesting happen on social media but i don't know that we well i don't know the answer to is there aside from the organic protesters happening is there somebody also corralling people or sharing of information i don't know the answer to that question i guess

by being more aggressive and asking the questions, you are taking the story more seriously than we are at the moment, which has its own problems. As Rob said, maybe we're paying too much attention to it. It's one of these constants that challenge us as journalists. Protesters organized by other parties have been showing up for a long, long time. People show up in chicken suits. People show up as Corncob Bob.

People do all kinds of things organized by opposition to throw off political leaders. That's happened forever. This is different, and this merits coverage perhaps separately from whatever the leader is trying to say. I think we need to try and understand what's happening. If we want to really reflect this moment in our history, we need to understand those people who are gathering, why they're gathering. It doesn't seem, just judging

by the way people are scurrying to defend the Prime Minister and his right to speak, other political leaders, doesn't seem like other political leaders want to risk being associated with this. So this is a real social phenomenon and we need to understand it it what we don't need it to do is to become the issue that most consumes canadians right now because no survey no research i've seen suggests that this is the issue that most consumes canadians whether or not we should be vaccinated canadians have made up their mind 80 of us have gotten our first and second shot now those of us who are eligible um that therein lies the danger for journalists and also i might say the prime minister might be feeding off these crowds now he didn't avoid them yesterday he went after them uh and so we've got to be aware

of that as well good discussion on uh both issues and uh appreciate the opportunity to talk to you two on it as I do every week. Rob Russo, Althea Raj, thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you. All right, before we go today, I want to just once again mention something I mentioned on yesterday's program, and it's about my new book. I'm shameless plugging, shamelessly plugging my book comes out a month from now october 5th is the date it comes out it's called off the record

and it's a collection of well in some ways it's kind of a biography i guess an autobiography because it's a story of my life and my career. But it's built around a series, quite a few, a couple of dozen, three or four dozen actually, anecdotes from my career. That tell stories, not just about me or about the people I mention in it, but about the business of journalism. And these are the kind of stories that, you know, weren't on the air, but they're the kind of stories I end up telling friends who ask, what was such and such like? And I say, well, you know, you saw what it was like on the air, but let me tell you what was happening behind the scenes.

Those are the kind of stories I tell in Off the Record. And, you know, the early indication is from people who have had an opportunity to read it before it goes on sale, they seem to be quite excited by it. So I hope you would be too. The point of the comment I was going to make, if you recall last year when I came out with Extraordinary Canadians along with Mark Bulgich, a lot of you wanted me to sign book plates.

And I mean a lot. And I did that all on my own time. But I'm not going to be able to do that this year because I'm going to be away a lot at the end of this year working on the documentaries that I'm doing. I'm just not going to be able to do it. But Simon & Schuster, the publisher, is very excited about this possibility, and they are offering up an opportunity for you to get a book bite now, in the next month, with a pre-order purchase. So they're going to, you kind of enter a pool, for the lack of a better word, and 50 names will be drawn out of that pool of people who have pre-ordered off the record.

You can do it all on my website, thepetermansbridge.com. All right, thepetermansbridge.com. And as soon as you go into that website, the first thing that will pop up is an invitation for you to head towards entering this opportunity to get a signed book plate that you can put inside the book when it arrives. Anyway, so that's my plug. I'll probably mention it a couple of times. It's only during this month, during the month of September, before it goes on sale in a regular fashion at bookstores. So if you're interested, please give it a try.

Off the record, thepetermansbridge.com. All right, tomorrow it's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. That should be fun, always is. Hope you'll be there with us. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.