This morning - the Telegram has served up another waste of space by "journalist" James McLeod. Under the News section you'll see a story headlined; "Rumours swirl about PC leadership ahead of critical meeting Saturday".
The story begins by outlining rumours about who may seek the leadership of the Newfoundland and Labrador PC Party.
It quickly turns into another Liberal bashing through the bias pen of the reporter.
The subheading reads: "Throwing stones" In this paragraph McLeod talks about tweets by Liberals regarding the Tory delegate style convention. What it does not say - is there have been Tory tweets as well taking smacks at the Liberal convention style.
McLeod then adds that it is unclear what glass ceiling the Liberal party broke as they elected a middle-aged man. If McLeod is using a strict interpretation of glass ceiling - with feminist meaning - then I would suggest - the open leadership of the Liberal party allowed many thousands of women to vote for the next leader - without restriction of finance to attend a convention, without restriction of geography, and without restriction of conflicting commitments to job and family. If one were to use a more broad interpretation of glass ceiling - where men and women could be included in the advancement - then obviously over 20,000 people voting in a leadership election for any party in our province - not only broke it but shattered it.
McLeod then says "it was the PC Party that first put a woman in the role of Premier". If James were actually producing news not spin - he might have opined that there were rumours of backroom deals to keep men interested in the role from running. It is also interesting that McLeod finds that anybody putting a woman anywhere is somehow breaking a glass ceiling.
The next subheading reads: "Delegates decide" - and in that paragraph McLeod paraphrases something allegedly said by PC Party President Sheahan. He said the Liberals were so thoroughly decimated — without active
district associations, donors or membership lists — that they needed to
use their leadership race to rebuild the mangled party.
Right of the top - this is an example of Tories once again taking smacks at the Liberal process and further ignores the obvious balance to that statement.
The Tories are probably using the delegate style convention because they have been decimated in the polls and must raise some excitement to rebuild the battered party. The rumours of so many people running may simply be a set-up by the PC's in an attempt to show artificial interest in the publicly admonished party. Names like Ottenheimer, Skinner, Manning, and Oram - Tory stalwarts not new blood - and a bunch of Cabinet Ministers positioning themselves to be a king/queen maker.
The other obvious thing here is that the PC's that McLeod says put the female Premier in office - are the same group that so obviously threw her out and the same bunch that are acting now like it was all Dunderdale's fault.
There are some real problems with much that McLeod reports on - but this one is Duffyesque and shows a real bias.
3 comments:
Liberal drivel. Most points the author makes here are baseless.
@go-forwardbasis
Thank you for the insightful comment, you've added much to this important discussion on media biases.
Sue you certainly are a well seasoned sage of the political realm and you are very capable of deciphering everything about politics that is fuzzy to the ordinary amateur political scene watcher's eye.
So my question to you is are you trying to get across to your readers, without saying it directly, that at the moment we have a female in our midst with PC ideology gearing up to run in the next election to become Premier as a Liberal to carry on with the Agenda of the present PC Government? If that is the case, well then the political system we operate under has come to the end of its ropes and Reform of the system needs to be started Pronto!
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