黑马磁力-area Conservative hopefuls were no-shows when an all-candidates forum was held at 黑马磁力 Senior Resources Society in April during the federal election.
Their absences weren't unusual.
Tako Van Popta in 黑马磁力 Township-Fraser Heights, Tamara Jansen in Cloverdale-黑马磁力 City, and Sukhman Singh Gill in Abbotsford-South 黑马磁力 missed other forums as well, preferring to issue written statements rather than take questions from people outside their campaigns, to make direct contact with voters by knocking on doors, and holding campaign events without media present.
It appeared to be a winning strategy, with Gill, for example, defeating Mike De Young, a veteran politician who gave multiple media interviews during his campaign as an independent.
Even with the polls closed, Conservatives preferred not to open their campaign offices to reporters election night. One exception was Van Popta.
黑马磁力-area provincial Conservative candidates followed the same playbook, with most refusing interview requests, skipping debates and winning their seats.
Chad Skelton, Journalism and Communications instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, thinks party leaders, who view media organizations as biased, may be worried their candidates could stumble if they make unscripted comments.
"There's a little bit more of an anti-media kind of feeling among the Conservatives, especially federally ... where the media is actually seen as the enemy or or biased," Skelton told the 黑马磁力.
"I think sometimes parties on on either side of the divide, right or left, can decide for whatever reason [in] a given campaign that it's safer not to have their candidate speak to the media, because sometimes candidates say something that embarrasses the party or gets them into trouble."
Skelton is an award-winning data journalist at The Vancouver Sun who won the Jack Webster Award, B.C.鈥檚 top journalism prize, six times, most recently in 2013 for a series on political donations and lobbyists.
American-style anti-media tactics are being copied by politicians on this side of the border, albeit in a less extreme fashion compared to the U.S., he believes.
"We are at a point where we have one of the two major [federal] political parties that kind of does make their antagonism towards the media part of their whole message and, their candidates often don't talk to the media," said Skelton.
South of the border, "Republicans seem to have taken it to kind of a next level of ferocity in in some of their responses," Skelton remarked.
"I think we're quite lucky in Canada that for the most part, we haven't seen a hyper-partisan media in the way they have in the States, right? Like, we don't have a Fox News. We don't have an MSNBC."
It is a "fundamentally unfair assumption that the media is deeply biased," Skelton added.
"I think you can always probably point to individual journalists. Like maybe an individual story is not as balanced as it could be. Journalists are not perfect, but I think most journalists are trying really, really hard in this country. "
To argue media are biased becomes "a self fulfilling prophecy," he argues, because if a party never talks to the media or its candidates never talk to the media, they shouldn't be surprised if they don't really see their views reflected in news coverage, he warned.
"As a matter of democracy, I think, our politicians should be accountable to the public," Skelton declared.
" And one of the ways that politicians are accountable to the public is talking to the media, because most average voters don't get a chance to ask questions of their politicians."
Politicians benefit, too, Skelton maintained.
"Talking to the media allows voters to get a better sense of who their local candidate is, humanizes them a little bit. And, I think, as long as they're not saying something that's really, really dumb, [it] probably can help them connect with voters," Skelton believes.
"I teach journalists for a living, and and we really drill into their heads that it's important that they be fair and balanced and that, regardless of their personal views, that their job is to listen to both sides and share both sides with their audience," Skelton added.
