More than a horse race: What goes into election coverage

Even before Prime Minister Mark Carney called an election on March 23, readers had begun e-mailing me with their rightful demands for balanced coverage of the parties, their leaders and their campaign promises. “There’s not a lot of grace with readers right now, I think because they’re worried about misinformation or bias, conflicts of interest as well,” said Gavin Adamson, undergraduate program director and professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism. As such, he believes it’s essential for newsrooms to be “ruthlessly transparent” about their processes and coverage decisions.

So, this seemed like the ideal opportunity to discuss journalistic best practices for covering elections, as well as The Globe’s own plans for delivering accurate, timely and meaningful reporting on the campaign.

What are the parties promising – and how will they pay for it?

It’s vitally important for news organizations to report on the policies that are key to each party’s platform and how they propose to pay for those policies, Mr. Adamson said. Without a costing plan, a policy is an empty promise. For example, a recent Globe article on the parties’ plans for housing reported: “The NDP said it would pay for its proposed retrofits by cutting annual subsidies and tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. Citing figures from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the party said cutting those supports would save Ottawa $1.8-billion a year.” (You can read the full article online here.)

Similarly, Andrew Coyne called out the Liberals’ and the Conservatives’ promised tax cuts in his March 27 Opinion column, noting: “That $6- to $14-billion annually, all of it borrowed – for neither party has offered any credible plan for offsetting reductions in spending, beyond the usual ‘foreign aid’ and ‘reduced waste’ flimflammery (Mr. Carney’s pretense that more government use of AI would pay for it at least has the virtue of novelty) – is money that is not available to rebuild our shattered military, to defend our nation. It is money that will not be spent on infrastructure, or improved social supports, or a hundred other things.”

At the heart of it all is The Globe’s Ottawa bureau, whose connections and deep understanding of Canadian politics give readers access to the campaign trail. (Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s decision not to invite journalists on his campaign plane or bus has made the reporters’ job even more challenging.)

Report on Business staff and The Globe’s Foreign desk help readers make sense of the economic promises and the parties’ potential responses to the trade war with the United States.

What do voters care about most?

It isn’t enough to report on what the parties and their leaders are saying. Journalists must surface the needs and concerns of voters across the country; where are the various parties ignoring these needs and whose platform is best placed to serve them? National editor James Keller told me The Globe’s “East to West” dispatches from across the country are designed to answer those questions. (Click here for an example.)

Reporters on James’s team are looking at the election campaign through the lens of their beat – crime and justice; water; the Supreme Court of Canada – and reporting on how those beats “intersect with the federal campaign. That’s how we’re going to get the broadest coverage.”

Challenging misinformation and disinformation

A 2019 article in The Walrus claimed that humans aren’t great at making rational voting decisions – citing, as an example, former prime minister Boris Johnson’s repeated claim “that by leaving the EU, Britain would regain control of £350-million that it could then spend on its National Health Service. Although the U.K. Statistics Authority debunked this claim, it continued to be invoked, and voters ultimately supported Brexit. Researchers have learned that people are more likely to believe things the more often they hear them, even when they are wrong.”

Misinformation (defined in The Globe’s Style Book as “bad information shared without realizing it is misleading”) and disinformation (which “has an intent to deceive”) are real threats to the electoral process. Globe journalists will address these concerns throughout the campaign, while senior visuals editor Patrick Dell continues his weekly Fact Check series. If you haven’t been following, this piece on how to spot fake content during the election campaign is a good place to start.

Careful use of photography

A reader who said she had never e-mailed the Standards Editor inbox before contacted me this week to express concern over the selection of photos accompanying election campaign stories. She thought she detected bias toward Mr. Carney, in the form of more pleasant portraits of the Liberal Leader.

The Globe’s photo desk, whose primary focus is the print edition, follows specific internal guidance that instructs staff:

“Try to keep in mind same/similar emotions/tone in leader pictures, so one person isn’t perpetually serious and others light and fun.

“Aim to not publish anything with room for negative interpretation – nothing where someone looks awkward, etc.”

The photo guidance is also designed to promote “overall equal representation.” Depending on the news cycle, that might mean one or two party leaders are depicted one day, and others on the next. The aim, as with the news coverage itself, is for balance over time.

Constant self-examination

On that front, audience growth manager Rebecca Zamon is tracking The Globe’s election coverage in a spreadsheet that looks at which parties, leaders, issues and candidates are covered in reported news and Opinion pieces, as well as whether the story was reported by a Globe journalist or a wire service. The aim, James said, is to identify any trends or coverage that may be inferred as bias and “course-correct” if necessary.

None of these measures will be particularly effective, however, unless voters read as widely and as often as they can. “Reading one story in isolation is never going to be a great way to assess our entire coverage,” James said.