Shoot Alberta's messenger

This anecdote may seriously date this page for some readers, but a few years ago, a regular poster to rec.sport.baseball coined the term 'mediocy' to describe commentators or sportswriters who stated the obvious, or provided observations without any basis in fact.

No, this isn't about opening day. This is about last Friday night, and the weekend of commentary that followed after Ralph Klein's chillingly tepid endorsement by his Alberta Conservatives. Holding the 55% result to keep it off the 11 o' clock news and the front page of the weekend papers couldn't stop a spring snowfall of speculation. However, among the startled talking heads and hurried op-ed pieces, this page was hard-pressed to find a snowflake of objectivity.

I'm not referring to the 'fair and balanced', giving both sides of the issue their say objectivity, this page is referring to giving an audience the overall, big picture of an issue. Unfortunately, with some heroic exceptions, Albertans are routinely treated to the worst media coverage of provincial politics in Canada.

How can this page make such a claim? By pointing out that as a former Alberta resident who monitors the news wires coming out of Calgary and Edmonton, this page has seen no published reaction from either Kevin Taft, leader of the Alberta Liberals and the OFFICIAL OPPOSITION in Edmonton, nor Brian Mason, who leads Alberta's NDP caucus. By contrast, when Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark were on their way out the door as British Columbia premiers, B.C. audiences were never lost for what Gordon Campbell thought about those situations. If the knives came out for Campbell today, I'm sure that anyone outside of this province could readily access Carole James' opinion.

It's one thing for mediots to constantly refer to Alberta as a 'one-party state', it's another to not even bother asking the representatives of parties who polled a combined 40% of Alberta's popular vote in an election less than two years ago. Throw in the righter-than-right wing Alberta Alliance party, and over half of the province didn't back 'Ralph's Team'. Why is a 55% approval rating a surprise?

The mediots can be just as bothered to talk to the opposition as they would be to question Alberta's hyper-gerrymandered electoral system which gives rural voters a franchise 2 to 3 times as powerful a franchise as their counterparts in Calgary or Edmonton. Of course, Ralph Klein was a reporter for CFCN Television before he ran for Mayor in Calgary and went on to become a do-nothing premier. In not bothering to challenge the status quo or ask any hard questions, perhaps the media is just emulating the master.