Book recommendation

Irritating: despite getting my overseas voting application in on time, faxed from the Canadian High Commission in London, I won't be voting because I haven't received a ballot yet. On the one hand, I assume this has something to do with the fact that last weekend was Easter, which took a few working days away, but on the other hand, why is the application deadline so late if Elections Canada can't guarantee that ballots will be received in time to actually cast them? Obviously I should have registered sooner, and that's my fault, but again, what's the point of having a deadline if it's too late? I know of at least two other Canadians in London and one friend in Canada who didn't receive their special ballots either. So hopefully a few people who weren't planning to vote go out and do it for me? I'll be hassling my parents, personally.

I'm a bit sick of thinking about, let alone writing about, elections, politics, social media, etc. So inspired by my friend Rosemary over at the flip side, who has just landed a journalism gig in Nairobi, I picked up a copy of one of my favourite books of all time (if not my absolute favourite, actually), Aidan Hartley's The Zanzibar Chest. I know it's terrible that I didn't yet own a book that I call my all-time favourite, but when I bought it the first time, it was as a gift for a friend who was going to Tanzania for a year, and who read it and then left it with me when she went. So for a year I kind of did own it, but then had to give it back and never replaced it.

Anyway. The book is Hartley's memoir of his time spent working as a stringer for Reuters in Africa in the 1990s, covering some of the worst famines and wars in recent history. Interwoven with Hartley's story, which is essentially a gripping account of how he ended up burnt out and a little messed up from the things he saw, is his later search for the story of Peter Davey, a friend of his father's who was a British officer in what is now Yemen during the first half of the 20th century.

I can't recommend this book enough to anyone with an interest in international reporting, British colonial history or really just with a sense of adventure. There's something about the history of Hartley's ancestors, generation after generation of people spending their lives in what were then the exotic corners of the British Empire, and of Hartley's own experiences in Kenya, Somalia, Burundi and Rwanda (and also a brief stint in the Balkans), that makes you want to just pack your bags and run halfway across the world. Maybe you shouldn't read this if you're going through any kind of crisis of career or identity - it does tend to make life look a bit uninteresting and totally devoid of adventure and spontaneity.

But for all of that, it's not really a 'fun' tale of globetrotting. Some of Hartley's experiences will bring tears to your eyes, and there is a definite sense of the people in the stories being fairly unable to function in the real world, outside of war zones, and of being unable to form proper relationships. Colleagues are apt to be killed, and the journalist's life doesn't really seem to give the same kind of satisfaction as Hartley believed his father, an agricultural officer who worked in Yemen, Ethiopia and Kenya, and Davey had in their work. There's also the underlying element of Hartley's struggle with his identity - he's a white, Kenyan-born Brit who was educated in England and went to Oxford and SOAS, but is clearly more at home in Africa in general and Kenya specifically. The story has it's funny, happy bits and its fairly devastating bits, and as is fairly common in non-fiction where we don't get to make up the endings, doesn't leave you with an overall warm and fuzzy feeling inside. But it does leave you with a bit of awe, and a better understanding of the lives of international correspondents beyond the glossy TV standups.

Read it.

RIP

The New York Times has put together some galleries of gorgeous photos taken by Tim Heatherington and Chris Hondros, who were both killed in Libya yesterday.

I think the danger that journalists face is something that is easily forgotten when we get wrapped up in domestic news and when international coverage is filtered through to us in terms of safe-looking stand ups on TV. Depending on the source, between 44 and 110 journalists were killed last year. The number being killed in war zones is falling, but the number of journalists being threatened, kidnapped and/or killed by repressive elements, be it governments or gangs, is on the rise. Check out annual reports from the Committee to Protect Journalists (44), Reporters Without Borders (57), the International Federation of Journalists (94) and the Press Emblem Campaign (110) for more information.

Coalition Government: Not the Worst Thing That's Ever Happened

The following is probably a bit dry, and isn't especially to do with media coverage. But it is something that is so rarely addressed and badly, if ever, explained in mainstream media that I felt the need to write something just to get it out there. So my apologies.

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An obnoxious parallel between the Canadian election campaign and last year's UK election campaign: an enormous amount of uneducated gasping about how terrible a coalition government would be.

In both election campaigns, there was a Conservative party looking likely to win the most seats, but not enough for a majority government. In Canada, we are familiar with minority governments, having had 11 (or more, if you count a few unorthodox cases) since 1921, including the last three. The UK has only had five minority governments (or hung parliaments) since 1910, the last in 1974. In much of the rest of the world, hung parliaments are common election results; the party with the most seats is asked by the head of state to form a government, and they try to gain the tacit or explicit support of one or more smaller parties in order to form a majority government. If the party with the most seats can't make a deal with any other parties, then the leader of the official opposition - the party with the second most seats - is asked to form a government instead. This is normal parliamentary procedure.

In both cases, as I said, the Conservatives were/are expected to win the most seats, but not a majority. In theory, they could try to lead a minority government (which tend to last around a year on average and lead to early elections, and which have proved troublesome for Stephen Harper's Conservatives in Canada over the last two governments), or they could try to lead a coalition. In both cases, the pre-election rhetoric has instead been based on the idea that the Conservatives could not make a deal with the smaller parties (the Liberal Democrats in the UK and the NDP and Bloc Quebecois in Canada) because of the differences in platforms and their distance on the political spectrum. So the assumption was that the UK Labour Party and the Canadian Liberal Party would instead be able to form coalitions and become the government.

Again - this would be normal parliamentary procedure. If the party with the most seats isn't willing to compromise or concede enough to win the support of another party, it can't govern. It represents too few people. If the smaller parties can compromise to form a majority coalition, they together represent the most people. This makes perfect sense.

But the rhetoric from the Conservatives, particularly now in Canada (in the UK they went on to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and one which has proven very successful for their own party's policies and fairly disastrous for the Lib Dems) has focused on the idea that a coalition government is somehow anti-democratic, power-usurping and vaguely evil. That if the leader of the opposition formed a coalition with smaller parties, he would be stealing power, ignoring the will of the people. That somehow a minority government representing 30% of the population is more representative than a coalition government representing 50%+.

The rhetoric also says that a coalition government is inherently 'chaotic'. In practice, a minority government, which can occasionally gain support from opposition politicians but has no formal agreement, is far worse. Coalition governments are formed when parties sit down and develop a manifesto that they feel represents their grouped interests, and they generally abide by them unless policy is introduced which is contrary to the agreement and splits opinion. A coalition led by the opposition is no more chaotic than a coalition led by the party with the most seats.

The strangest thing about the opposition to coalition governments is that opponents behave as if coalitions have never worked - as if there are no examples of effective coalition governments. In reality, in many countries around the world with multi-party systems, coalition governments are common practice, and they don't seem to be falling apart.

Some examples of coalition governments currently in power: UK, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Brazil, Chile, India, Japan, Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal and Algeria.

(The worst example? Belgium, which has recently passed the 300 days without government landmark because its parties have been unable to form a coalition. But Belgium is plagued by deep regional divides and there is speculation that the country could actually split up because of the divisions. So it's not exactly the most representative example, and is certainly the exception to the rule.)

The important thing is that the idea of coalition governments isn't demonised in the election campaign; firstly, this tends to delegitimise the coalition if it is formed afterward, and hurts the credibility of the leaders who go around proclaiming they wouldn't form coalitions and then go and form them. Secondly, in countries where coalitions are the norm, it's easier to get an idea of what the coalition policies might be after the election - knowing which parties are likely to ally, and which policies are likely to make it through to the coalition document. One of the biggest disappointments for Lib Dem supporters in the UK was the vague assumption that a coalition was more likely with Labour than the Conservatives because Labour was the more leftist party. Some Lib Dem voters would not have voted for a coalition with the Conservatives. And most Lib Dem voters would not have voted for the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition policies, which included raising tuition fees (despite the Lib Dem election promise to lower or abolish them) and massive public spending cuts.

If coalitions are a possibility, the voters need to know what, and who, they're voting for, which is why discussion should be open and transparent, not hampered by false accusations of power-stealing and bad democracy.

On the Ottawa Sun

I confess, I haven't been paying as much attention to the election coverage as I'd hoped. And living in the UK means I missed last night's Canadian leadership debate, though I caught up on the highlights this morning. And then this article from the Ottawa Sun was brought to my attention. And this editorial.

This is election coverage at its worst. There is no mention of the policies discussed in the debate, just a transparent attempt to draw a link in readers' minds between Michael Ignatieff and Mao Zedong based on...what, exactly? Ignatieff did not quote Mao, but used a similar phrase. Whether he realised what he was doing or not, the Sun would have us believe that this comment is a real insight into Ignatieff's character, that lurking beneath the surface is a communist dictator waiting to seize power and kill millions of people. It's a pathetic bit of partisanship that has no place in journalism.

I wandered over to the Sun's website to check out the rest of their debate coverage. Their main story on their 'Debate' tab is 'Harper ahead in duel: Poll'. The headlines of the related stories: Iggy channels Mao, Cdns. heard message, Tories head for a majority, Harper best for battlefield, CBC compass points red, AG to investigate leaks, Tories fighting for faiths. Obvious bias?

Of course everyone knows that media outlets tend to have a political bias and often come right out and endorse one party. And Sun Media has never been shy about its Conservative leanings. But such heavily editorialised journalism, and editorials presented as news (as in the first Ignatieff article I posted above) are far over and above the kind of bias that can be detected in other media outlets; for example, the Toronto Star is often called out on its Liberal bias, but its debate coverage does not read like a list of Liberal Party talking points.

Some would say that the Sun papers are tabloids and we shouldn't expect the same standard of journalism there as in other publications. But the Ottawa Sun is a very popular daily paper, and while some people are aware of its bias or its shortcomings, many are not and read it the same way they would any paper: as a genuine source of news. Especially in an election campaign, I think it's disgustingly irresponsible to trot out opinions disguised as fact.

And yes, of course there are many journalists and media outlets guilty of this, across Canada and elsewhere. I've picked the Sun because of the horrible examples on hand, but by no means mean to say that there aren't others out there with the same problem!

Worth Sharing

Warning: if you're interested in this sort of thing, you may soon become lost in the articles/blogs linked in Andrew Potter's blog, and the ones linked in those pieces, etc. Maybe look through when you have some time on your hands and no deadline looming.

Andrew Potter on the Sun and CBC's Vote Compass.

If you follow me on Twitter or we're friends on Facebook, you'll know that I promoted the Vote Compass as a fun way to see where you stand in relation to political parties. I didn't think of it as "see how you should vote" - I thought of it as "see how little you probably agree with the party line from the party you think you're supposed to vote for". I've read conflicting claims on whether the Compass is actually biased toward a Liberal vote (that is, that no matter what you put you'll almost always be told you're closest to the Liberal Party), and haven't looked into it myself yet, so I can't really comment on that at the moment.

First of all, people shouldn't be using the Vote Compass to figure out who they should vote for. If they genuinely don't know who to pick, the Compass might point them in the direction of a party or parties that they might want to look into further. If nothing else, the issues addressed in the questions may make them realise they actually care about those things, and look into what each party says about them.

But the fact that people who know who they want to vote for are upset because the Compass tells them to vote for the wrong party was exactly my point - people can become too fixated on the party line on issues, and on making that party line their opinion. When presented with opinions to choose from without having the party's opinion on hand, people may be surprised to find out their opinion is different - and that's okay. You can still vote for a party without agreeing with what they have to say on every issue. In fact, I doubt there's a single person alive who agrees with the party line on every issue - political parties are by nature pluralistic, and can't possibly be tailored to individuals. When you vote, you vote for the candidate or party that best represents your view and that you think would do the best job for your riding (well, country - regardless of the political system, many/most people likely still vote based on who they want to be Prime Minister, not who they want to be their local MP).

I'm interested to see how this whole thing plays out though - a new, different story when election campaigns provide same old, same old.

Belated Response

I never did get around to posting after the TUC protest a couple of weeks ago, which means I won't bother saying much about it now since it's all a bit outdated. I did have a look at the coverage on Sunday, and it was pretty much what you'd expect. The more liberal papers tended to run higher numbers of attendees (ranging up to 400,000) and their headlines played down the trouble caused by the more radical elements. The more conservative papers generally went with lower attendance estimates (as low as 200,000) and featured photos and headlines about violence and police more prominently. Headlines aside, though, the things that went on outside of the march - the occupation of Fortnum and Masons, the paintballs thrown at police officers and allegedly tax-dodging businesses on Oxford Street, the vandalism of the Olympic clock in Trafalgar Square - were really the main focus of all coverage. Some better-meaning pieces opened with a paragraph that pointedly recognised the mass of peaceful protesters, but still went on to talk quite a bit more about the rest. But even if 400,000 people are marching peacefully, it's still news if anyone goes and smashes windows and throws paint on Oxford Street, so it's wrong to think that there should somehow be no media coverage just because the protest leaders would rather highlight the peaceful elements.

Yesterday someone posted this article on Twitter, defending the Black Bloc's tactics. While I generally don't agree with it, I do think it makes an important point about the distinction between violence and vandalism. Commentary during and after protests from politicians, police, opponents and peaceful protesters always condemns the 'violence' perpetrated by a few rogue elements. But is breaking shop windows or spraypainting buildings and monuments really violence? If this were an isolated incident on any night of the week, it would just be vandalism, and not noteworthy at all. Of course, there have been incidents of some people attacking police with protest signs, bottles, bricks, etc., and of course this is violence. I just think it's important that we use the right words in the right context.

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The election campaign in Canada is under way, and I'm already annoyed. First, by the jibes being traded on Twitter by Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper over the possibility of a one-on-one debate. "You said this but now you've taken it back", "My staff offered this and got no response", blah blah blah. People who are trying to be elected as Prime Minister of a country should not be engaging in petty who said what, schoolyard taunting online. It's pathetic. Second, the condescending campaign sloganing: met with REAL CANADIANS today, repeating RURAL CANADIANS over and over to show they aren't forgotten. It's so transparent and superficial. And I know, I know, it's politics. Sometimes I just hope for something a little better from the people who are supposed to be our nation's great leaders.

Finally, I'd forgotten the most annoying thing of all about election campaigns - my partisan Facebook friends. My newsfeed is basically a list of articles about why Harper or Ignatieff is terrible and will ruin this country (or already has). Worse than these, which are presumably meant to at least educate, are the status updates that don't really mean anything and serve just to shout loudly about who that person is voting for and why everyone else is stupid for not doing so. Urgh. I wish we could have some sort of moratorium on party hacks for the duration of the campaign.