Who needs reporters? Ford interviews Ford, Kinsella interviews Chow

Toronto's ongoing mayoral campaign could be considered the first to run outside the prying eyes of journalism. It won’t, of course. Far from it. In fact, it may be the most-covered election in the city's history thanks to the international reputation of Rob Ford and the national profile of competitor Olivia Chow.

But we all know Ford’s position on journalists and specifically his desire to avoid uncomfortable questions, which became the genesis of a Ford Nation YouTube series. And questions were recently raised in the Chow campaign after Warren Kinsella, a member of Chow’s war room and a commentator on Sun News Network, interviewed the mayoral candidate on air.

We should add to this for good measure complaints, mostly from the mayor’s camp, about a perceived favouritism toward candidate John Tory by a radio station on which he used to host his own show.

Suddenly it seems like none of the major mayoral contenders need reporters or news agencies to get their messages to the public. They could rely on allies, brothers, friends and former colleagues to offer them unfiltered.

Jeffrey Dvorkin, director of the University of Toronto Scarborough’s journalism program, says the shifting role of social media in politics has done a lot to shake this foundation. While Twitter, YouTube and others were once used to share the message a politician provides through the media, that message is now just as frequently delivered first through social media.

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“We are seeing the use of social media in a different way these days. Instead of it being an attempt to get the message across, it is a more focused message that the people on the campaign are engaged with,” Dvorkin told Yahoo Canada News in an interview.

And while the role of social media changes, reporters and news agencies are forced to play catch-up, often reacting to comments made on social media and finding other ways to find compelling content.

Hence, the issue with Kinsella’s interview with Chow. Kinsella, sitting in as host of Byline for the absent Brian Lilley, began the segment by disclosing his association with Chow’s campaign and later told the National Post’s Christie Blatchford, “I am a partisan commentator. I don’t pretend to be a reporter.”

On his blog the next day, he wrote, “I told Lilley I thought I sucked, but I’ll leave the reviews to you guys and the historians. And, yes, I asked Olivia Chow six of the nastiest, meanest, rottenest questions I could come up with.”

When asked about the perception of a mayoral candidate being interviewed by a member of her campaign team, Dvorkin said he doubted those watching expected it to be a hard-hitting interview.

“It is a party political ad, not a piece of journalism. I think people understand that. Or most people would understand that,” Dvorkin said.

“For Kinsella to do an interview with a candidate, as opposed to a journalist doing an interview with the candidate, is just another way of sharpening the focus of the message they want to get out. That is what social media has become in political campaigns.”

Another message such instances send is that a campaign doesn’t trust the media to deliver the message they want delivered. While that may not be the case in Chow’s camp, which is experiencing a honeymoon period since launching her campaign last week, it is surely true in the case of Rob Ford.

The Ford brothers have long made their distrust of media a key tenet of their administration and, more to the point, Rob Ford’s re-election campaign. Campaign manager Doug Ford has made a habit of deriding the media’s collective character, as well as singling out specific reporters.

After the mayor’s most recent apparently drunken public appearance, Doug said Rob had never promised to “100 per cent” stop drinking. When presented with evidence to the contrary, he accused those reporters of bias.

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The Ford campaign has long sought ways to avoid delivering their message through traditional media. They went through a period where they spoke almost exclusively to American networks and later took an unfortunate spin through the world of late-night television with an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Most notably, however, is the Ford Nation YouTube series, in which Doug and Rob interview each other and provide unfiltered and non-fact-checked commentary to the public. An early episode included a segment deriding the state of Toronto media.

“Politicians always like to go around the media,” Dvorkin said. “There is this idea that if you demonize journalists and journalism, basically implying anything they broadcast, report or print is inherently untrustworthy, then you can go around the media to get your message out. Politicians have been doing this on a national level for quite some time. It is interesting to see it in a municipal election.”

Dvorkin offered the example of members of Parliament avoiding the Ottawa press corps and offering exclusive interviews to “flattered” local news agencies. Another example would by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 24/7 video series, which purports to offer an unedited, behind-the-scenes look at Harper’s daily affairs.

In the end, however, this can’t be the way campaigns are conducted. YouTube clips and softball interviews with noted supporters aren’t going to move the needle when it comes to Election Day. It will be the full catalogue of announcements, policies and daily events – and the coverage of such – that will paint a complete portrait for voters. As Dvorkin notes, “More journalism is better than less journalism. It will get sorted out in the end.”

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