A quartet of Quebec-based academics took a look at the coverage of four newspapers during the most recent Quebec provincial election campaign and found no evidence of bias:
Quebec voters who selected their election season newspapers based on the expectation that their
paper’s news coverage would be tilted toward favoured candidates were disappointed, according to a campaign news analysis conducted by McGill University’s Observatory of Media and Public Policy.
The study took a look at coverage in Le Devoir, The Gazette, La Presse, and Le Soleil . While the study’s authors praised the neutral tone of coverage, they felt that the newspapers they studied focused too much on the “horse race” aspect of the election and not enough on some of the policy issues debated during the election.
Voters reading any one of the four papers throughout March learned a lot more about the polls than they did about where any of the candidates wanted to take Quebec if they won the election. Vital issues like education, immigration, the environment and national unity were all given short shrift in favour of an overemphasis on daily poll standings. . . .[but] The results of our study suggest that Quebec’s leading newspapers deserve high marks on the fairness of campaign news coverage, but far lower marks for their treatment of policy matters.