The federal Conservative Party of Canada, like the two major parties in the U.S., will put some bloggers on the same footing as the mainstream media for their fall policy convention.
Bloggers, like the MSM, will have to pay their own freight to get to Winnipeg this fall and pay for their room and board. (Actually: I assume they'll have to pay their own way, just like the MSM. Some bloggers are very closely connected to the party and it wouldn't surprise me if some bloggers had their bills paid by the party or like-minded political organizations — and that goes for bloggers from the right and left. The CBC journalists, for the record, who will attend will have their tabs covered by federal taxpayers; private sector MSM journalists — possibly yours truly — will have their bills paid largely from the sale of advertising.)
UPDATE: A Conservative party official writes in to tell me that while bloggers are free to apply to attend the convention, the Party will not be assisting them with any of their expenses.
It also looks like the party won't accredit bloggers on demand. Instead, the Conservatives say that: “The accreditation of bloggers will be based on various factors – including interest; space availability at the convention; the readership and influence of a blog; the amount of original content the blog typically generates to name a few.”
[Tip o' the toque to Greg Elmer]
Technorati Tags: blogs, democracy, journalism, conservatives
Somehow I doubt anyone from “The Torch” will be invited (or subsidized):
“This is the sort of defence statement…
…the Conservative government seems incapable of making….”
Mark
Ottawa
The blogs are rapidly replacing the news media in this country. Often the media reviews the blogs to get new stories and then publishes them as their own.
People are craving for honest analysis from the media in general. What do we get? This party said this and that party said that? The public is left to guess who is right and who is wrong. Instead of reporting what each group is saying explain the issue and let the reader make up his/her mind. However, that would not fit into the media's agenda of being an official oppostion party.
One difference between bloggers and MSM journalists is that bloggers don't have to pretend to be unbiased. So if the Conservatives are barring certain traditional media outlets from press
conferencesbriefingschit-chats for their perceived sins, I don't hold out a lot of hope for any but the most devoted Blogging Tories getting approved.Despite the odds, I sent in my application weeks ago but have had no reply. The readership on my blog is relatively small so I assume they'll use that as an excuse to not give me accreditation, but then again I sincerely doubt we'll be seeing Jason Cherniak or Scott Tribe there either.
“One difference between bloggers and MSM journalists is that bloggers don't have to pretend to be unbiased.”
Actually, Jennifer, the MSM don't have to pretend to be unbiased either, it has simply become the convention here in Canada. In the US, the media are allowed to be biased, and as a result the general tone of interviews is much more mellow, not to mention informative. Don't believe me ? Try watching Hannity & Colms on Fox. They disagree with each other, and with the guests, but everything is kept on a fairly polite level, and differences of opinion are allowed.
In Canada, the media have appointed themselves the official inquisitors of the government, particularly in the case of a Conservative government, and the whole attitude is confrontational. Journalists who are supposed to report the news have become opinion writers, and the Globe even has a phrase for it – “interpretive journalism”. But heaven forbid that anyone would think they were biased.
By the way, a small pat on the back to David A for this blog. While I do think that he sometimes comes across as biased, he at least has the grace to allow dissent in the comments, and to attempt to respond to that dissent. Some of his media colleagues' blogs are not so broad-minded, as evidenced by the lack of comments on them.
I have heard rumors that some MPs and their spouses are actually bloggers themselves under different names, so yes they will be there. And influential.
Now there's a juicy bit of gossip — do tell more, BeverleySmith! (I assume you mean government MPs, for we know that Liberal MPs Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff are frequent bloggers) What MPs? What spouses? What blogs?
Well jsmith, in my case, I'll be probably be letting the Cons. off the hook, because I doubt I'll be applying. It will be interesting though to see what the blogger breakdown is for who they invite.
By my recollection, the Liberals in 2006 invited 12 bloggers and 1 professor who studied/studies blogs to be accredited (that was Greg Elmer).
Of those 12 bloggers, 2 were Conservative blogs that were Blogging Tory affiliates, 2 were non-partisan but represented blogging affiliations on the “left” (Progressive Bloggers, and The Tyee), and 1 blog was multi-partisan (Blogs Canada) The other 7 were Liberal affiliated – so a 60/40 split between partisans who supported the Liberals and ones that weren't affiliated with them or opposed them.
I'll be very interested to see the blogging ideological breakdown to this little affair. I've been encouraging the blogs in the affiliation at Prog Blog to send in applications. We might keep a scorecard on how many get accepted/rejected.