CampusOpinion

University administration and newspaper publishers have the responsibility to avoid endorsing political candidates

The media’s ethical responsibility to consumers is a murky shade of grey. We are manipulated every time we flip open a magazine or drive past a billboard, and producing the desire to be just a little different — despite causing social anxiety and needless identity crises — is the media’s goal. Make the people feel weak, and they will buy the strength you’re selling.

While we have come to accept this influence from advertisements, other media sources, such as newspapers, are generally expected to be above this kind of coercion since they don’t peddle products but report facts. Recently, however, this assumption has proved fallible as newspapers across Canada have stepped into the commodity game, pushing political parties like hot skinny boyfriend jeans.

Over the past few months, Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey has called journalistic integrity and responsibility into question as Postmedia-owned newspapers like The Edmonton Journal have been endorsing the Progressive Conservatives at Godfrey’s behest. The Journal’s May 1st editorial, urging Albertans to pick a premier “who can be our chief executive, piloting a $48-billion public company,” unabashedly promoted Jim Prentice as the right person for the job, while a set of identical editorials published the following day in The Edmonton Sun and The Calgary Sun — both under Godfrey’s ownership — also backed the PCs. While an editorial is expected to be opinionated, readers generally expect that opinion to belong to a columnist, not a publisher. The Edmonton Journal’s Margo Goodhand confirms that Postmedia asked the paper to endorse the PCs. This kind of corporate influence in journalism leaves a sour taste in readers’ mouths and makes newspapers like The Journal appear disingenuous — as if the opinions they published were not their own, but had been dictated to them. This endorsement, as well as the PC support recently shared by Doug Goss, Chair of the U of A’s Board of Governors, prompts the question: to what extent should influential persons be non-partisan?

For Goss who openly backed the PCs in a press-conference the Friday before the election, PC support reflected poorly on the University. As Kevin Kane, president of the AASUA noted in a letter to Rachel Notley calling for Goss’ appointment to be rescinded, “it is essential that someone in such a position have the best interests of the University of Alberta foremost at all times. Those interests require the Board Chair […] to stay above and not weigh into election campaigns.” Despite Goss’ later assurance that his views were his own and not the institution’s, the University wound up blemished by his political endorsements. Any University employee, whether professor or Board Chair, is inevitably tied to the institution, and while all are entitled to their opinions, there should always be consideration for how that opinion will reflect on the University. Goss is free to support any political party he chooses, but as a public representative of a large institution, he has a responsibility to keep that backing private.

Both Goss and Godfrey overstepped their roles by wading into an electoral race, and ultimately lost people’s confidence as a result. While Goss blemished the University with his stance, Godfrey caused exceptionally more trouble. We live in a democratic country where citizens have both the right and responsibility to vote, and we should be able to rely on media sources like newspapers to provide genuine media coverage of political news. Individuals will always carry some degree of bias — and that bias even has its place in the media — but the opinions of publishers like Godfrey should never be forced onto the country’s readership, masquerading as a local view.

In a game where there’s already so much dishonesty and players skirt around the rules, someone has to call it like it is. That someone is not Paul Godfrey.

4 Comments

  1. “University administration and newspaper publishers have the responsibility to avoid endorsing political candidates”
    Doesn’t the Gateway endorse UASU candidates?

  2. It is absolutely disgusting that Mr. Goss did not resign from his job, or the board did not remove him. What Mr. Goss did was one of the most disgusting ploys of fearmonging and political hackery in the history of Canadian politics. The students should take it upon themselves to remove Mr. Goss and the entire crony board at U of A. Really one of the most revolting displays of conflict of interest I’ve ever seen and it destroys Alberta’s educational reputation throughout the world.

  3. Nothing wrong with editorials endorsing candidates—as long as someone’s name’s on it. Unsigned editorials are chickenshit. Exactly because, as you pointed out, in the case of the Alberta election, it was Paul Godfrey disguised as the editorial boards of various papers in effect taking a specific kind of local authority he wouldn’t have with just his name.

    (ps. deal with my pseudoanonymous comment idgaf)

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