First off, for those of you who took the time to read this blog in the past, my apologies for the time between posts. Truth be told, I probably wrote about three different entries over the past six weeks or so. But after careful evaluation, I decided not to hit "publish". All three had to do with crime stories and how media covers them, and seemed to be "too soon". I have the ideas saved for future reference and may come back to them at some point.
Now on to the subject matter at hand. I do want to preface it a little bit by saying that the title is obviously pretty tongue in cheek. There's this weird belief out there that there's a "concensus media" that has a pre-determined agenda that it wants to push on the public. Yes. We (reporters) meet every morning, sipping on champagne and eating fine caviar while deliberating how we are going to cover each story. Is that enough sarcasm for you?
That being said, there are times it would be kind of nice to have a "media consortium" of sorts. Not to discuss what story ideas everyone has. Rather, it would be a way to gather and, maybe, just maybe, come to an agreement on when stories aren't really stories anymore. You know those times when you say "when will this story just go away?" For those exact times. Not to debate whether or not the Rob Ford saga should continue getting air-time. But for those "filler" days.
Let me elaborate. The "it's snowing" stories. Don't get me wrong, weather affects a lot of people, but does that mean we need full-out coverage of the fact we got an inch of snow? Call me Albertan, but it snows here. Every year. And yet, we are subjected to the same stories year after year (and day after day during the winter) about how the City of Calgary responds to snow. How many times can you possibly hear one of the spokespeople say "we'll start with the Priority One routes and then move onto the Priority Two routes" in a year? I was kind of hoping one of the spokespeople would say "this time we're going to switch it up and do the Priority Two routes first, just for a change of pace". In this situation, I'd love to have a consortium in place that would agree not to do those token winter stories. And anyone breaking the agreement would have to pay a small fine. Or apologize on-air. Something fun. And yes, the same rules would be in place for those "it's warm out so how are people like the patio" stories.
Here's another example: polls. It's been a hot-button topic of late thanks to the municipal election in Calgary in 2010 and the latest provincial elections in Alberta and BC. It's had many asking the question about how legitimate the polls are, but it's begged the question in many newsrooms about how much weight they will be putting into said polls. We have another municipal election in Alberta coming up, but do you think those polls will be abandoned? Not a chance. Especially in Edmonton, where Mayor Stephen Mandel won't be running again, so every media outlet is going to be trying to grab a poll or two to find out which newcomer has the "early lead" or "who has the momentum in the early going". We almost need that consortium to come to an agreement that, while the polls are good snapshots, please don't make it the top story. Otherwise, we'll be getting the same story post-election, about how the polls were "wrong again".
Although, it does give us even more stories after the election. Maybe we'll have to discuss these merits at tomorrow's wine and caviar session...
