Three local observers of the media agree that TV coverage of the Liberal leadership race was thin on policy and strong on sports clichés. “It’s often how we define news; it’s an acceptable way of covering it,” Mary Lynn Young, assistant professor at the UBC School of Journalism, told the Georgia Straight. “I watched it and, yes, it [is] becoming a sporting event. You hear who’s on first base, second base, or who hit a home run. It’s sports metaphors.”

People learned that Stéphane Dion won the race on December 2. But few would know from the coverage that Dion has an extensive climate-change action plan plus detailed reports on Native issues and commercialization of scientific developments waiting to be downloaded in PDF form from his Web site. Hours of coverage later and none of this or any other major policy area had received any serious play.

Conservative stalwart Colin Metcalfe, who works in the Vancouver regional office of Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl, told the Straight he was “glued” to the coverage.

“It was exhaustive,” Metcalfe said. “And I know every party will say the other party gets better [media] coverage, but it was pretty friendly coverage overall. At one point when [former prime minister Jean] Chrétien was speaking, I noticed he was referred to by one TV reporter as ‘Mr. Prime Minister’”.

Metcalfe added: “If you’ve ever been to an Alliance or even a Progressive Conservative convention, one thing you will always notice people participating in is policy.”

Seth Klein, B.C. director at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told the Straight that he saw a “fair bit of the TV coverage”, as it made “good drama”.

“I thought the coverage was fairly typical of this type of leadership race,” Klein said. “Are the individual delegates, who seem to have played a pivotal role in this, thinking in policy terms about their choices? I hate to say it, but I think practical considerations, if you’re a partisan, loom fairly large. It’s like, ‘Who can win this for us?’”