We just finished our platform coverage, so we decided to dig in to how the mainstream media did it. It was eyebrow raising.
Last night, we were finally able to wrap up our platform analysis coverage with a nice neatly packaged platform comparison article. Obviously, it was through the lens of technology and digital rights given the nature of this website, but at the very least, you could get a sense of what the political parties did (and did not) promise.
The nice thing is that everything is fully sourced. You could click on each platform that was covered (the NDP never released their platform) and get a full drill down of everything we picked up. What page was the promise found? You can find it through our individual platform analysis page.
Now, some people out there might look at all of this and say, “well, big deal. The mainstream media has been offering this since the very beginning. What makes your coverage any better?” Well, embedded in that question is actually the first problem. As we noted in our coverage, there were platforms that were late. The Conservative party didn’t release their platform until the last day of advanced voting (April 22nd). Meanwhile, the NDP never released their full party platform at all (just their costed platform which only really includes costed numbers). So, the question is, how can you offer a platform tracker when at least two parties hadn’t released their platforms by that point? Yes, things are already not adding up here.
So, for instance, the CBC has long been advertising in their broadcasting a “platform tracker” to help “cut through the noise” and figure out which party best aligns with your point of view. Well, that interactive feature is found here. Somewhere along the line, the “platform tracker” became a “promise tracker”. Honestly, that is a very good change because that is a more accurate title for it.
Now, if you scroll to the bottom, you can still see evidence that it was, at least at one point, called a “platform tracker” because of this note:
April 3: Liberal, Conservative, NDP platforms on U.S. relations, tariffs updated.
Neither political party, at that point, had a platform on that date available. So, what were they actually citing? In all likelihood, they were actually using campaign announcements and news releases by the different parties. In all likelihood, it was a “fake it ’till you make it” kind of deal.
No worries, right, everything is nicely sourced in the first place, right? Well, when you scroll up, you get each promise, you’ll quickly notice that there is no references of where they got their information at all.
In that screenshot, there are no links referencing the promises anywhere to be found. Just a “take our word for it” kind of information being presented. I get that maybe the CBC was asking the parties directly for their information on each subject, but even then, at least note “written response from party”. If not that, then maybe offer a link to the video referencing this or a part of the political party website that this is referencing. None of that was even presented at all. In journalism, one of the big rules is to cite your sources for this information. The CBC’s platform tracker breaks that rule.
Of course, the CBC isn’t alone on this. CTV also offered a similar feature, but didn’t bother changing the title to a “promise tracker”. Instead, they just left it as a “platform tracker” despite one of the parties never really releasing their platforms. Their tracker can be found here and it’s not really that much better than the CBC.
Much like the CBC, CTV offered excerpts without any specific references at all. Just notes on where the parties stand on different issues. However, what they did do that the CBC didn’t was post up links simply showing where to find the platforms. For the NDP, they pointed to their list of promises found on their web page. For the Green Party, they just referenced the promises page (unlike the Liberal and Conservative parties where it is oddly directly linked to their respective PDF files. The Green Party also has a PDF of their platform). It’s… weirdly inconsistent. Still, I’m not convinced that just vaguely referencing their platforms is good enough. I would’ve liked to have seen page references along the way at minimum.
So, why do this in the first place? Why create a “platform tracker” when you don’t have all the platforms in question? The simple answer is that it is likely an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. Mainstream media is pushing a campaign where they are advertising their “platform trackers”. They know many will Google a “platform tracker” and that their sites will likely appear at the top of the search results. So, they want to suck in all that sweet sweet traffic from Google afterwards by appearing at the top of the search results. So, they just pretend that their pages track platforms when they are really just tracking random announcements and promises with the hopes that people won’t notice the difference (sorry, we did).
To be fair, though, this situation isn’t entirely on the mainstream media here. Normally, the political parties release their platforms part way through the election, making this process a reasonable one. The fact that two of the mainstream parties were so late with one not releasing their platform at all is kind of surprising. I’ve never encountered an election until this one where one of the major parties didn’t bother releasing a platform at all. That truly is a first for me. So, the political parties did technically put the mainstream media in a bind where they want to present the information, but some of the parties weren’t giving it.
Ultimately, though, this shows the real difference made. We not only posted the platforms, but referenced page numbers and posted large quotations directly from the respective platforms where we could to show you where we got our information from. We didn’t present content that we simply didn’t have.
Still, I think the mainstream media was best served to simply name their trackers “promise trackers” from the get go. If they manage to get all the platforms, then create a platform tracker. Alternatively, create a platform tracker and only add parties as the parties release their platforms. Put a “not available” if they have to. I think all of that is fine. The problem I have is that the mainstream media basically conflated the two and put random promises into a “platform tracker” as if they are part of a party platform is a bit misleading to put it mildly. The fact that there are no actual references put in these trackers for specific points made the mainstream media look even more amateurish as well.
That’s the difference between Freezenet and the mainstream media. We release information as it becomes available and don’t mix “platforms” with “promises”. We reference specific page numbers and offer quotations, meaning our research is fully referenced and you can more easily audit what we uncovered. This should serve as a wakeup call for the mainstream media to do better because a single person operation is beating their multi-million dollar journalism machine. This when it should be the other way around where whole journalist teams should be mopping the floor with me instead. Not the first time I’ve reported circles around mainstream media and not going to be the last, either.
