Oanh,
October 27, 2014
The Newspaper media is biased when it comes to covering the Toronto mayoral race. When I read the various news articles from The National Post, Now and Toronto Metro newspapers, they proved that most articles express the same topics, tones and patterns. The pattern of topics that focused around the mayoral race I noticed are The Ford’s versus the Media and how the media tries to diminish Rob and Doug Ford‘s character, the media favours and portrays John Tory as such a great candidate even though evidence says otherwise, and if Olivia Chow can gain more votes to stay in the competition, if she is able to use her knowledge and work experience to whoa the Torontonians and win the race. The tones portrayed by the media give a negative outlook onto a specified candidate. They tend to look for the bad in the targeted candidate instead of the good.
There is a bias amongst the media that shows mostly a one-opinion side on the candidates. The media tends to portray the Fords’ as incompetent, a drug addict and irresponsible. Diminishing Rob Fords’ character is what the media strives to make the community perceive that Rob and Doug Ford are inappropriate for candidacy. Despite the drug scandal that involved Rob Fords’ personal life during his mayor time in 2014, today’s media continues to use his past experience to prove his incompetent behavior. The pattern the media is portraying is attacking the Fords’ personal life instead of seeing what he has done for the city during his time in the office as Toronto’s mayor. As of now, he cannot join the mayoral elections due him having abdominal cancer; his brother Doug took his place to run for mayor.
The evidence in supporting the media’s biasness is demonstrating how the media shows zero support to The Fords’ campaign and claim that The Fords’ may have known ahead of time of Rob Ford’s illness and are just using it for sympathy votes. The title in one of the articles of Toronto Metro it shows little compassion after only a few days of knowing Robs condition. The article title gives off a negative tone alone, “Can Rob’s cancer diagnosis earn Doug sympathy votes?” Why must Toronto Metro express such negative response towards the Fords’ with no evidence of these allegations? The following article speaks about how the cancer diagnosis of Rob Ford has people wondering if this will translate into sympathy votes for his brother Doug. A U.S. politician professor, Amy Jasperson stated, “As more time passes, the greater the likelihood the sympathy effect will disappear.” (Jasperson, Amy. “Can Rob’s Cancer diagnosis earn Dough sympathy votes?” Toronto Metro 29 Sep. 2014.) The media shouldn’t suggest such crazy ideas such has hiding an illness to gain some votes which just proves that the media is attacking his personal life and not his competency as a mayor.
Doug Ford is now running for candidacy, and yet they still scrutinize his personality and like to portray him having the same views and aspects in the race as his brother, Rod Ford. Trying to convince the public not to vote for him because he’s going to be just like his brother, an unreliable, firecracker excluding the drug problems. The supporting evidence that shows how it is The Fords versus The Media is in another major Toronto newspaper called Now, this article is called Big Brother: Season 2. The pattern the media is showing is just being more obvious as I observe articles one after another. In this article a few major points caught my attention they constantly talk about what kind of person he is without any proper hard proof. For an example “Doug Ford’s tragedy is that he doesn’t like people but very much wants to be liked. He craves approval and wants to be your friend, regardless of how little he thinks of you.” (Goldsbie, Johnathan. “Big Brother: Season 2.” Now 18-24 Sep. 2014) How would they know if he doesn’t like people? When you become a public figure and want to even run or be mayor you have to be a
