What hurt the Liberals the most? The truth

[a_majoor]

Via Insatapundit (Jan 19):

DAVID WARREN ON THE CANADIAN ELECTIONS:

    What I think the Liberals failed to anticipate up here, like the Democrats down there, was a development that may well prove the antidote to smear advertising over the longer run. For this is the Canadian election in which our “blogosphere” came of age. Sites such as Small Dead Animals, Angry in the GWN, the Shotgun, Andrew Coyne.com, Relapsed Catholic, and many others, respond to events almost instantaneously. Then, “news aggregators” such as Nealenews and Bourque direct readers quickly to the latest memes. Things that would have taken a week to unfold in the old media, now break over breakfast and are resolved by noon; and an hysterical smear ad is being mocked and parodied, long before the evening news.

No wonder they're trying to use election law against Canadian bloggers. Warren continues:

  In short, the Internet has broken the stranglehold the Liberal Party had over sympathetic media, and created an information environment in which you had better be darned sure what you are saying is the strict truth, because there’s an army of fact-checkers out there. Moreover, an army that cannot easily be intimidated by off-the-record threats from Party lawyers, or made to desist by peer pressure. For even when (as we saw in the delayed release of Gomery testimony) a legal ban on publication can be obtained, the information simply passes through electronic space across the border, and we can all read the banned material on such sites as Captain’s Quarters from the USA.

An "army of fact-checkers." Not quite the army I would have invoked, but close enough.

posted at 01:01 PM by Glenn Reynolds

 

[The_Falcon]

I think there is a measure of truth to that article.  Even though myself I don't visit blogs very much, the Toronto Sun regularly featured articles taken off of blogs run by people of all political stripes.  I also think, that the liberals were pretty laisse-faire about the whole election, believing the Conservatives would implode/run out of steam like they did last time.  It was only after the christmas break, which saw the boxing day shootings, and the annoucement of the RCMP probes, did they really try to put some effort into their campaign.  And when they did kick it up a notch, they started making really dumb statements.  I am really hoping that enough undecideds go conservative over the weekend and we have a majority government.

 

[The Gues-|-]

What hurt the Liberals the most? John Duffy.

 

[tomahawk6]

Scandals.

 

[Glorified Ape]

Scandals.

I agree.


As for the call for an inquiry into blogs, go ahead. If the Conservative Party is using them in contradiction of Canadian election law, then we'll have yet another scandal to entertain us.

 

[a_majoor]

As for the call for an inquiry into blogs, go ahead. If the Conservative Party is using them in contradiction of Canadian election law, then we'll have yet another scandal to entertain us.

I suspect the RCMP probe into leaks from the finance office will reveal the next real scandal, and I hope a Conservative government launches an inquiry into the $7 billion of taxpayer money funneled into unaccountable "foundations" outside of Parliamentry audit or perview. (For that amount of money, these so called foundations could have launched full blown universities, or seven new Halifax class frigates, for that matter).

...the Internet has broken the stranglehold the Liberal Party had over sympathetic media...

I'm sure there will be plenty of people out there who will claim Harper "stole" the election because of bloggers, global warming, the results of the Leaf's game.....

 

[a_majoor]

Discussion on the role of the Blogosphere in the defeat of the Liberals.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_4421942,00.html

Kopel: Did blogosphere influence vote?
Corruption inquiry covered only on Web might have tipped Canadian election

January 28, 2006

On Monday, Canadian voters elected a new government, led by Stephen Harper and the Conservative party. Without the Internet, Paul Martin and the Liberals might still be ruling Canada.

Last year, Canadian Judge John Gomery was conducting an investigation of a money-laundering and kickback program in which the Liberal government had given $85 million to Montreal advertising firms. Rather than spending the money on advertising for government programs, the money was apparently distributed as payoffs to political allies. Gomery allowed the public to attend the public court hearings on the scandal, but forbade publication of events at the hearing. He hoped to be able to prevent the public from becoming prejudiced about the matter in the event that some of the alleged perpetrators were put on trial.

But a Canadian citizen who attended the hearing provided accounts to Minneapolis Web logger Ed Morrissey (who blogs at www.captainsquartersblog.com).Morrissey then published reports on his Captain's Quarters Web site. Canadian media continued to obey the publication ban, but Canada's CTV reported on the existence of Morrissey's site, which soon was attracting hundreds of thousands of readers daily.

Because Canada (unlike China) has not coerced major Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft into implementing a pervasive censorship system, Canadian citizens could easily read about their government's corruption. The diffusion of information about the Gomery inquiry critically weakened public support for the Liberal government, which lost office primarily because of corruption, rather than because of policy choices.

It would have been possible for an American newspaper Web site to have given Canadian readers the same information that Captain's Quarters did. When the newspapers failed to act, Captain's Quarters showed that bloggers can do more than just critique; they can report suppressed news and change the course of history.