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January 25, 2006
Two Views of One Phonecall
Monday's recent election, in which Steven Harper's Conservative Party ended the 13-year rule of the Liberals, continues to dominate headlines in Canada. The two major national papers - the right-leaning, Calgary-based National Post and the center-left Globe and Mail of Toronto - offer telling differences in their coverage of the election's aftermath.
The Globe and Mail leads with a cover story on a 20-minute phone call between George W. Bush and the Prime Minister-designate. No details of the conversation are availible, but the paper runs a photograph of a smirking Bush talking into the phone, obviously pleased with what he's hearing. This picture dominates the front page and, given the unpopularity of Bush in Canada, can't but be interpreted as a provocative gesture. In some ways, this is an oblique reference to the Liberal campaign's strategy of trying to link Bush and Harper, with the suggestion that a Conservative victory will serve to bolster the un-Canadian Bush, and may lower resistance to such unpopular, US-backed initiatives as national missile defense, the war in Iraq and domestic surveillance.
How does the right respond? What is the National Post's take on the phone conversation between the two leaders? We don't know - the Post runs an inoccuous wire version of the story, without picture, stuffed in the back pages of its print edition.
Posted January 25, 2006 11:46 PM
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