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Media bias in election coverage

The election is over so I guess the FreeP won't be publishing my letter. I always hang on to them for a week after submitting just in case. 

Dear Winnipeg Free Press

All the big cities have fallen to Post Media, but Winnipeg proudly continues to have an independent daily newspaper. 

So it’s all the more disappointing that our scrappy Winnipeg independent is bowing to power instead of honouring our democratic ideals.

The CBC managed to find a rubric to exclude most of the mayoral slate from the televised debate, including only the three front-runners incapable of producing a single progressive policy proposal between them.

The FreeP has been giving disproportionate ink to the same three, despite a field 12 candidates wide and a largely undecided electorate.  

This purportedly unengaged and uninspired electorate rose up 1300 strong to appeal for another candidate – a fresh face, a young voice, a progressive thinker – to be included in CBC’s one-hour (with commercials) televised debate.

But what do we find in your pages the next day? Nary a peep about the 1100 who've watched an alternative YouTube broadcast mustered at the last minute to provide an alternative to the same old ideas from the same old men. We do, however, find a front page article plus two more section A articles on the debate, low on solutions but high on potshots between privileged men.

It's quite the contrast to the treatment given the previous day's two-hour all-candidate forum – hosted by First Nations – buried in section B with only 1 article.

Why so much media bias for these already overprivileged 3? I’m tired of the media creating front-runners with plenty of coverage and consigning the lesser knowns to the dustheap of history by abdicating any responsibility for fair and equal treatment.

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