La Presse on the swing to the right
La Presse has an important dossier this weekend on the swing to the right we’re going to be experiencing this year and in years to come. In a not unrelated theme, Le Devoir looks at growing hostility to journalists as distrust of fact is stoked by the right.
qatzelok 15:13 on 2025-01-05 Permalink
Distrust of fact, or distrust of the mainstream media industry?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Kevin 15:33 on 2025-01-05 Permalink
As pointed out in the previous thread, we now live in a polycentric society, and that is especially true when it comes to news.
There are many smart, otherwise educated people who pay no attention to daily news, ever. And who think that getting all sides of a story, or think the idea that a story can develop over time, is somehow evil or heretical.
H. John 18:13 on 2025-01-05 Permalink
Abacus Data’s David Coletto did a piece looking at the issue:
Beyond Left and Right: The Ideological Dimensions of Canadians and What it Means for 2025
https://abacusdata.ca/abacus-data-voter-segmentation-consumers-profiles/
nau 23:38 on 2025-01-06 Permalink
That Abacus Data is interesting for a couple reasons.
First, the largest group is the one that is progressive both economically and culturally. AD presents the “mixed” group as the biggest but these are people who are spread all over the 2-dimensional space AD has created. No other group contains people with such widely disparate views, so I discount this aspect of their analysis. There’s no policy that’s going to be attractive to everyone in that group. In contrast to what one might think if one has ever consumed legacy media, the smallest group is the economically conservative but socially progressive one.
Second, given that the double progressives are the largest group, one might think that this should bode well for the NDP. But no. While the double conservatives intend to vote 77% for the Conservatives, double progressives only intend to vote 40% for the NDP and almost 20% intend to vote for the Conservatives! And while 50% of double progressives self-place themselves as left or centre-left, 40% self-place as centrists? I mean, sure, on the grand spectrum where the left end is the Soviet Union and the right is Fascist Italy, we’re all centrists but that’s hardly relevant to the Canadian political landscape. While to a certain extent, people of all stripes are confused about how their values actually place them vis a vis other Canadians (i.e. they like the comfort of thinking they’re more centrist than they actually are), this is most apparent among progressives.
The other obvious point is that culturally progressive views are much less popular than economically progressive ones. The inverse holding true for conservative views, it’s hardly surprising why the Conservative party loves hiding their economic agenda behind the culture wars.
Of course, this is all based on a survey of only 1,500 Canadians, so necessarily must be viewed as a crude sketch.