by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
October 26, 2004
It has never been a secret that the Liberals (provincial and federal) are the little darlings of Toronto’s largest circulation daily. The newspaper never passes up an opportunity to put a positive spin of news that comes from their favourite party.
a good way for a newspaper to inject its opinion into a straight news story is the way they frame the headline. Two articles appeared in last Friday’s edition of the Star that illustrates how sympathetic the paper is to the Ontario Liberals.
The first headline read, Response cool to McGuinty’s plan to add 1,000 officers. The Fiberals had promised to put 1,000 additional police officers on the streets of Ontario. When the details were announced, it was revealed that the province would commit $30 million over a three-year period for the thousand new police officers. This would leave the municipalities, many of whom are cash-strapped, to pay approximately 50 percent of cost of these new officers. as some of these municipalities cannot afford their share, the police officers will never materialize and critics of the Liberal government are calling it just another broken promise from the premier.
By framing the headline in the manner that they did, The Star is making the critics of the plan the main actors in the story. The headline implies that McGuinty is unilaterally supplying 1,000 more police officers and the critics are simply "cool" to his wonderful idea. The headline was drafted to put McGuinty and his government in the most positive light.
an egregious example of biased headline writing was the headline that read, Health minister tries to calm workers’ fear. Wow, what a guy! This headline is reminiscent of the boy who kills both his parents and then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan. The reason for the "workers’ fear" was caused by Smitherman himself. In his bullying Ontario’s hospitals to reduce expenditures and balance their budgets, the Minister said that they should replace CUPE maintenance staff (or floor sweepers as the Minister referred to them) with contracted workers who would earn about $10 less an hour. Yet the Star can’t help drafting the headline in such a way as to make Furious George the hero by calming the fear that he caused.