I was struck by something Andrew MacDougall wrote about reporters the other day as he grappled with something that seemed strange to him: the fact that, despite Justin Trudeau’s many misfires and outright fails, his popularity is undiminished.

MacDougall offered many explanations, including the enduring power of Trudeau’s “sunny ways” narrative and his good looks (though he overlooked the absence of permanent leaders in the opposition parties, which I think may be a factor).

But what interested me was this partial explanation for Trudeau’s staying power:

“Some of it is ideological sympathy from reporters. Those Trudeau hasn’t already hired, I mean. They appreciate that he respects them and they return the favour, sparing Trudeau some of the snarkier kicks they gave his predecessor, who didn’t.”

MacDougall is one of the most interesting people writing about Canadian politics these days. A former spokesman for and advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, MacDougall manages to draw on his experience and his belief system without needing to re-litigate every spitball fight he and his former boss were ever in. (If you don’t see that as an achievement, just watch cable TV for an hour.)

So setting aside Harper’s sometimes poisonous relations with the media, it’s worth taking MacDougall seriously on this point.

Of course, he’s not the first to claim that the press gallery has liberal — or even Liberal — sympathies. You’ll find a fair number of New Democrats who agree. Reporters respond to such accusations with umbrage coupled with a furious insistence on their professionalism and commitment to covering all parties equitably. This is one of the many little circular gears that makes Twitter such a powerful engine for consuming time and going nowhere.

There are several things going on here. One is that reporters have a powerful belief-system and set of practices aimed at constraining personal opinion and preserving neutrality — at least so far as mainstream political actors are concerned. But like all human beings, they are subject to unconscious bias.

It is popular nowadays for commercial marketers and political parties to rely on demographics and psychographics to help guide them in predicting political attitudes. So, let’s do a little experiment. I’m going to describe someone and you guess their party preference.

The person I am thinking of comes from a major metropolitan centre, probably in central Canada, is in his or her thirties or forties, has some knowledge of both official languages, is university educated, with a middle-class income but with pay and job security in relative decline, and works in a knowledge-based industry.

Imagine that I will pay off your mortgage if you correctly predict how this person voted in the 2015 federal election. *

New Democratic Party

Liberal Party

Conservative Party

Bloc Québécois

* This is a thought experiment. I definitely will not pay off your mortgage.

The Trudeau Liberals are more like the Mulroney PCs and the Chrétien Liberals, both of whom started out all chummy with at least some of the press corps. And of course, for whatever period that persists, it’s going to help the Liberals. The Trudeau Liberals are more like the Mulroney PCs and the Chrétien Liberals, both of whom started out all chummy with at least some of the press corps. And of course, for whatever period that persists, it’s going to help the Liberals.

Of course, you can’t possibly know for certain how this person voted from the information I have given you. And even if I had given you no information at all, your best guess would have been Liberal, since the Liberals won the most votes in 2015. But this profile, which very roughly fits that of the press gallery, also roughly fits that of a Liberal voter.

In actual newsrooms, reporters seldom openly share their politics or their voting intention and we have no good surveys in this country that would give us direct information. A survey of American journalists a few years ago suggested that they were more likely to identify as independents than most Americans, much less likely to identify as Republicans, but almost as likely to say they were Democrats as the general population.

My experience of mainstream media newsrooms is that they tend to be socially liberal, on issues such as abortion and sexual orientation, but skeptical about new or unfamiliar fiscal or social policy ideas. That’s not a terrible fit with the Liberals, really.

That having been said, every newsroom has some reporters whom their co-workers would identify as likely Liberal, Conservative or New Democrat voters. These reporters seldom concede this openly and might even be embarrassed or outraged that others see them this way.

The only people in newsrooms proud to talk about voting are the non-voters — both those who don’t vote from the high horse of impartiality and those who don’t from the low road of cynicism.

What none of this discussion of ideology captures is the effect that the adversarial nature of their jobs has on reporters’ attitudes. Butting up every day against politicians of every party does strange things to a man or woman. One likely effect is to puncture any absolute faith in one party above all others.

And believe me, regardless of the way they vote, most reporters would much rather lay a government low with a sponsorship scandal or a Senate travel scoop than see it succeed at the ballot box.

I think MacDougall may come closer to the mark when he talks about the social side of the relationship the incoming Liberals have with reporters. Stephen Harper came to office suspicious of all institutions and famously declared as he campaigned to become prime minister that the courts, the bureaucracy, the Senate and the media would collectively constrain his power. Although most governments — including Liberal ones — end their days in a sour relationship with the media, Harper’s actually started there.

The Trudeau Liberals are more like the Mulroney PCs and the Chrétien Liberals, both of whom started out all chummy with at least some of the press corps. And of course, for whatever period that persists, it’s going to help the Liberals. It turns out ‘not being a dick’ can be an effective strategy in managing media, as it is in life.

But here’s the thing: There’s a natural arc to this kind of relationship.

Opposition politicians are typically more accessible to the media than the government is. The old Reform Party and Harper’s Conservatives were a partial exception to this rule, but generally reporters build positive relationships with opposition MPs and organizers that translate into the early stages of government.

When a government has just been elected, reporters also are anxious to acquire new sources, in the hopes of getting information and context. What happens inevitably is that, sooner or later, reporters write stories their sources don’t like. Sometimes, sources use their leverage to plant information that is misleading or untrue. The relationship frays.

And then reporters start to “burn” sources — publishing stories they know will destroy a relationship because they value the story more.

It can get like a divorce. The failure of one becomes the triumph of the other.

In my lifetime, just one government — Joe Clark’s — failed to secure a second term. Public opinion turns slowly as do reporters’ relationships with governments. But it happens. It almost always happens.

So, patience, Andrew. Patience.

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