Article content continued

Ford’s strategy will be to go directly to the people as much as possible – whether it’s in person or via social media. This is increasingly the path to victory. It’s less and less about winning the air war – getting the most and best coverage in newspapers and on radio and television. Ask any winning campaign of late – from Trudeau to Trump – and they’ll agree.

No doubt my media colleagues understand all of this as well. So why the fuss? We can chalk it up to a few things: slow news day, typical media navel-gazing and – here’s where things get interesting – the anti-Ford bias that’s already caked into their coverage.

Photo by Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Whenever I’m asked about liberal media bias by disaffected news consumers, I explain that it’s not so much that they’re fully for or against one candidate or another. It’s just that they’re naturally predisposed to viewing liberals in a more positive light than conservatives, such that it’s more difficult for them to see things in a neutral fashion. (Case in point: The Ottawa bubble has, to their credit, finally figured out that Trudeau’s progressive schtick is a smarmy ruse. It just took them two years longer than the rest of us to get there.)

Hence why right after Doug Ford won the leadership we saw all of these headlines predicting the doomsday things he was going to get up to and how he’s just a repeat of Trump. It was not only lazy journalism but most of it ranged from baseless to flat-out lies. It’s an example of how their first inclination is to reach for any conceivable negatives, which is of course the opposite of their response to a liberal victory.

Photo by Chris Young / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Here’s the thing though: If they display this bias too heavily, it risks further eroding the dwindling trust people have in them. For two years in a row, the annual Edelman Trust Barometer has found that less than half of the country trusts the media.

The tour bus is the least of their problems. The question is how fairly they cover the events once they get there.

@anthonyfurey

afurey@postmedia.com