Volume 10, Number 1

MEDIA ATTENTION TO                                                               DEBTS AND DEFICITS ON THE DECLINE

Former B.C. Premier Mike Harcourt claims that Canada's news media have become champions in the fight against debts and deficits. In the book A Measure of Defiance, Harcourt claims that, "panic over deficits and the mania over debt. . . has taken hold with such intensity that it has become a sort of `mad-cow disease'. . . . Only one side of this extremely complex story dominates-cut or else. In effect, the news media have been co-opted as the carrier of this monotone message."

The Reform Party of Canada is often credited with raising debt and deficit concerns to national prominence during the 1993 federal election. At that time, journalists were finally forced to consider the impact of a very high debt load on Canada's current economic health and on the well-being of future generations. As Figure A shows, media attention to debt and deficit issues increased dramatically in 1993, but has declined steadily ever since.

Click here to view Figure A : Media Attention to Debts and Deficits Compared to Federal Debt Servicing Costs, 1988-1996

Contrary to Mr. Harcourt's claims, by 1996 national television news references to debts and deficits were even lower than 1992 levels on both CBC and CTV. Meanwhile, federal debt is forecast to be almost $600 billion dollars in 1996/97, costing Canadians $46.5 billion in interest payments.

Many Canadian journalists are now suggesting that with the deficit under control, government spending should be renewed. For example, on October 9, 1996, CTV's top story of the night was Finance Minister Paul Martin's announcement that the federal deficit would be lower than forecast in the March budget. In the introductory remarks, Anchor Lloyd Robertson commented, "But everybody, even some Liberals, wanted to know if things are so good now, where are the rewards Canadians deserve for sticking it out when things were so tough? CTV Ottawa Bureau Chief Craig Oliver has more."

Interestingly, neither Liberal nor opposition MPs called for increased spending in the report. In fact, although "everybody" wanted to know why the government wasn't increasing spending, the only people talking about the need to increase spending were the media.
Craig Oliver concluded: "In proclaiming yet again his intention to stay the course, Martin is sending a message not just to the country, but also to his own Liberal party rank and file, many of whom are asking if his financial results are that good, why does he not end a dreary string of restraint budgets and put more federal money into job creation and other government programs, especially with an election coming?"

As Canadians begin to think about the next federal election, it is interesting to note that public opinion regarding the importance ofdebt/deficit issues has closely followed media coverage. Back in 1992, when Gallup asked Canadians "What [is] the most important problem facing the country?" just 3 percent of respondents named the debt/deficit. But as media increased attention to debt/deficit issues, public concern increased. By September 1993, 20 percent of Canadians thought that the debt/deficit issue was the country's greatest problem. In 1996, however, after media attention to debts and deficits had fallen dramatically, only 12 percent of Canadians cited debt/deficit as their biggest concern.

Click here to view Table 1: CBC and CTV Mentions of Debts and Deficits

The federal government and 4 provincial governments continue to run deficits, with the obvious result of both increasing debt loads and increasing debt servicing costs. At the same time, Canada's national television news reports have reduced their attention to debt and deficit issues, possibly causing the Canadian public to think that the debt crisis is over. Ignoring problems rarely makes them go away, and certainly the debt is one such problem.

Child Poverty: How the Media Overstates Poverty in Canada and Fosters Further Income Redistribution

In recent weeks, television reports, newspapers, radio programs, and magazines have been reporting that 1.4 million Canadian children live in poverty. This figure is based on Statistics Canada's Low Income Cut-off (LICO) which defines those in Canada who spend 20 percent more than the average Canadian on food, shelter, and clothing as "low-income."

This methodology actually measures income disparity and provides anti-poverty activists with a moving target that would be almost impossible to eradicate. Statistics Canada does not consider LICO to be a measure of poverty and even goes so far as to publish a note to readers of its publications that states: "Although the cut-offs are commonly referred to as `poverty lines,' Statistics Canada does not endorse them for this purpose." [Statistics Canada, The Daily, cat. 11-001E, December 11, 1996, p. 2]

Given the media's steady reporting that 1 in 5 Canadian children "live in poverty," the federal government has decided that the fight against child poverty will be a central component of its platform in the upcoming election.

On November 27, 1996 "The National," CBC's Peter Mansbridge reported: "Ottawa and the provinces got together today to talk about social policy; a meeting seen as ground breaking by the ministers. But as Julie Van Dusen reports, they didn't come out with any firm plans on their prime concern, child poverty."

Later in the report, Julie Van Dusen stated: "Statistics Canada says one in five kids in this country lives in poverty. That's the second highest rate in the industrialized world, after the United States. It's a record these politicians are vowing to change. After a 5-hour meeting, the federal and provincial social service ministers say they are ready to push child poverty to the top of the political agenda." [The claim that Canada has the second worst rate of child poverty in the world is highly misleading. The statistic is generated by taking the median income in each country, dividing it in half, and calculating how many children live in families within that income range. Such methodology supposes that income inequality and poverty are synonymous]

Although Statistics Canada continues to state that the Low Income Cut-Off is not intended as a poverty measure, anti-poverty organizations use LICO statistics as the "poverty line" because it overstates the number of Canadians living in poverty, which leads to heightened media attention and public support.

The Fraser Institute's Chris Sarlo has measured the number of children living in poverty based on the cost of providing children with basic needs. He estimated that in 1993, 313,000 Canadian children lived in poverty.

Apart from erroneously reporting that 1 in 5 Canadian children live in poverty, numerous journalists (and a Globe and Mail editorial) have reported that the number of children living in low-income families has increased by 46 percent since 1989. These reports create the impression that Canadian incomes are becoming increasingly polarized even though Statistics Canada recently stated that "fluctuations in the percentage of children under age 18 who live in low income families can be attributed to changes in the business cycle through the 1980s and 1990s. The percentage of children below Statistics Canada Low-Income Cut-offs (LICOs) rose during the recession and declined during expansions. There was, however, no long term trend, either upward or downward."

What journalists have failed to mention is that in 1989 the number of families below the StatsCan Low Income Cut-off was at an all-time low of 14.1 percent. In fact, the 1995 level of 17.8 percent is lower than the 1984 business cycle high of 18.8 percent.

The most often cited statistic, that "one in five Canadian children live in poverty," is from the report The Progress of Canada's Children 1996 by the Canadian Council on Social Development.

Stephen Lewis, former Canadian Ambassador to the UN and current Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, wrote the report's introduction. Mr. Lewis condemns Canada for having "nearly 20 percent of Canada's children . . . subsisting . . . below the poverty line." But two paragraphs later Mr. Lewis writes, "To be sure, our children are relatively better off than those of countless other nations, but relativity has no place when measuring rights." Ironically, the anti-poverty campaign is based on the premise that being poorer than one's neighbour, i.e. relative poverty, is damaging.

Clarence Lochhead of the Canadian Council on Social Development argues that the poorest 20 percent of Canadian families must be helped by government because there is a "cycle of poverty." On CBC's April 9, 1996 "Face-Off" he stated: "We find that low-income kids are more likely to be born with low birth weights, they are less likely to do well in school, more likely to drop out, more likely to smoke. Teens are more likely to end up unemployed. We know there's a cycle of poverty. We are concerned with long-term trends."

Notably absent from Lochhead's correlations is that low-income kids will become low-income adults, that in Canada poverty begets poverty. There is no current intergenerational data available in Canada regarding income mobility, but Statistics Canada has begun to track how individual Canadians fare over time in its new series "Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics" (SLID). It promises to answer how many families cross the low income line each year, and why, and how long low income spells last. It will also answer what proportion of families are persistently poor, although it cannot answer such questions at present.

However, the study does provide evidence of upward income mobility in Canada through its survey of eduction levels. Two-thirds of Canadians have a higher level of eduction than their parents, while just 7 percent have less eduction. Given that in 1993 the average income for a person with a university degree was $40,247, while those with a high-school diploma earned on average just $23,644, one can conclude that people with more eduction will tend to have higher incomes. [Statistics Canada, Dynamics of Labour and Income, cat. 75-201E, 1994, pp. 24-27] For example, 20 percent of Canadians surpassed their parents' educational attainment by three steps: the parents had not graduated from high school, while the children attended either college or university.

Canada's record in combating poverty, contrary to recent media reports, has been reasonably successful. By using the "Orshansky method" to calculate what proportion of families spend more than one-third of their total income on basic food supplies, Professor Sarlo found that between 1973 and 1994, Canada's poverty rate fell from 10 to slightly less than 5 percent. During the same period, the U.S. rate increased from 11 to 14 percent.

As the federal election approaches, there will be considerable discussion about child poverty. To date the popular press have failed to focus on Canadians truly in dire straits. Instead, the media have set the stage for further income redistribution to the poorest one-fifth of Canadian families under the guise of poverty activism.


Spins on Studies: Who's in the Real Canadian family?

On October 18, 1996, Statistics Canada released the preliminary results of the report Growing Up In Canada: National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. The Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun reported the study's findings in front-page articles, but with two very different spins.

According to the Vancouver Sun, the study's primary finding was that Canadian families are like "TV's Cleavers" with 83 percent of children under 12 living with two parents. [Brad Evenson, "Canadian families like TV's Cleavers, survey indicates, Vancouver Sun, October 18, 1996, p. A1] But according to the Globe and Mail, the most newsworthy item was that "Children of single mothers show increased problems." [Dorothy Lipovenko, "Children of single mothers show increased problems-Statscan study finds more behaviour trouble, school failures," Globe and Mail, October 18, 1996, p. A1]

This case illustrates the power of the media to define social problems. Journalists, presented with a dense, 160-page report in which each page may contain "news," must initially decide the spin of his or her story. Numerous factors come into play, including the journalist's personal life experiences, the perceived values of audiences and editors, and the journalist's knowledge of the field.

Click here to view Figure B-Distribution of Children Aged 0-11 Years by Family Type, 1994-1995

The Vancouver Sun's reporter Brad Evenson found "news" in the fact that Canadian families are composed primarily of traditional 2-parent families. The lead sentence of the article stated: "Canadian families are more like the fictional 1950s Cleaver family than the patchwork of "mixed" families portrayed in the media during the 1990s." The item was newsworthy because it was surprising to Evenson and, he assumed, to the Sun's readers.

In direct contrast, the Globe and Mail's Dorothy Lipovenko decided that the primary finding was that children of single mothers have more problems. The lead stated: "Young children in Canada raised by single mothers are showing higher rates of behaviour problems and school failures than other youngsters." The item was newsworthy because it identified disadvantaged Canadians, namely, the children of single mothers.

While both reports contain genuine news, the public is presented with opposing impressions of Canadian families. Discord is proof of a free press, but at the same time, the media have a responsibility to accurately reflect the true state of affairs.

The Globe and Mail ran a second article, based on the Growing Up in Canada study, on November 21, 1996. This time the headline read: "Study finds 400,000 children in stepfamilies, Statscan report the first of massive series examining nature of Canadian households over 20 years." [Alanna Mitchell, "Study finds 400,000 children in stepfamilies," Globe and Mail, November 21, 1996, p. A9] This headline gives the impression that a significant portion of Canadian families are stepfamilies, when, in fact, only 8.6 percent of children live in stepfamilies. A headline more representative of traditional news in which the qualities of "new" and "unusual" determine what is classified as news would have read: "Less than one-in-ten Canadian kids live in stepfamilies." In presenting headlines that emphasize single mothers and stepfamilies, the Globe and Mail is perpetuating the false but widely held belief that the traditional family is disappearing.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.