Rob Ford’s election as mayor of Toronto and the “how did this happen?” post-game analysis triggered yet another round of hand-wringing about what’s wrong with political coverage in Canada. True, reminiscent of the famous quotation from a senior parliamentary reporter about the “boys on the bus” having a government to defeat, some of the columns and editorials that appeared during the campaign did leave the impression that at least some journalists would have gladly substituted their own preference for the judgment of voters. But for the most part what should have been a dispassionate assessment of the strengths of each campaign too often descended into a proxy war between AM talk radio and the Toronto Star. After all, why should we look to the candidates to explain their victories and failures when we can instead blame the inherent biases of the media?

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