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Electrify

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As a GTA resident, this is getting frustrating. Obviously Toronto's mayoral election is the most important and affects the most people, but it is hardly the only one. Half of the people in the metro area live outside the city limits, so why are their local politics to be ignored?

Hell, some of them should be generating high interest, like the one in Vaughan with allegations of fraudulent electoral spending. If this happened in Toronto, it would be front page news until someone would be forced to resign. But since it happened in an adjacent municipality, it gets a small blurb on page 23. Speaking of which, before amalgamation were other Metro municipalities snubbed during local elections, while all the focus was on the old city of Toronto?

Sometimes I feel that Toronto's news media is designed to create infotainment on other places, with urban dwellers as the actors. All while keeping us from focusing on issues in our own backyard.
 
Most of the GTA election coverage can be found in the local paper. The Brampton Guardian, for example is covering the election. Mississuaga, well.. Hazel is going to win, even though she hasn't done anything in the past 2 terms to deserve re-election. Vaughn is getting quite a bit of coverage.
 
It is a little insane how little people who live in 905 areas tend to know about their own municipal politics. The way someone from 905 can rag on Toronto councillors for their salaries and benefits when their own town or city councillor is almost definitely getting paid more is more than a little annoying.
 
All the media is Toronto-based, so what exactly do you expect? Mississauga, Vaughan, Oakville, Brampton, none of them have daily newspapers or TV stations (Rogers Cable 10 doesn't count). Hell, they could all be amalgamated overnight and no one would notice much difference.
 
I bet there are a lot of people in the 905 who wont be able to comprehend, that they cant vote for Rob Ford when they go to their polling stations. The ignorence of the political system is mind boggling to me sometimes.
 
This works to the advantage in the 905 99% of the time so be happy about it ... people who are interested in their specific communities concern can find it in the local papers.
Because of this you avoid most of the negative press Toronto recieves, and it's mainly this i.e. say property taxes go up in Toronto - while all the other GTA communities have a larger increase (I'm not debating the merit of this) all you'll see in the papers is Toronto's tax rates are going up and barely nothing about the 905 - this causes a lot of the less educated population (not even that, educated as well) in the 905 and 416 to think the 905 has it so much better off ... this extents to many other issues, not just tax.

Back to the orginal question, it's probably not practical to have media coverage for every single community - Mississauga / Brampton / Vaughan / Markham / Richmond Hill / ...... and so on.
And as well all know there's no election in Mississauga :)
 
Electrify's comment is quite valid IMO. I read the Star online most days, and while I obviously can't claim that I see everything that's being published, I see little on municipal politics outside Toronto. Mississauga is covered to some extent because of the inquiry currently under way, and Vaughan because of ongoing allegations of corruption. I see little or nohing about other municipalities. Meanwhile it's Ford this and Ford that, as the Star does their level best to make his campaign (the most effective one to date) seem like the second coming of the Cro-magnons.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
All the media is Toronto-based, so what exactly do you expect? Mississauga, Vaughan, Oakville, Brampton, none of them have daily newspapers or TV stations (Rogers Cable 10 doesn't count). Hell, they could all be amalgamated overnight and no one would notice much difference.
Click to expand...

The Star and Sun represent the Toronto media market, which includes most of the Greater Toronto Area. They are not local papers.

taal said:
This works to the advantage in the 905 99% of the time so be happy about it ... people who are interested in their specific communities concern can find it in the local papers.
Because of this you avoid most of the negative press Toronto recieves, and it's mainly this i.e. say property taxes go up in Toronto - while all the other GTA communities have a larger increase (I'm not debating the merit of this) all you'll see in the papers is Toronto's tax rates are going up and barely nothing about the 905 - this causes a lot of the less educated population (not even that, educated as well) in the 905 and 416 to think the 905 has it so much better off ... this extents to many other issues, not just tax.

Back to the orginal question, it's probably not practical to have media coverage for every single community - Mississauga / Brampton / Vaughan / Markham / Richmond Hill / ...... and so on.
And as well all know there's no election in Mississauga :)
Click to expand...

How is this better? People (are supposed) to look to these papers for up to date information and insight on current events in the GTA, not to be spoon fed a false reality that the '416' is all trouble while the '905' is all roses! I don't expect the same amount of coverage that Toronto gets, but we don't even get a blurb when someone announces they will run for mayor in some of the largest municipalities in the country (6 metro municipalities are in the top 30, not including Toronto).

Seriously, all this does is further my thesis that Toronto's news media is only interested in creating infotainment for the suburbs.
 
Electrify said:
The Star and Sun represent the Toronto media market, which includes most of the Greater Toronto Area. They are not local papers.
Click to expand...
Can't speak for the Sun. The Star is primarily a Toronto paper; not sure why they should cover other cities in detail. I live in Toronto and read Toronto papers and watch Toronto TV for local news. If I lived in Oshawa I would read an Oshawa paper, and watch an Oshawa channel. If I lived in Hamilton, I'd watch a Hamilton station, and read a Hamilton paper. When I lived in Kitchener I watched Kitchener TV and read a Kitchener paper (which I note, had far better coverage of my area than the Star does now).
 
nfitz said:
Can't speak for the Sun. The Star is primarily a Toronto paper; not sure why they should cover other cities in detail. I live in Toronto and read Toronto papers and watch Toronto TV for local news. If I lived in Oshawa I would read an Oshawa paper, and watch an Oshawa channel. If I lived in Hamilton, I'd watch a Hamilton station, and read a Hamilton paper. When I lived in Kitchener I watched Kitchener TV and read a Kitchener paper (which I note, had far better coverage of my area than the Star does now).
Click to expand...

To be fair, the Star did at one point have a 905/GTA section. Haven't picked up a print copy in a while so I can't say if they still do. But like I said, Brampton/Mississauga/Oakville don't have daily papers. And the (three-times-a-week) papers we do get are pretty pathetic.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
To be fair, the Star did at one point have a 905/GTA section. Haven't picked up a print copy in a while so I can't say if they still do. But like I said, Brampton/Mississauga/Oakville don't have daily papers. And the (three-times-a-week) papers we do get are pretty pathetic.
Click to expand...
I've seen the Mississauga paper. It's pretty pathetic, but it did seem to cover local issues. Perhaps better than we get in the Star for many local issues in such a large city. We also have to rely on local papers ... and they are far less frequent than three-times-a-week.
 
I don't understand how GTA cities don't have daily papers. Welland, NF and St Catharines all have dailies. Sure, I guess you could argue that part of being in the GTA is being tapped into Toronto in many ways including media, but you'd think there'd be enough interest to make a go of it in markets much bigger than those Niagara cities.
 
Nearly every GTA local paper is part of the MetroLand group, which is owned by TorStar. Needless to say, it is not really in TorStar's best interest to make these local rags anything more than glorified flyers. They want everyone subscribing to The Star.
 
GraphicMatt said:
Nearly every GTA local paper is part of the MetroLand group, which is owned by TorStar. Needless to say, it is not really in TorStar's best interest to make these local rags anything more than glorified flyers. They want everyone subscribing to The Star.
Click to expand...

oh didn't know anything about ownership, which explains it. It's a bit sad though. It was nice having the Welland Tribune on your doorstep every morning.
 
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