Listening to Labour: Mainstream Media, Talk Radio, and the 2005 B.C. Teachers Strike

Abstract

In October 2005, B.C. public school teachers conducted a two-and-a-half-week illegal strike that attracted widespread support from the public. This article conducts a comparative content and discourse analysis of the news coverage provided by the leading provincial outlets in three media types: The Vancouver Sun (newspaper), the News Hour on Global (television), and The Bill Good Show (political talk radio). The Bill Good Show’s open-ended, participatory format, coupled with the host’s commitment to journalistic norms of objectivity and diversity, allowed teachers to play an active and significant role in shaping discussion and debate about the strike. Conversely, coverage by The Vancouver Sun and the News Hour, both owned by CanWest Global, largely failed to reflect public opinion and instead reproduced the ideological bias of conventional strike scripts.