All the News

If Toronto voters were baffled by the issues in this week's general election, they had only their newspapers to blame. Not since the days of fist-swinging personal journalism had they known anything like the political news served up during the campaign by the city's evening papers, the Liberal Star (circ. 362,193) and the Tory Telegram (circ. 192,651).

Page after page of the Star was given over to outright plugging for the Liberal Party. No story about the Tories got into print unless it could be made an insult. When Tory Leader George Drew was well received in the Maritimes, the Star ignored it. When boos were heard at a Drew meeting in Halifax, the Star rediscovered him and played up the boos.

The Telegram, in the midst of a circulation war with the Star, followed the same pattern--cut to Tory cloth. It forgot Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent when, in French-speaking Montreal, he got the best reception of his campaign. When St. Laurent visited Toronto, the Tely's front page carried not a word of his speech. Instead, it ran an interview with a St. Laurent heckler and a picture of him shouting "Phooey."

Elsewhere in Canada, leading newspapers judged the news on its merits, took sides only in their editorial columns. A survey made by the Ottawa Citizen near the end of the campaign showed that the circulation strength of the English-language papers backing the Liberals was close to 1,000,000, the Tories had about 800,000. Not a single daily editorially supported either the Socialist CCF, the Social Crediters or the Communists.

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