This News May Come As a Shock

This News May Come as a Shock

The Politics and Press Coverage of Electricity Restructuring in Ontario, 1995-2002 Josh Greenberg Carleton University Abstract: This study examines newspaper coverage of electricity restructuring in Ontario (1995-2002). This news coverage came to be dominated by the claims of government officials and industry insiders that the public electricity system was in a state of crisis that demanded responses based on principles of market competition and private ownership. By the time these responses were undertaken, however, the issue of electricity restructuring had become more urgent to the public and its framing in the press more diverse and contentious. This paper aims to describe this shift and explain some of its possible causes and effects. It con- siders how a government policy program that once appeared to be a fait accompli could so quickly become an abysmal failure—as both a policy initiative and an exercise in political communication. Résumé : Cette étude examine la couverture dans les journaux de la restructuration du marché de l’électricité en Ontario (1995-2002). Cette couverture vint à être dominée par des fonctionnaires gouvernementaux et des initiés de l’industrie déclarant que le système public pour l’électricité était en état de crise—à résoudre par la concurrence de marché et la propriété privée. Cependant, avant même que cette initiative fut prise, la restructuration était devenue une question beaucoup plus importante pour le public, et ses représentations dans les médias moins conciliatrices et homogènes. Cet article vise à décrire cette transformation d’attitude et expliquer quelques-unes de ses causes et effets possibles. Il consi- dère comment une politique gouvernementale qui semblait être un fait accompli a pu si rapidement subir un échec retentissant—tant à titre d’initiative gouvernementale que de tentative de communication politique Keywords: Neo-liberalism; Harris government; Hydro Privatization; Framing; Content analysis Introduction There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to con- duct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. — Niccoló Macchiavelli

Josh Greenberg is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, Room 346 St. Patrick’s Building, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ONK1S 5B6. E-mail: [email protected]

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Governments tend to be driven by the simultaneous desires to initiate innova- tive policies, on the one hand, and to sustain electoral credibility, on the other. Although these objectives appear compatible at first blush, governments should not take for granted that it will be easy to propose and then radically change public policy while maintaining credibility in the hearts and minds of the electorate. Contingencies such as unanticipated events and procedural problems, disagree- ments and power struggles among elites, social movement advocacy and activism, and critical media coverage can potentially derail the policy process and problem- atize meanings about it. This problematic is particularly evident in the case of policies that are associated with the turn to neo-liberalism. Although the substance of neo-liberal policies and the extent of their implementation vary, such policies share a commitment to reducing government spending and stemming the interventionist role of the state in favour of restructuring the polity and the economy along competitive, open market lines (Teeple, 1995). Neo-liberal advocates argue that, in contrast to the inefficiency of Keynesian policies that were (or remain) characteristic of postwar democratic regimes, policies that are oriented to opening markets and that encourage the freer flow of private capital are preferable steering mecha- nisms for economic growth because they encourage competition and operational efficiency, and enhance choice for consumers (Shearmur, 1992). Critics and observers who are suspicious of the alleged benefits of neo-liberal policies argue that cutbacks in government funding to public services and programs are undesir- able because they generally impose immediate pain on specific groups in return for benefits that are, at best, diffuse, long-term, and uncertain (Pierson, 1994). This dilemma poses both a political and a communications challenge for governments oriented to a neo-liberal framework, and it provides the setting for the case study examined here. Focusing upon market-oriented restructuring (deregulation and privatization) of the Ontario electricity industry (1995-2003), I specif- ically explore the role of the mainstream press in policy processes. As a constructor and carrier of the “culturally dominant assumptions of our society” (Glasgow University Media Group, 1976, p.1), news media invest some perspectives with greater authority and credibility over others and in this regard often con- tribute to the reproduction of a hegemonic order. Governments focused on restructuring the polity and economy along market lines can thus minimize resistance to political change by using the channels of mass communication to obfus- cate the policy process, either by stemming the flow of information from the political arena to the public sphere or by manipulating the texture and tone of that information in a manner that will circumscribe its meaning. Nevertheless, media discourses are not impervious to challenge or change. Routine or unintended shifts in the political environment may arise and generate new political and discursive opportunities for disrupting both the policy cycle and media coverage of it (Deacon & Golding, 1994; see also Gamson, 2004). The role of news media is thus potentially contradictory: facilitating and consolidating elite control over policymaking and the construction of a dominant discourse on the one hand, while Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 235 operating as a space for framing contests and the articulation of alternative or oppositional policies and interpretive frameworks on the other. Tracing news coverage of electricity restructuring from the developmental to the introductory and implementation phases, this paper will show that during the policy’s formative years, the discourse was largely restricted to the claims-making of government officials and industry “insiders” who argued that opening the electricity system to market competition would eliminate government bureaucracy, encourage innovation, and ultimately lead to lower rates and more choice for consumers. By the time of implementation, however, the putative benefits of the government’s policy direction became more uncertain and their meaning more contentious. In the end, after embarking on what it called a “bold and historic” plan to transform the province’s electricity industry, the government was forced to back down from its restructuring agenda. This study’s central theoretical and empirical questions are to consider how a policy shift that appeared to be a fait accompli could so quickly turn into a disaster in both policymaking and political communication, and to explore the implications of this case study for the role of media in policymaking more generally. After offering a short background to the case study, I provide some theoretical comments about the media-policy relationship and the central role of news discourse in the context of neo-liberal restructuring. The paper then offers a summary of the data-gathering and analytical strategies and techniques in order to set up the empirical analysis of the news coverage. The paper concludes by attempting to address the guiding research questions, and in doing so offers some remarks about the implications of neo-liberalism for political communication.

A brief background to electricity restructuring in Ontario, 1995-2003 In all my years in public life I have never witnessed so little comment or resistance to such a massive change in public policy. — Ontario Energy Board Chair, Floyd Laughrin The 1995 election of the Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) party, under the leadership of Mike Harris, ushered in profound changes to the business and culture of politics for Canada’s most populous and industrialized province. Pre- vious governments, including the New Democratic Party (1990-95), the Liberals before them (1987-90), and the PCs that dominated Ontario’s postwar political landscape for more than four decades, all perceived the government’s role as positive and constructive, despite differences in the substance and key details of their respective policy platforms. As Snider has recently remarked, “Previous governments, whatever their label, saw Ontario as central to citizenship and nation- building…. From 1960 on, Ontario invested heavily in healthcare, education and housing, and provided a range of social services (none of them generous) to immi- grants, the unemployed and the poor…. In 1995, this history, and the policy agenda it represented, were not just halted but trashed” (2004, pp. 268-269). What marked the Harris government as distinct from preceding governments were the radical ways in which it sought to reinvent governance by transforming 236 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2) the roles of the state, market, and civil society, and the relationships among them. As many scholars have noted (Greenberg, 2004; Knight, 1998; Noel, 1997; Snider, 2004), the Common Sense Revolution, the Conservatives’ 1995 election document and subsequent policy platform, integrated economic policy changes (comprised of tax cuts, overall reductions in government spending, and the “assault” on trade union freedoms [Panitch & Swartz, 1988]) with a social policy program that entailed close monitoring, policing, and a broader marginalization of “problem” populations (such as young offenders, the homeless, and welfare recip- ients). The success of the Conservatives’ political project hinged on a discursive strategy that aimed, through successful media and public relations, to ensure that these policies would resonate with the lived, everyday experiences of citizens, and which could manage the contradictions among them (Knight, 1998). Despite achieving considerable electoral “success” in 1995 and again in 1999, the Conservatives failed to implement key aspects of their original policy platform. The most significant of these aspects entailed the privatization of state assets, particularly the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the publicly owned edu- cational broadcaster, TVOntario, and Ontario Hydro, the largest monopoly electricity company in North America. In this broader context, then, on his final day in the provincial legislature,1 Harris announced that the province’s electricity generation sector would be opened to competition on May 1, 2002, and that the trans- mission grid would be sold to private investors in the largest privatization of a state enterprise in Canadian history: We’ve always believed that government ownership of commercial businesses is not in the best interest of taxpayers…. We have a bold, historic plan to encourage investment in Ontario and increase efficiency in the energy sector. As part of this plan, today I am pleased to announce that we will privatize Hydro One…. It is the responsible thing to do for a government, for the ratepayers and for the future of electricity growth and investment in this province. (Hansard, December 12, 2001) The context for Harris’ announcement was both political and economic. Shortly after the 1995 election, the Tories commissioned William Farlinger, chair of the accounting firm Ernst and Young, to report on the status of the province’s electricity industry. Farlinger, then a Tory campaign organizer and personal advisor to Harris, called for a massive privatization of the province’s generation assets (including nuclear assets) and the elimination of all government regulation of the industry, except for monitoring of environmental standards. In November, Farlinger was appointed chair of Ontario Hydro and, in the same month, the Tories convened a special Advisory Committee on the Future of the Electric Power System, chaired by former federal Liberal finance and energy minister Donald Macdonald, to recommend regulatory changes in order to facilitate competition.2 The Macdonald Committee submitted its final report to the government in the spring of 1996 and recommended the elimination of Ontario Hydro’s monopoly on electrical generation and a privatization of all its assets, except for its nuclear facilities (which would still be opened up to private investment) and the Niagara Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 237

River holdings (which would be retained for their “symbolic significance” as the province’s original source for hydroelectricity). On the basis of a “compromise” between the Farlinger and Macdonald reports, the government released a White Paper in 1997 articulating its vision for change. In January 1998, the government established a Market Design Committee to advise on a broad range of technical issues for establishing an operational framework for competition (for instance, market rules and procedures, codes and standards, information system requirements). The committee’s report to the government and all subsequent recommendations culminated in the passage of the Energy Competition Act (Bill 35) in October 1998, which divided Ontario Hydro into five successor companies, the two largest being the publicly owned transmis- sion company Hydro One and the monopoly generator Ontario Power Generation (OPG). Despite the political and economic implications of these changes, the shift from a public to a private model initially failed to resonate with either the media or the broader public. However, following rolling blackouts, subsequent revelations of corporate tampering with the energy market in California, and the major rate hikes that occurred in Alberta following the deregulation of that province’s electricity industry, Ontario’s pending restructuring was suddenly thrust into the media spotlight in an unprecedented way. With tales of corporate greed, market rigging, and government complicity now part of a prospective media narrative, electricity policy had become considerably more “newsworthy” and thus subject to increased attention and scrutiny on the part of journalists, the public, and poli- cymakers. This newsworthiness was also underscored by a series of important events that occurred within the policy cycle. In March 2002, two of the province’s largest organized labour groups, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers’ (CEP) Union, launched a successful and widely publicized court appeal to stop the privatization of Hydro One. This had the effect not only of putting the government on the defensive, forcing it to justify its courses of action, but also of generating public awareness about the implications of deregulation and privatization for rates, reliability, and service. Indeed, shortly after the opening of the electricity market in May, rates began to climb in response to the combination of rising consumer demand (brought on by an early summer heat wave) and ongoing repair problems at some of the province’s nuclear generators. Then, in June 2002, following revelations of excessive remuneration packages for its top executives, Hydro One’s board of directors resigned en masse to protest what appeared to be politically motivated decisions by the government to violate its arm’s length role and to intervene in the utility’s operations. In early July, under government orders, the new board of directors swiftly fired the utility’s CEO, Eleanor Clitheroe, for putative violations of fiduciary responsibility. All of these problems came to a head in November 2002, when the Tories announced that the privatization of Hydro One was permanently “off the table” and subsequently retreated on many other key aspects of their 238 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2) policy program. New legislation (Bill 210) was introduced, imposing an immediate freeze on user rates and requiring OPG to spearhead several new production projects to ensure stability in the province’s electricity supply margins. The government also introduced a series of consumer incentives to encourage reductions in power consumption and to provide opportunities for new private projects in order to bring more generation online.3 Advocates of deregulation and privatization were outraged by what they perceived to be central planning of the worst kind. The following quotation by Terence Corcoran, financial editor of the National Post, aptly summarizes the reaction to this shift in policy direction by the most vocal proponents of market- oriented restructuring: Attention all conservatives! The end is near. The Eves government of Ontario, heir to the modestly conservative Harris Revolution, is desperately blowing up every idea and principle Mike Harris might have had. The national implications of this massive act of destruction, now focused on the province’s electricity market, are broad and serious. The Ontario achievement, such as it was, is in flames…. For conservatives, the Eves electricity industry takeover is an unprecedented political and economic disaster. (November 14, 2002) With this sudden about-face in policy direction, the government’s “bold and historic plan” to develop a new strategy for electricity had failed abysmally, as both a public policy initiative and, as will become more apparent below, an exercise in communication.

Theoretical framework: Media and public policy Numerous studies have addressed the nature of the relationships between governments and various stakeholder groups (partners in industry and the non-govern- mental sectors, scholars and professional associations, social movements, and so on) with regards to policy development and change, in which the former normally exercises greater symbolic, political, and economic leverage over the latter. In terms of media coverage, some scholars believe that news discourse reproduces the perspectives of the powerful because of corporate control over the news agenda and also due to the filtering that occurs in editorial decision-making, in which journalists, business leaders, state agents, and “experts funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power” (Herman & Chomsky, 1988, p. 2) cooperate on the basis of institutional affinity, shared economic interests, and a common ideology. For others, the relationship between journalists and sources, particularly political and economic elites, is less deterministic. For example, Deacon & Golding (1994) argue that while news texts may indeed contain textual devices that attribute more legitimacy to the interpretive frameworks of the powerful, these texts can never be ideologically sealed. Although powerful actors do tend to be provided with privileged access to the channels of mass communication, and although news texts frequently naturalize their values and interests, there are more opportunities for non-official and marginalized political actors to intervene in and disrupt the policymaking process than scholars have traditionally acknowledged Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 239

(Schlesinger, 1990; see also Davis, 2002). Not only do elites sometimes come into conflict with one another over the formulation and framing of policy (Bennett, 1990; Deacon & Golding, 1994; Robinson, 2001), but adversarial policy communities (Dudley & Richardson, 1996) or resource-poor organizations, such as activist groups (DeLuca, 1993), can also intervene in policy processes and re- frame the central issues that define them. With these considerations in mind, the present study adopts Wolfsfeld’s (1997, 2003) “political contest model” as a sensitizing framework to examine two dimensions of the news media’s role in driving and problematizing policy agendas. The structural dimension of this model focuses on patterns in news source access. Wolfsfeld describes the relationship between policy actors (powerful and subordinate) and journalists as a “competitive symbiosis” in which each side seeks to exploit the other while expending the least cost (1997; see also Gamson & Wolfsfeld, 1993). This account of the interaction between journalists and their sources suggests how sources depend on journalists for publicity and how journalists depend on sources for the raw materials (for example, quotations, background information, research and other ‘information subsidies’) required for assembling the story. As numerous scholars have argued, however, this relationship is often stratified, and those actors with greater levels of political and economic clout rank higher on the journalist’s “hierarchy of credibility.” In his classic treatise, Howard Becker argues: “In any system of ranked groups, participants take it as a given that members of the highest group have the right to define the way things really are…. Thus, credibility and the right to be heard are differently distributed through the ranks of the system” (1967, p. 241). Similarly, the Glasgow University Media Group (1980, p. 114) describes news access as “structured and hierarchical to the extent that powerful groups and individuals have privileged and routine entry into the news itself and to the manner and means of its production.” Although the “hierarchy of credibility” offers a useful heuristic for hypothesizing the outcome of media-source interac- tions, these static frameworks cannot account for historical shifts in either patterns of media access or a source’s symbolic standing in and with the media (Davis, 2000; see also Cottle, 2000). In other words, these concepts fail to acknowledge the dynamic, processual nature of both policymaking and news production. The cultural dimension of the media-policy relationship requires empirical attention to the framing and narrativization of the issues and events germane to policy- and news-making processes. Drawing again from Wolfsfeld, the transac- tions between sources and news media may be conceptualized as “cultural inter- actions in which antagonists promote their own frames of the conflict while the news media attempt to construct a story that can be understood by their audience” (2003, p. 88). Frames define past and present conditions as problematic, identify causes, impose normative judgments on events and actors, and endorse solutions that may improve the problem at hand but tends to benefit some actors to the det- riment of others (Entman, 2004). Framing involves active “sense-making,” and this demands some pre-existing notion on the part of sources, reporters, and 240 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2) readers about acceptable definitions of the situation and culturally resonant ways of telling the story (Ryan, 1991). To influence what issues people think about as well as how they think about them, news frames must therefore be “relatively salient” and “empirically credible”—they must be capable of resonating within the society’s broader political, economic, and social cultures if they are to serve as both cognitive schema and a guide to action (Benford & Snow, 2000). Central to the theoretical argument of this paper is an understanding that discourse, and thus the role of news media, has become increasingly significant in the shift to neo-liberal forms of rule and governance. Indeed, as Fairclough (2000) argues, neo-liberalism is both a political and a linguistic project (see also Chouli- araki & Fairclough, 1999) comprised of de-investment in social programs and services (such as state-subsidized electricity rates, social housing, public education, universal health care), devolution to private markets occupied by corporations and voluntary organizations, and shifts in the “ethos” of citizenship, as responsibility for well-being becomes a matter of individual rather than collective concern. However, and as illustrated in the works of theorists like Giddens (1990) and Beck (1992, 1997), these discourses are neither restrictive nor homogenized. The dismantling of Keynesian policies and the attack on its attendant discourses of benefits, entitlements, and rights have introduced to the logic of social redistribution a myriad of contingencies that are transforming the relationships of individuals to the world, to one another, and, importantly, to themselves. Situating my analysis within this framework, I argue that neo-liberal policies and discourses have a built-in “reflexive effect” that potentially undermines their efficacy. In other words, latent functions and unintended by-products associated with the dismantling of the welfare state give rise to contingencies “whose singu- larity and situational uniqueness can no longer be ensured in either a practical or discursive sense.… Neo-liberal attempts to dismantle the practical apparatus in which life-world expectations are embedded—i.e. the welfare state—have generated a pervasive sense of uncertainty and risk about everyday life” (Knight & Greenberg, 2003, p. 218). This suggests that while discourses (and channels of mass communication) may be “both an instrument and effect of power,” discourse may also be “a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance, and a starting- point for an opposing strategy” (Foucault, 1978, pp. 100-101). Through the “relations of definition” (Beck, 1995, 1997) that ensue when social movements, corporate actors, and government officials struggle to define the meanings of policies and thus set their course and direction, uncertainties and risks become constructed as objects of knowledge and, as such, provide “perfect grist for the media mill” (Knight & Greenberg, 2003, p. 218).

Research methods The data set for the news analysis is the entire population (N=1,527) of press reports focusing on electricity policy from 1995 to 2002 in the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, and Toronto Sun. These are the largest circulating newspapers in Ontario, and they tend to “speak” with different editorial voices on policy issues. The Globe and the Post circulate nationally and are considered to be Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 241

“serious” or “upmarket” newspapers. Although both typically express editorial support for fiscally conservative economic policies, the Post is arguably more zealous and uncritical in its embrace of market solutions, whereas the Globe tends to reflect the broader spectrum of elite opinion. The Star, a “popular” or “mid- market” paper, is the largest-circulating English-language daily in Canada. Socially liberal in its editorial outlook, the Star normally assumes a critical position toward policies that unfairly impact vulnerable populations (children, the aged, ethnic minorities) and has been a consistently critical voice of opposition to Tory policy in other areas as well, such as labour (Knight, 2001) and education (Greenberg, 2004). Finally, an economically conservative and populist perspective common to the tabloid genre characterizes the Sun. It is unwaveringly critical of unions and other groups it labels as motivated by “special interests.” The coverage was examined with respect to three main concerns: first, the total distribution of all reports over the sample period; second, the presence and presen- tation of key individuals and institutions as accredited sources; and third, the tempo- rality and dominance of the central and marginal issue themes and framing packages that provide the overarching “media storyline” (Triandafyllidou, 1995). Following Deacon & Golding (1994), individual and institutional sources were coded according to their visibility in the coverage (as quoted sources) as well as their disposition toward the proposed policy changes (that is, “critical,” “neutral,” or “supportive”). News themes were operationally defined according to which arguments were stated or inferred by the topical organization of each news item. Each article was coded for its main theme(s). There were never more than three themes allo- cated to a single news item.4

News coverage of electricity restructuring, 1995-2002 The evolution of electricity policy news In this paper the history of electricity restructuring has been broken down into three phases: 1. Phase 1 covers the period from the June 1995 election until December 1998, two months after the third reading of Bill 35 in the legislature. 2. Phase 2 covers the period from January 1999 until December 2001, which includes the rolling blackouts in California, the government’s first delay of market opening, the early days of the Enron scandal, and the period sur- rounding Harris’ announcement in December 2001. 3. Phase 3 covers the period from January 1 until November 30, 2002, which includes the opening of the market and the period just after the passage of Bill 210. These stages in the policy’s history are referred to respectively as the “developmental,” “introductory,” and “implementation” phases. Figure 1 provides a distribution of all news items, focusing on electricity policy from June 1995 until December 2002. The most noticeable characteristic of this distribution is the dramatic upsurge of issue attention in the third phase of the 242 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2) policy’s history. Indeed, more than 60% of the total population of news articles were filed between December 11, 2001, and December 1, 2002. Although there were three other times when the coverage jumped over this seven-year period, these other moments in the policy’s history were reported with comparatively less intensity. Until December 2001, electricity restructuring received very little press attention overall.

Figure 1: Ontario Newspaper Coverage of Electricity Reform, 1995–2002

These data also show the differences in levels of issue attention across these newspapers. In terms of total coverage, the Star reported on restructuring much more extensively than the other newspapers, accounting for 39% of the total coverage (N=600), compared to the 23% each by the Globe (N=350) and the Post (N=348), and 15% (N=229) by the Sun. This finding is important: given the combined effect of an audience reach in excess of 500,000 readers per day and a consistently critical tone toward neo-liberal policies in general and market-driven restructuring of electricity in particular, the Star has the potential to inform or influence the opinions of a larger population swath than the other media. The following excerpt, from an op-ed published just after the release of the 1997 White Paper, provides a reasonable representation of the Star’s general disposition toward both the government and its restructuring agenda: The Harris government is looking for ways to bring the private sector into the electricity sector in Ontario.… The Tories know that Ontarians would balk at the wholesale privatization of Hydro. What we are likely to get is privatization on the instalment plan. In the end, the consequences will be the same. We will no longer own and control our own electric power system, something our ancestors rejected as the course of folly…. If you need to be reminded of what Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 243

the private sector ethic is, tune in CNBC, the U.S. business channel. On CNBC, which keeps the current value of the Dow Jones average on the screen even during commercials, one ethic dominates from morning to night—making money…. A northern people just can’t afford to leave its most vital affairs in the hands of people who think like that. (January 23, 1998, p. A19) In contrast, the Globe, Post, and Sun all expressed more or less open support for the government’s policy direction, referring to the market model as “concise, direct, visionary, [and] coherent” (Globe, November 7, 1997), as “a bold move that should go down as one of [Harris’] crowning achievements” (Post, December 13, 2001), and as “the only way to go” (Sun, December 19, 2001). As we will see, however, this unequivocal support for the government’s policy position became less stable over time. Although the reasons for this instability vary for each paper, the growing intractability of these media suggests a breakdown in the ability of government officials to control the definitional parameters of the debate in a manner to which these officials had grown accustomed in the policy’s earlier years (excepting, perhaps, the Star). This breakdown was due in large part to changes in the policy process over time and to the resulting shifts in how news sources competed for media attention. These changes and shifts carried significant implications for how the issue was framed and, ultimately, as I argue, how the policy was implemented. Patterns of news source access To capture shifts in source access patterns over time, Table 1 illustrates how policy actors were represented according to their overall visibility as quoted news sources. Most notably, when averaged over all three phases of the policy’s history,5 51% of those sources quoted in the coverage endorsed a market-oriented approach to restructuring; within this category, government officials were the most frequently cited policy actors (24%), followed by representatives of the public utilities (14%), and pressure groups supportive of the competitive paradigm (13%). In contrast, the main opponents to the government’s policy position were opposition party politicians (particularly the NDP), unions, and pressure groups opposed to deregulation and privatization; these actors accounted for only 20% (10%, 6%, and 4%, respectively) of the total quoted sources. It is also notable that the balance of actor dispositions remained virtually unchanged over the introductory and developmental stages, with approximately 60% of the news sources supporting the government’s policy direction, compared to only roughly 25% who were critical. Although the dynamics of source support for the government’s policies did not remain static throughout the sample period, it is nevertheless clear that relative to the aggregate coverage, supporters far outnumbered detractors in their visibility as “authorized knowers” (Ericson, Baranek, & Chan, 1989). That the coverage tended to endorse the government’s perspective in the early stages of policy development is not surprising. Institutional sources, particularly those associated with government departments and agencies, possess the most up- to-date information and often enjoy a privileged ability to determine which details 244 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2)

Table 1: News source access (%), electricity restructuring, 1995-2002 Disposition toward policy (%)

News Source Frequency (%) Critical Neutral Support

Phase I (June 1995–Dec. 1998) Government 22.1 0.0 6.7 93.3 Electric Utilities 19.2 18.8 28.2 53.0 Pressure Groups (+) 17.7 0.0 0.0 100.0 Labour Unions 9.2 53.6 28.6 17.9 Business/Corporate Sector 8.4 3.9 17.7 78.4 Political Opposition 5.4 60.6 21.2 18.2 Committees/QUANGOs 5.3 0.0 0.0 100.0 Pressure Groups (-) 3.1 100.0 0.0 0.0 Individual Consumers 2.6 69.0 25.0 6.3 Financial Community 2.0 25.0 25.0 50.0 Other 5.1 29.0 48.4 22.6 TOTAL 610 154 96 360 Phase II (January 1999–Dec. 2001) Government 21.7 0.0 4.0 96.0 Pressure Groups (+) 16.5 0.0 0.0 100.0 Electric Utilities 12.7 20.5 34.1 45.5 Business/Corporate Sector 10.4 11.1 27.8 61.1 Political Opposition 8.4 84.0 16.0 0.0 Committees/QUANGOs 6.9 4.2 33.3 62.5 Financial Community 5.5 31.6 26.3 42.1 Pressure Groups (-) 4.9 100.0 0.0 0.0 Labour Unions 2.3 12.5 12.5 75.0 Individual Consumers 1.5 60.0 20.0 20.0 Other 9.3 59.4 25.0 15.6 TOTAL 346 80 60 206 Phase III (Jan–Dec. 2002) Government 29.1 9.1 14.8 76.1 Political Opposition 16.4 95.3 4.7 0.0 Electric Utilities 10.9 11.5 73.3 15.3 Committees/QUANGOs 6.2 12.0 66.7 21.3 Financial Community 6.1 17.8 52.1 30.1 Pressure Groups (+) 5.8 11.4 45.7 42.9 Labour Unions 5.8 67.1 24.3 8.6 Business/Corporate Sector 5.7 31.9 44.9 23.2 Pressure Groups (-) 5.3 96.9 3.1 0.0 Individual Consumers 4.6 87.3 9.1 3.6 Other 4.1 30.6 61.2 8.2 TOTAL 1204 439 382 383 * Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding. Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 245 of a given policy framework will be released to the media, and when (Downing, 1986; Ericson Baranek, & Chan, 1989). This is particularly important when it comes to reporting on policies that are prospective or future-oriented (whose effects and outcomes will not be felt for some time). Because the impacts and effects of the changes in electricity policy were future-oriented throughout much of the sample period, the claims-making tended to speculate about the likely effects economically, environmentally, and so on. As Knight (2001) has argued, the upshot of a prospective news orientation is that journalists will seek out those sources who can provide the specialized knowledge required for “breaking” the news or, at the very least, informing the public about the policy process. This accentuates the importance of institutional credibility and legitimacy as important considerations in news making. The most significant shift in the source access patterns was the dramatic drop in overall support for the government’s policy, from approximately 60% in the introductory and developmental phases to only 32% by the time of implementation. Corresponding to this shift, critical voices became much more prominent as quoted sources, rising from approximately 25% to 37%, while those expressing only neutral support for the government’s policy also rose sharply, from 17% to 32%. Importantly, this signals not a decline in support for privatization and deregulation per se, but a recognition of the inconsistent directions the government was taking to further its objectives. As the policy entered its final and most contentious phase, the percentage of quoted ruling party sources who clearly supported the government position dropped from a very strong 95% to a more moderate 76%. At the same time, the number of government sources expressing only neutral or mixed support increased more than threefold. Responding to a rising tide of public opposition to privatization, which had been generated by the anti-restructuring campaign of the Ontario Electricity Coalition (a social movement network of labour unions, envi- ronmentalists, and citizen groups), and realizing that an election would be called within a year, government members (mostly backbenchers, but also one cabinet minister) began to call publicly for a regulated rate freeze and a “rethinking” of the government’s policy direction. Conversely, the modest to small measures of support expressed by members of the Liberal Party in the early years of the policy’s history also evaporated.6 This splintering of support for the government’s restructuring agenda no doubt contributed to critical news coverage of it, and would seem to support previous studies’ findings that government control of the news agenda can be eroded when fractures within the “sphere of consensus” become more visible (Deacon & Golding, 1994; Hallin, 1986; Robinson, 2001). It is also interesting to note shifting patterns of prominence for pressure groups that expressed support for the government’s policy direction. The most visible of these (61% overall) was the environmental organization Energy Probe, whose executive director, Tom Adams, served on the government’s Market Design Committee in 1998.7 Other supportive “insider” groups consisted primarily of corporate consumers and private power producers, namely the Association of 246 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2)

Major Power Consumers of Ontario, the Stakeholders’ Alliance for Competition and Choice in Electricity, and the Independent Power Producers Society of Ontario, all of which had vested commercial interests in the government’s proposed policy direction. Each of these industry groups, and numerous others in Canada and abroad with a financial stake in an open market, lobbied the government extensively in the periods leading up to the passage of Bill 35 and just prior to Harris’ privatization announcement in 2001. These groups also engaged openly in media relations work to promote the benefits of deregulation and privatization.8 By the implementation phase, however, these voices became less prominent as quoted sources, dropping from approximately 17% (phases 1 and 2) to only 6% (phase 3) overall. And even among these groups, the level of unqualified support dropped from 61% to 43%. As I will explain below, this drop corresponded to a shift in the issue’s framing—away from explaining the “benefits” of restructuring and toward reporting on the policy’s negative effects. In theory, when policy communities are fragmented, this fragmentation potentially provides new opportunities for “outsider” sources to intervene in the news process because opportunities to define the news are, at least temporarily, disaggregated as well. Given the declining levels of support within government for its own position, it is somewhat surprising that critical voices from outside the legislature did not see an increase in their measures of news access. While the relative presence of challenger groups increased twofold from the developmental to the implementation phases, these actors still remained marginal overall as sources of record. Dissenting voices that did achieve prominence were located primarily within the political system. Indeed, the data gathered in this study show that the growing debate over media framing of electricity restructuring was waged princi- pally between institutionalized political actors—government voices, on the one side, and a rejuvenated (if not still fragmented) political opposition, on the other. It is important to note, however, that this discursive marginalization of non-institutional challenger groups does not mean that these actors were unsuccessful in influencing the policy or news agendas. The NDP, for example, worked very closely with organized labour and grassroots groups in their campaign to halt the privatization of Hydro One and to reverse the strides made toward deregulation.9 This marginalization simply means that the influence of social movement groups would have been exercised in less visible ways, and that their media visibility might have been located elsewhere, such as in community newspapers or other media.10

The story of electricity restructuring: Issue themes and framing packages Research in political communication has demonstrated that conflicts over public policy frequently centre on disputes over meaning (Gamson, 1989; Gitlin 1980; Ryan, 1991). In these “framing contests” each side of the dispute, operating with unequal political, economic, and symbolic clout, attempts to promote its own definition of the situation to the mass media and key publics or stakeholder groups. It is thus of critical importance to examine the correspondence that might obtain Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 247 between the measures of news source access and the frames that appear in news coverage of political issues and debates. Table 2 shows that the news reporting of this electricity restructuring cohered mainly around 11 issue themes. Taken as an aggregate, these themes fall into six “framing packages” and provide the overall structure of the “media storyline” (Triandafyllidou, 1995): 1. Economic—included themes related to the purported effects of the changes on rates, government debt, and taxes (increase or decrease); differential impacts of proposed rate changes on vulnerable populations; investment opportunities; and consumer choice. 2. Environmental—included themes related to whether a competitive framework would encourage the development of new technologies less harmful to the environment (e.g., wind, solar, fuel cells); and whether a profit-driven system would encourage more production of “dirty” (coal) and “dangerous” (nuclear) energy, thus leading to increased health risks (e.g., asthma). 3. Governance—included themes related to a reduced role for the state; the question of whether changing a public service into a private good was in the best interests of the public; the threat an open market posed to political and economic sovereignty; and the electoral consequences of change in the face of public resistance to that change. 4. Policy—included themes related to the legislative process and technical features of existing or proposed legislation, as well as policy alternatives. 5. Ethical Probity—included themes related to aggressive door-to-door sales tactics; violations of fiduciary responsibility by utility executives; and secrecy and deceit on the part of politicians and utility executives. 6. Other—included themes related to government attempts to manipulate public opinion; global pressures underpinning the push to open utilities markets; and individual profiles of key policy participants (e.g., utility executives, consultants, board directors). Several observations are noteworthy. To begin, in all these newspapers and throughout the policy’s history, electricity restructuring was framed primarily as an issue of economic concern. There is certainly great debate about whether the Keynesian paradigm has been effectively dismantled as an institutional arrange- ment (Pierson, 1994). Less contested, however, is neo-liberal advocates’ success in establishing a new ideological “consensus” by getting the public to think about the world in primarily economic terms, a view that is achieved by prioritizing deficit management, debt reduction, and returns on investment as dominant prior- ities of policymaking (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 2000). A closer examination of the economic framing package reveals some important differences of inflection. In the policy’s introductory and developmental phases, with the notable exception of the Star, news coverage overwhelmingly privileged the argument that deregulation and privatization would provide more 248 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2)

Table 2: Issue themes (%), Ontario Electricity Policy, 1995–2002

Themes Star Globe Post Sun Total Phase I (June 1995–Dec. 1998) Benefit the economy and “taxpayers” 32.3 34.9 45.7 58.5 39.5 Policy (process, design, alternatives) 19.5 24.9 15.8 15.4 19.5 Reduce the role of the state 4.9 24.9 26.8 12.3 16.0 Hurts businesses and ratepayers 13.2 3.9 3.2 3.1 7.2 Not in the public interest 9.8 0.0 3.9 0.0 4.8 Benefit to the environment 1.5 6.2 2.4 4.6 3.2 Ethical probity 2.9 2.3 0.8 4.6 2.5 Harm to environment and health 5.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.1 Threat to sovereignty 3.4 1.6 0.0 0.0 1.7 Electoral consequences 2.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.5 Risk and safety 2.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.8 Other 2.6 1.6 1.6 1.5 2.5 Total (N=) 205 129 127 65 526 Phase II (Jan. 1999–Dec. 2001) Benefit the economy and “taxpayers” 14.8 43.7 46.7 65.6 35.7 Policy (process, design, alternatives) 14.8 31.0 28.6 9.4 22.3 Reduce the role of the state 5.9 11.5 14.3 6.3 9.7 Hurts businesses and ratepayers 19.3 3.5 0.0 0.0 8.1 Threat to sovereignty 16.3 1.2 0.0 0.0 6.4 Ethical probity 7.4 3.5 1.0 12.5 5.0 Benefit to the environment 3.0 3.5 4.8 3.1 3.6 Not in public interest 7.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.8 Harm to environment and health 4.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.7 Risk and safety 1.5 1.2 1.9 0.0 1.4 Electoral consequences 3.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.4 Other 1.5 1.2 2.9 3.1 1.9 Total (N=) 135 87 105 32 359 Phase III (Jan.–Dec. 2002) Hurts businesses & ratepayers 27.9 21.8 16.0 23.2 24.0 Ethical probity 17.4 16.6 11.1 22.4 16.8 Reduce role of the state 3.6 22.7 28.4 13.6 13.2 Policy (process, design, alternatives) 9.9 14.0 11.1 7.0 10.7 Benefit economy & ratepayers 6.9 6.0 12.4 5.6 7.4 Not in public interest 9.1 3.0 2.5 0.8 5.7 Harm to environment and health 7.1 5.7 1.2 4.8 5.5 Risk and safety 6.9 3.1 5.6 4.0 5.4 Electoral Consequences 3.8 2.2 6.2 12.0 4.8 Benefit environment 2.6 3.1 3.1 3.2 2.9 Threat to sovereignty 4.4 0.4 1.9 2.4 2.9 Other 0.4 1.3 0.6 0.8 0.7 Total (N=) 495 229 162 125 1011 * Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding. Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 249 choice and lower rates for consumers, would broaden investment opportunities for prospective shareholders, and would enable the government to pay down the utility’s debt (with future implications for further lowering taxes). By the time of implementation, however, the emphasis of the economic frame changed dramatically. With the blackouts and price-rigging of California’s deregulation experi- ment fresh in the minds of the media and public, the focus on economic impacts shifted from extolling the benefits of restructuring to outlining the emergent harms (price spikes) and prospective risks (threats of blackouts) of deregulation and privatization, in both the present and the future. The data also indicate that in the policy’s formative years, media coverage attended primarily to a circumscribed interpretation of the restructuring objectives: that over-spending and direct government control over the regulation and operation of electrical utilities created a multi-billion-dollar debt that needed to be eliminated immediately to ensure price and supply stability. In short, the public electricity system was shown to be in a state of fiscal crisis and could be repaired only through economic solutions that would limit the direct role government could play. All other scenarios, from environmental concerns to issues pertaining to political sovereignty, were downplayed or not discussed at all.11 By the time of implementation, however, this preferred framing, based as it was in putative causes rooted in the past and solutions that would not be realized (if at all) until the future, was replaced by a sustained focus on the immediate effects of change (i.e. rising rates and the risk of blackouts). This shift in focus of news coverage from justifying the present on the basis of the past accorded with the changing logic and structure of news values. Since at least the time of Galtung & Ruge’s (1973) pioneering study of news selection, conventional wisdom holds that news organizations operating on an increasingly faster news cycle will select as newsworthy sudden or spectacular events over gradual, unfolding processes. Thus, against the backdrop of the California and Alberta deregulation experiments, events such as hundredfold increases in electricity rates (based on a system that changes every five minutes) and daily calls by the provincial regulator, the Independent Market Operator (IMO), for consumers to reduce their consumption or face the risk of blackouts provided the interpretive ingredients necessary to adjust “inferential frameworks” (Manning, 2001, p. 61); journalists used these “inferential frameworks” to select which information would be included in a story and how it would be assembled overall. News coverage, which once followed the neo-liberal discourse of introducing market reform in the name of economic “progress,” thus shifted to illustrate that such a policy was not helping but harming businesses and ratepayers; was not encouraging but discour- aging investment; was compromising the government’s preferred definition of itself as the most responsible “manager” of the economy; and, as demonstrated by the upsurge in reporting on the theme of ethical probity, was failing to protect the public from the excesses of the market. Although insignificant in relation to the overall framing of the issue, the threefold increase (1.4% to 4.8%) in reports focusing on the erosion of voter confidence supports this finding. 250 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2)

The theme of governance was taken up in much the same way. Early in the policy’s history, the governance frame was used in a “positive” sense to reinforce the neo-liberal notion that less government is good government. By the time of implementation, however, this frame became subject to contention: on one hand, it was subverted by critics who pointed to the “inevitability of market failure” and the need for more regulatory control on the part of the state, while, on the other hand, it was invoked by restructuring advocates who preferred the market model and argued, more forcefully now than before, about the need to protect public utilities from the meddlesome hands of the state. For example, responding to the passage of Bill 210, the National Post opined that: the scale of Ernie Eves’ retreat from conservative principles of private enterprise, market forces and less government is so massive and irreversible that it’s hard to imagine any segment of the population will again trust a conservative politician…. From now on, Ernie Eves is the CEO of the new Ontario Hydro, a monster monopoly that is in even worse shape than the old bankrupt institution that Mike Harris helped dismantle. The new policies—fixed power rates, direct political control over every facet of the business, widespread bureau- cratic intervention—are more aggressive than anything seen in any province. (Corcoran, November 14, 2002) This shift from a “positive” to a “negative” governance frame was mirrored in other thematic areas as well. In particular, the “ethical probity” theme increased substantially in the implementation phase, to 17.4% from 7.4%. This upsurge was related to three events: first, the lingering impact of the blackouts in California on public confidence in Ontario regarding the merits of private power; second, from December 2001 until May 2002, substantially increased door-to-door marketing by subcontracted sales agents working for energy retailers, as well as allegations and revelations of contract tampering, aggressive sales tactics, and fraud;12 and third, in the aftermath of the aborted plan to privatize Hydro One, increased news coverage on the excessive remuneration packages of the utility’s executives, particularly Hydro One CEO Eleanor Clitheroe, whom the press pilloried almost daily as “greedy” (Star, June 8), “just another big boy in a good suit” (Post, July 29), and “the $6M woman” (Sun, June 6) who “should have been satisfied with less” (Globe, August 13). Some interesting differences emerge when we shift our attention from these more general framing patterns to comparisons of coverage between news outlets. The most notable observation is a much greater diversity of issue themes in the Star than the other papers.13 In the policy’s introductory phase, coverage in the other media focused almost exclusively on the “economic benefits,” “policy,” and “reduced role for the state” themes. While the Star attended to the first two of these, it also broadened its reportage to accommodate discussion of the negative economic impacts that electricity deregulation and privatization might pose for individuals and businesses. Additionally, the Star paid much more attention to the impact of the policy on the province’s economic and political sovereignty. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), clauses that would protect publicly owned institutions would be rendered moot in the context of a private Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 251 energy market (see Cohen, 2001). The Star’s concern about the implications of foreign private ownership of public utilities was evidenced by an average of 8% of its coverage devoted to this issue (peaking at 16% in the developmental phase), compared to less than 1% by the other three papers combined. When we look at other differences across these media, the Post and the Globe focused more on the “problem” of government interventionism, a finding that is consistent with the general editorial leanings of both papers in favour of reducing the role of government in the management of economic affairs. The Sun, finally, devoted far more news space than the other papers to covering issues of “ethical probity,” and although these stories rarely found front-page attention, bold head- lines such as “GREED NOT GOOD” (May 5, 2002), “HYDRO ONE EXECS TO MAKE MILLIONS WITH PUBLIC SALE” (May 16, 2002), “UTILITY BOSS MEMBER OF MILLION CLUB” (June 5, 2002), and “GREED BAD FOR HEALTH” (July 28, 2002) illustrate the propensity of tabloid news to sensation- alize policy problems in order to encourage public consumption.

Conclusion This analysis of news coverage about electricity restructuring in Ontario supports a central assumption of critical communications research: that the voices, interests, and viewpoints of state and other elite sources will tend to dominate media coverage of the policy process. Indeed, the empirical findings support this premise, illustrating how, throughout the various stages of the policy process, government officials did, in fact, achieve definitional prominence in the coverage. Consequently, the dominant news themes over much of the sample period corresponded with the government’s preferred framing of its restructuring agenda: deregulation and privatization of the electricity industry was necessary to reduce the utility’s debt, to curb the state’s interventionist proclivities, and to offer consumers more choice, lower rates, and new opportunities for investment. Despite the significant political, environmental, and economic implications posed by this tilt to the market, criticism of deregulation and privatization failed to resonate as popular common sense throughout the early stages of the policy’s history. By the time of implementation, however, it had become clear to many that this major policy initiative would not secure a popular mandate, and the putative benefits of restructuring proved to be significantly more difficult for the government to com- municate. At the outset of this study I posed two guiding analytical questions: How might we account for changes in the news discourse over time? And what implications would these explanations have for theorizing the role of media and communication in policy development and change? I now turn my attention to these questions. I have argued in this paper that a central characteristic of the political and economic changes that are associated with the turn to neo-liberalism is that these changes exist both as discourses and as processes that occur outside or beyond discourse (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Jessop, 2004). As such, media framing of policy issues cannot be adequately understood apart from the “broader 252 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2) enveloping contexts in which those processes are embedded” (Snow, 2004, p. 402; emphasis added). The range of possible meanings policy issues will obtain in news coverage thus derives largely from the broader political and discursive terrain in which meaning contests occur. The mainstream news media’s limited attention to the issue of electricity restructuring in the early phases of this policy’s history can therefore be explained by changes in what social movement theorists describe as political and discursive opportunity structures. According to Gamson, “Structure implies stability as a variable element, running from highly inert com- ponents that are more or less permanent features of the terrain to windows of opportunity that may be open only briefly” (2004, p. 249; see also Snow, 2004). In my account of shifts in the coverage and the way these shifts fed into and influ- enced changes in the policy environment, the marginalization of critical voices and opposition frames throughout much of the policy’s history was a result, in part, of the “prospective” nature of the issues and their potential effects. The gradual, unfolding character of the policy process during the developmental and introductory phases limited the opportunities available to non-official sources for speaking and being heard because these sources do not possess the specialized or up-to-date information journalists demand when reporting on policy issues that are not event-centred (issues lacking a sudden, dramatic change or occurrence). Changes in the texture and tone of the news coverage and the impact of these changes on the policy process were also imbricated with shifts in the balance of power at Queen’s Park and the nature of the province’s social movement sector. The electoral successes of the Tories in 1995 and 1999 seriously weakened the position of both the Liberals and the NDP. Throughout the latter half of the 1990s, both of these parties underwent significant reorganization, including new leadership races. On long-term issues such as electricity restructuring, the opposition thus lacked the legitimacy and credibility required to generate sustained public and press attention. Indeed, their political energies (and limited resources) were probably better spent in those areas where the “Common Sense Revolution” was effecting more immediate, radical change (for example, environment, health care, education, labour, welfare). As we shift our attention from the political apparatus to the social movement sector, it is noteworthy to point to the setbacks that had befallen organized labour during the Ontario Public Service Employees Union strike in 1996 (Knight, 2001) and the Ontario teachers’ strike a year later (Greenberg, 2004). Both of these job actions were responses to government efforts to restructure labour relations by clawing back the gains achieved through previous collective bargaining arrange- ments. Although some gains had been made in the battle for public opinion, both strikes failed to generate substantial improvements in policy. Moreover, on the issue of electricity restructuring, organized labour lacked coordination regarding how, or even whether to, contest the tide of deregulation and privatization. In 1996, the Power Workers’ Union (PWU) spent more than $1 million on a massive advertising campaign to oppose deregulation and other market-oriented changes to electricity. Until 1998, the PWU remained the major voice of opposi- Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 253 tion within the labour movement. The position of the PWU shifted dramatically, however, around the time Bill 35 was passed. With the impending changes now seemingly inevitable, the union leadership opted (presumably for strategic pur- poses) to endorse the government’s new direction. It thus took several years for CUPE, the CEP, and other labour voices to organize and present a common front —and it was not until these unions launched their litigation appeal in spring 2002 that they emerged as a voice of opposition accredited in the media. In other words, only when the policy issue was transformed by an event into a problem did the patterns in news source access and issue themes change. The data reported above also indicate how media coverage of public policy is not fixed or static, but subject to shifts in articulation and elaboration over time. The analysis indicates that the government owed its difficulty in successfully implementing its restructuring agenda as much to bad timing as to poor communication. Indeed, it is difficult to discern whether the government would have faced similar obstacles in opening the electricity market to competition without the cloud of uncertainty caused by the widely publicized deregulation problems in California and Alberta in 2001. Although this study has not examined the effects of changes in other policy areas, we should also not discount the possible impacts of the Walkerton water tragedy (Snider, 2004) on the attempt to transform the role of government and to open the electricity industry to free market uncertainties. Exogenous events, such as California’s blackouts and Walkerton’s water tragedy, destabilize the broader policy environment and reconfigure opportunity structures. They do this by creating new conditions under which dominant sources and their discourses can be contested, and in which subjugated discourses can emerge to redirect the information flows entering the public sphere. Clearly, however, opportunities for previously marginalized groups to seize the mantle of media publicity also depend on the ability of dominant groups to ensure consistency in their decision-making and communications. As the case of electricity restructuring illustrates, shifts in the texture and tone of news discourse can result from fragmentation within elite policy communities. Although divi- sions within the Tory caucus did not reach “crisis” proportions, significant change in the levels of unambiguous and neutral support undermined the government’s preferred definition of its policy framework. This case study illustrates the “relative importance of tensions within the power structure” (Deacon & Golding, 1994, p. 202) for explaining how the tenor and tone of media coverage of public policy can change over time. One lesson this might provide for social movements and other non-institutional sources wishing to shift or change meanings about policy is that when faced with a non-responsive mainstream media they may be well served to seize the mantle of political opportunity and try to influence or work with established institutional actors behind the scenes rather than “fighting it out” on the pages of the press. Such accommodationist strategies carry significant influence, however, and should be pursued with caution. Nevertheless, the extent to which opposition politicians became more visible in the coverage and could articulated the discontent of movements they represent is suggestive here. 254 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2)

The central roles of discourse and news media to policy processes have been exacerbated by the neo-liberal shift in many liberal democratic regimes. Neo-liberalism has been conceptualized as a policy model (premised on purposive strategies of weakening the institutional apparatus of the welfare state and the capacity and propensity of the state to provide universal security and safety) and a discursive framework (premised on a “progress” narrative in which market relationships provide opportunities for “growth” through fostering “competition” and “modern- izing” the roles and functions of government and business in providing social services and of citizens in consuming them). Nevertheless, as illustrated through the case of electricity restructuring, “neo-liberalism is an incomplete project rather than a fait accompli” (Fairclough, 2000, p. 148). Neo-liberal policies intensify the optic of contingency and risk because the benefits they promote are most often diffused, long-term, and, at best, uncertain. The harms they obtain, by contrast, tend to be concentrated and more immediately felt. As Pierson (1994) has argued, one upshot of this change has been a shift in the communications strategies of political leaders, who now increasingly invest more time and energy in avoiding blame than they do in seeking credit (see also Weaver, 1986). As a primary space for the social construction and contestation of policy, news media provide a forum where such strategic communications can be articulated. Nevertheless, as the current study shows, just as news media represent a space where neo-liberal hegemony may be consolidated, so too do they occupy a space where these changes can be challenged and blame for their side effects can be apportioned. The differentiated, pluralistic public sphere in which news media operate is still clearly one where power relations register their effects discursively and materially (Eide & Knight, 1999) . We must therefore be cautious to endorse theoretical arguments that virtually guarantee the success of elite sources in both policymaking and contests over their meaning. In cases of economic and political restructuring, government officials and policy insiders may indeed hold the best cards, but there is no guarantee that exogenous events, failures to coordinate action, or successful mobilization on the part of otherwise resource-poor groups will not prevent them from playing the best hand at the right time. Fuelled by policy changes that increase rather than alleviate risk and uncertainty, the contin- gent nature of neo-liberalism positions the mainstream news media as a potentially contradictory space in which the deficiencies of the political and economic system reverberate in everyday life as problems that threaten the interests and values of citizens—citizens who, importantly, are also consumers of news (Eide & Knight, 1999). Because these issues must be processed and organized discursively, news media have become an even more important forum where policy issues are not only defined and consolidated, but also contested and problema- tized.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank Graham Knight, Pam Sugiman, Don Wells, Candace Kemp, Mary Elizabeth Leighton, Sean Hier, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and advice. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Greenberg / This News May Come as a Shock 255

Council of Canada generously provided funding for the project from which this paper stems.

Notes 1. Former finance minister Ernie Eves, who returned to politics after a three-year hiatus in the private sector to run for the Conservative Party leadership, replaced Harris as leader and premier in April 2002. 2. At the time of his appointment, Macdonald was chair of the board at Siemans Electric Ltd., which sells turbines to electric utilities; a director of Banister Foundation Inc., a civil engineering firm that builds hydroelectric plants; and a director of TransCanada PipeLines Ltd., a gas supplier that stood to profit significantly under a deregulated utility market. 3. Bill 210 also centralized much of the surveillance, monitoring, and regulation of electricity by replacing the authority of the Ontario Energy Board and Independent Market Operator (IMO) with “ministerial discretion.” 4. A second coder independently examined a subsample of the total population of articles using the framing categories determined by the author. Although a statistical test of inter-coder reliability was not conducted, we reached 84% agreement on the presence and disposition of actors and 81% agreement on issue themes. In cases where our analyses differed, each of us read the article together and discussed how best to code its discursive properties. I wish to thank Roslyn Turner for her assistance. 5. These figures are not illustrated in the table, but have been reached by taking the mean score of each source category in each phase of the policy’s history. 6. The Liberal position on restructuring was difficult to pin down. During much of the policy’s history, the Liberals joined the Tories in calling for market-based change, particularly deregulation. Indeed, as Swift (2002) has written, throughout the early years of the policy’s history there existed a strong “consensus for change” between the Tories and Liberals, and, to a lesser extent, among factions within the NDP. When it became politically expedient to shift position, however, the Lib- erals joined the NDP in calling on the government to back away from its restructuring agenda. In part, this shift in position can be attributed to changes in the nature of the policy itself; although the Liberals clearly favoured a model for deregulating the generation industry, they had no clearly stated position on privatizing Hydro One. Liberal opposition to the government’s plans was couched more in terms of the latter than the former. 7. Energy Probe has consistently called for less government regulation of the environment as a solu- tion to ecological risks and harms. Its preference for regulatory liberalization also expands beyond the electricity industry. The Canadian Policy Institute, headed by Energy Probe’s research coordi- nator, Larry Solomon, has long called for the replacement of public medicare by individual medical savings accounts and private insurance, as well as the privatization of public transit. Another affiliated pressure group, Probe International, has lobbied the federal government extensively to end government-to-government aid programs, while Environment Probe has long called for the privatization of forests, mineral resources, and sewage and water plants (Walkom, 1997). 8. See Government of Ontario, Office of the Integrity Commissioner, Lobbyists Registry, online at http://www.lobbyist.oico.on.ca. 9. Indeed, the NDP played a central role in developing the organizational structure of the Ontario Electricity Coalition, by providing access to resources and offering media training seminars where activists learned how to create and take advantage of opportunities afforded by a changing political and discursive structure (Greenberg, 2003). 10. A methodological limitation of this study is its inattention to the local press, Internet, and other media forms. Given the grassroots campaigning of the Ontario Electricity Coalition (OEC), there is reason to believe that critics may have accomplished a greater presence and visibility in the smaller market dailies, for example. Moreover, without including an analysis of the political and media strategies of the OEC or other challenger groups, it would be misleading to suggest that 256 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30 (2)

they “failed” to get their message out through the media. Indeed, depending on the organization’s goals, media visibility may not have been a desirable objective at all. Testing these hypotheses empirically must remain the focus of further study. 11. This was the result of a concerted media relations campaign by the government to ensure “that the policy would be understood as an economic issue… That’s why we focused our campaign on the finance and business reporters.” Interview with government communications officer, May 7, 2002. 12. See John Saunders, “Ontarians Warned of Power Scams,” Globe and Mail, February 18, 2002, p. A18; Vanessa Lu, “Energy Board Probes Firm’s Sales Pitch,” Toronto Star, March 16, 2002, p. A12; and Peter Kuitenbrouwer, “Shock Tactics,” National Post, April 13, 2002, p. T3. 13. Interestingly, source access patterns within the Star’s hard news coverage differed little from the other papers. Although the Star included more critical voices, the difference was nominal. A notable difference existed, however, in the presence of critical viewpoints in the editorials and, particularly, in columns and op-ed pieces.

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