Focus of what?

Last week’s At Issue panel concerned the state of Question Period and Paul’s thinking very hard about the subject.

One hilarious myth that apparently needs to be debunked: the belief that too much focus is put on QP.

Someone with a Lexis-Nexis account could compare the number of stories in the daily papers over the past two years that speculated on the timing of the next election with the number of stories that make more than passing reference to the previous day’s Question Period. Or you could simply take attendance each afternoon. Today, for instance, there were nine, possibly ten, reporters in the seats reserved for press gallery members. The empty chairs outnumbered the filled ones by a factor of about 2 to 1.

Question Period has its fault. But it’s not presently a problem that it’s covered too well.