National Affairs
Journalists' job to present all sides
Claire Hoy

For several years now, ever since Preston Manning rode east to the nation's capitol to build his Reform,

the denizens of the National Press Gallery have been in a snit. They still are.

Barely a week goes by when we are not treated to yet another "news" story - particularly in the pro-Liberal Toronto Star and CBC - about Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper making life difficult for the journalists who work on The Hill on a full-time basis.

For one thing, having spent several years in that same forum myself - plus many more at Queen's Park and elsewhere - it is your correspondent's humble opinion that the general public doesn't give two hoots - or even one hoot - about the difficulties journalists may or may not face in going about their jobs.

For another thing, all these stories about Harper centralizing things in the PMO (Prime Minister's Office), are presented as something new when - as every journalist on The Hill knows - they are not new at all. But the parade of woe-is-us stories continues unabated.

The latest - yet another contributed by Paul Martin biographer Susan Delacourt of The Star - is that Harper nixed an Ottawa photographer, Dave Chan, who had been hired to work with TV comedian (and paid cheerleader when he shilled for the Liberals' so-called One Tonne Challenge) to take pictures at 24 Sussex Drive.

The story presents this decision - understandable actually given that Chan also used to work for Martin and is married to Martin's former press secretary - given the partisan nature of the nation's capitol. But it is presented as yet another example of what Delacourt claims "revives the ongoing tension over how Harper's office has handled journalists seen as unfriendly to the Conservative government."

Since most journalists by definition are unfriendly toward a Conservative government - any Conservative government - that would be a pretty lengthy list.

But the examples of this horrible injustice toward journalists includes even last week's expulsion of Halton MP Garth Turner - "a former journalist," writes Delacourt - tossed out of the Tory caucus "over postings on his internet blog."

It is true that Turner is "a former journalist" - your correspondent actually worked with him for several years when we were both at the Toronto Sun - but that has absolutely nothing to do with his expulsion from the Tory caucus. What that was about was not a simple matter of "postings" on his internet blog, but of Turner's penchant for attacking his own party and blabbing about things that went on inside caucus while he was at it. No party would allow that to continue, whether it was being done by a former journalist or not.

Delacourt writes that things are getting so bad that "cabinet ministers and MPs ... are starting to grumble more openly - though still off the record - about the heavy hand of the PMO communications officials."

Just a minute. They're grumbling "openly" but "off the record?" How is this possible? Off the record is the exactly opposite of being open. Hmmnnn. In any event, the Star story goes on to complain that the PMO "has insisted on its right to choose who asks questions at press conferences..."

Really? When Brian Mulroney was prime minister in the 1980s, he once went more than two years without even having a press conference. Why? Because he didn't like some of the questions and he particularly didn't like some of the journalists who asked them.

As for snubbing unfriendly journalists, well, many of my colleagues at the time asked me not to attend even the scrums outside the Commons chamber after Question Period because if Mulroney saw me there he would leave, such was the hostility we shared largely as a result of my best-selling book Friends In High Places, a book not seen as friendly toward his government. And not meant to be friendly.

I say this not to brag, but to put the lie to this notion that Harper has invented something new.

Those carping now might wish to ask their colleagues how many of them were invited for private get-togethers at either 24 Sussex Drive or elsewhere by the prime minister or cabinet ministers during the Jean Chrétien and Martin regimes.

They will know that those journalists seen as "unfriendly" were not on the guest lists, and it rankles some of them now because, having become accustomed to being coddled by the government, they're not receiving their due reward for years of accusing Harper and his colleagues of everything imaginable.

There is nothing remotely about a political leader trying to control the agenda.

It's the job of the journalist to cut through that stuff and present all sides to the reading, listening or viewing public.

Just quit whining and get on with it. Please.