If you really don鈥檛 care what the media write, you don鈥檛 use Ottawaspeak. You don鈥檛 say your chief of staff has resigned when he鈥檚 really been fired 鈥� or vice versa. A man who really couldn鈥檛 care less what his critics have to say would answer all questions, tell the truth in plain words and damn the torpedoes.
Stephen Harper is not that man.
Our prime minister has put a lot of effort into making sure no Conservative ever says the wrong thing 鈥� never says anything of substance at all, if he can help it. He鈥檚 trained himself and his party to never get into trouble.
And that, ironically, is what鈥檚 got him into what might be the worst trouble of his career. This weird, pigtail-pulling obsession with the media is partly to blame for the fact that the Senate scandal became a Prime Minister鈥檚 Office scandal.
It鈥檚 not that he doesn鈥檛 care what we write. It鈥檚 that he cares so much, he and his staff default to scenarios and talking points. It鈥檚 become an instinct. Almost everything Harper鈥檚 government does 鈥� from the tough-on-crime agenda to his attempts to make certain senators just go away 鈥� is media strategy.
If there was ever a political party in Canada deserving of being called the Media Party, it鈥檚 the Conservative Party of Canada in 2013.
Of course, that name鈥檚 taken. That鈥檚 what the Conservatives and their supporters call us, 91原创 journalists, to suggest that we鈥檙e a biased herd and therefore irrelevant.
Populists need elites to attack, and conservative populists can鈥檛 attack the rich and powerful, because some of them are rich and powerful. So we journalists become 鈥渆lites.鈥� And then the Conservatives tie themselves in knots to show us how much they don鈥檛 care about us.
They pen reporters at their party convention and yell at them when they walk in the wrong places. They pay, with taxpayers鈥� money, armies of public servants to monitor what we do, to take our questions and pass them around by email like hot potatoes for a few hours, before disgorging approved 鈥渓ines鈥� that, ideally, have ludicrously little to do with said questions. They spend an awful lot of time and energy to make sure we 鈥� and by extension, 91原创s 鈥� get as little information as possible.
And then they spend more time and energy writing aggrieved letters to the editor.
They openly mock the press: John Baird鈥檚 director of communications recently tweeted: 鈥淭he constant whining of the media about access isn鈥檛 obnoxious at all. Oh wait 鈥� it is.鈥�
A director of communications should hold 鈥渁ccess鈥� as sacred as any journalist. His goal, in theory, is exactly the same as the media鈥檚 goal: to make sure news stories are accurate and informed.
(By the way, the public sneering is all a fiction, too. Conservative MPs and their staffs are, almost invariably, nice, decent people who get along great with journalists.)
Faithful Tory Senator Marjory Le-Breton does her part. In May 2013, several months into the expenses scandal, she said, 鈥淚 am a Conservative and I know, more than most that around this town populated by Liberal elites and their media lickspittles, tut-tutting about our government and yearning for the good old days, that we are never given the benefit of the doubt and are rarely given credit for all the good work that we do.鈥�
She loftily declared in 2012: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 read the Ottawa Citizen.鈥�
Oh, that rag? Who cares what they write? Well, the prime minister, apparently. It was the Citizen鈥檚 Glen Mc-Gregor who did much of the reporting on Mike Duffy鈥檚 expenses and residency, at the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013.
Here鈥檚 Duffy鈥檚 version of how the prime minister reacted:
鈥淏ut the attacks from Postmedia continued, and the political heat escalated. So after caucus on Feb. 13, I met the prime minister and Nigel Wright. Just the three of us. I said that despite the smear in the papers, I had not broken the rules. But the prime minister wasn鈥檛 interested in explanations or the truth. It鈥檚 not about what you did. It鈥檚 about the perception of what you did that has been created by the media. The rules are inexplicable to our base.鈥�
I leave it to you to decide whether Duffy鈥檚 version of that meeting sounds plausible.
As for the prime minister鈥檚 credibility, I leave that to you, too. He has said both that Wright resigned and that he 鈥渨as dismissed.鈥� In Ottawa, this change of terminology hasn鈥檛 been that big a deal: after all, everybody knows what it 鈥渞eally鈥� means when a politician says someone has resigned. Nobody even expects it to be true.
All that matters, all that ever matters, is how it鈥檒l play on the news.
