Spin class, Part 2: How Stephen Harper beat the press gallery

Ever since Stephen Harper and his Conservative party took office last February, ending 13 years of Liberal rule, he has been poking the Ottawa press gallery with a sharp stick.

Following in the path of U.S. President George W. Bush, he tried to ban cameras from covering the return of dead Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan. Routine requests for information were ignored, cabinet ministers and spokespeople were rarely made available, even the scheduling of cabinet meetings was considered to be of no interest to the press.

Finally, last May, the low-level sniping between Harper and the press escalated into a full-scale shooting war. The issue was a simple one, at least on the surface: Who gets to choose who can ask questions at the prime minister's press conferences.

Traditionally, a representative from the parliamentary press gallery chose the questioners. But the new Conservative government had a different idea. It wanted something closer to the U.S. system where the president gets to select.

The walkout

The government said it simply wanted to bring some order to a practice that was frequently too chaotic. Gallery members saw the proposal as an attempt to usurp their power and engineer more favourable press coverage.

"Does that mean that when there's a crisis they'll only call upon journalists they expect softball questions from?" asked gallery president Yves Malo.

The journalists decided not to wait for an answer. On May 23, Harper scheduled a press conference to announce Canadian aid to Darfur. When he refused to answer questions from reporters not on the list, two dozen journalists rose and walked out of the press conference.

It was a bold, and in many ways, courageous gesture by a press gallery that too often exhibits the weaknesses of in-group journalism.

By walking out, the reporters sent a strong signal that they were prepared to stand up for their rights, and presumably the rights of all Canadians, to get straight answers to tough questions from their elected leaders.

The walkout meant, of course, that any honeymoon with the new government was over. Nor could they expect much public sympathy. As a rule, Canadian political journalists are not held in much higher esteem than the people they cover.

Some of the prime minister's more conciliatory advisers were calling for reconciliation ("I think both sides have an interest in sorting it out," said one).

But Harper himself was in no mood to make nice. In a series of interviews over the next several days, the prime minister made it abundantly clear that his decision was not a sign of "petulance," or an inability "to control his sulks," as a Globe and Mail editorial suggested.

This was a carefully designed strategy. Harper wanted to see if he could fundamentally change the relationship between his government and the people who cover it.

Taking on the 'left-wing ideologues'

Declaring that the Ottawa gallery was biased against him, the prime minister announced that in the future, he would speak primarily to local media and journalists of his own choosing. Reporters who made their living covering the ins and outs of Ottawa would be out.

One of the journalists Harper talked to was Kevin Libin of the Western Standard, a right-wing Alberta-based newsmagazine that is arguably Harper's biggest booster in the Canadian media. In an interview with Libin in June, Harper spelled out his new media strategy.

The Ottawa press corps, the prime minister declared, was dominated by "left-wing ideologues" who were determined to stop him from getting his message out.

The gallery's boycott clearly played right into his hand. "I've got more control now," he boasted, "I'm free to pick my interviews when and where I want to have them."

In his view, the Ottawa press gallery had become "too institutionalized, and too convinced that it can control the news" and was in the way of better government. "I think if we can break that up in any way, that is helpful for democracy."

Bypassing the filter

Some might see in Harper's strategy certain parallels with what has been happening in the U.S.

Media analysts, such as New York University professor Jay Rosen, have written about the Bush administration's strategy to "decertify" the press, to deign not to answer its questions and thereby to reduce its influence as proxies for public opinion.

See Rosen's views at PressThink, where an expanded version of this article exists. Since breaking off contact with the gallery in May, however, Harper has actually made himself available for several lengthy one-on-one interviews, even with media organizations he considers hostile.

Harper does well at these, articulating his positions clearly, coherently and convincingly. Though he and George Bush seem to share a similar political philosophy, the prime minister is miles ahead of the president in explaining what his government is doing and why.

But while Harper appears willing to talk to the press one on one, he clearly has no interest in holding regular press conferences or in subjecting himself to the Parliament Hill "scrum," a uniquely Canadian vehicle for political accountability.

What's more, he has been proving that a prime minister in the digital age does not need the parliamentary press gallery to reach the nation.

In his interview with the Western Standard, Harper noted that it is now easier for governments to bypass the filter of the press and get their message directly to the people.

He has turned to sympathetic newspapers and radio talk shows, direct emails, websites, friendly blogs and podcasts.

According to one survey in an online magazine, Harper's podcast is the fifth most downloaded podcast in the country. Check out the official Prime Minister of Canada website at www.pm.gc.ca and the Conservative party website at www.conservative.ca and see if you can tell which is funded by taxpayers and which is a party organ.

Far from hiding from the press, Harper appears to be everywhere. And that, of course, is the second part of what Rosen calls the effort to "decertify" the media.

First, you attack its integrity and limit its access; then you promote the idea that information unfiltered by the press is at least as accurate and legitimate, if not more so, than what passes through the media filter.

In other words, you switch from meeting the press to being the press.

Beating the press

What is also striking about Harper's decision to take on the Ottawa press corps is that it does not appear to be based on any specific grievances.

A significant majority of Canadian newspapers endorsed the Conservatives in the election of January 2006, and the prime minister admitted to Libin that "the actual press coverage of us has been complete, fair and generally far more favourable than it's ever been." So why fight?

First, Harper wants to turn his current minority government into a majority at the next election. And he seems to genuinely believe that the Ottawa press is biased against him. But there may be a larger purpose at work here as well — to reduce the role that the national government plays in the day-to-day lives of Canadians.

Harper doesn't appear to particularly like the culture of official Ottawa, and seems to distrust many of Canada's national institutions, judging by some of his and his senior ministers' public statements.

The Ottawa press corps may simply be another national institution that needs to be rolled back.

A turning point occurred on Aug. 22 when the PMO informed reporters that Harper would be appearing in the foyer of the House of Commons to announce a controversial settlement to the long-running softwood lumber dispute.

The PM made his statement and then walked away when reporters tried to question him. Later that evening, Harper called four parliamentary reporters from three different news organizations and granted them interviews about the softwood deal.

All four had earlier told the PMO that they were prepared to put their names on its list, though they had neglected to tell press gallery officials of their decision.

Two of the reporters were employed by CanWest Global, the country's largest media chain, which has now instructed all its correspondents to sign the PMO list.

The CanWest papers are broadly sympathetic to the Conservatives, and Derek Burney, who headed Harper's transition team, was recently named the new chairman of the board at CanWest.

In the wake of such a major defection, the press gallery agreed to suspend its boycott of the Prime Minister's list for 30 days as "a gesture of good faith." Meanwhile it urged more discussion with the PMO to resolve the dispute.

This fight is over: Harper won

The 30 days are well past, and the Prime Minister's Office has shown no interest in reopening negotiations or in holding press conferences. According to the gallery president, the PM's communications director refuses even to return his phone calls. Why should she? This fight is over, the press gallery's common front is in tatters and the PM has emerged victorious.

Ask Paul Wells, one of Canada's more astute Ottawa columnists. He supports the decision to call off the boycott and notes that the only journalists who have not gotten to question the prime minister in recent months are the ones who are paid to live in Ottawa and cover him.

More importantly, he argues, "our self-image as monopolistic gatekeepers has taken a richly deserved, long-overdue battering this year, and I wonder how many of us are lucid enough to notice."

Wells is correct that the days of a small group of journalists having a monopoly over the news that emanates from the nation's capital are gone forever. And that's a good thing. But it doesn't naturally follow that information found on government websites or podcasts or on sympathetic blogs is somehow more reliable than information that is "filtered" through a journalist.

Harper took what was probably a low-risk gamble when he decided to begin his assault on the press with the entrenched Ottawa press gallery.

In the end, few Canadians care who gets to ask questions at press conferences, and so long as the dispute continues to be framed that way, Harper's moves should cause him little harm.

But there are larger questions at stake. Despite its flaws, the Ottawa gallery still plays a useful watchdog role over our government. It is hard to see how diminishing it can be considered "helpful for democracy."