The view from the south

A follow-up to yesterday's post about the Helen Thomas interview on CBC Radio's The Current:

First: Electric Landlady alerted us to this archive for all past editions of The Current. So listen to Thomas at your leisure.

Two: Thomas is not the only one singing the praises of Canada's Parliamentary Press Gallery for standing up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's media machinations. Others are holding up our PPG as lab rats for the White House corps of cowering press puppies.

Critics of the White House press corps occasionally take them to task for being unwilling to visibly assert themselves when they have come under fire from the Bush administration (it is a critique that, with friends from time to time, I too have set forth). The most skeletal version of one theory behind this critique basically runs as follows: If the press stops laughing at the President's lame jokes and indulging his penchant for fratboy schmoozing (pointing out, for instance, that he has basically given at least three reporters the nickname "Stretch"); if they call him and his communications team out on how they have been misled and disregarded; and if they tell the administration that they will no longer simply transcribe the White House's verbal press releases without more (and honest) explanations; they might regain some of the public's confidence and thwart the administration's hardball media relations tactics.

What we are about to find out from Canada -- in an admittedly slight and imperfect way, as comparisons using alternate universes are wont to be -- is whether such a grand stand would succeed or whether, if a President were to hold his (or her) ground against a media coup, as Harper is doing, the public really would think for a period of time that it could do without a vigorous national press corps. It's not often that we get to see an experiment like this run, and the outcome should be of interest to media watchers in the US. This is not to say that the press would be without other recourses in such situations -- the best reporting in Washington, after all, takes place outside of the White House press corps proper -- but, rather, that a confident, public, and justifiably contemptuous display of force may or may not be as productive as some of us occasionally think.

So, you might be interested to know, what are the initial returns in Canada? The Prime Minister, it would appear, is winning.

Well ... not quite, as the latest Decima poll indicates. Check the numbers here. (And, once again, with feeling, I think polls suck.)

Comments

[Ben]

I have read a great deal of coverage concerning the PPG and I am curious who was left out of questions by Harper during the one-month trial period of using Harper's list?

Yves Malo, new president of the press gallery and a reporter for TVA said, "[Harper] started [using the list] right away. We tried their lists, and a month-and-a-half later we saw very well that it doesn't work, that some people never got questions. That's why at the last general assembly we decided unanimously that we won't go along with their lists." Hill Times

If it didn't work and selective reporters were ignored for a month shouldn't there have been many reporters saying they had been on a given number of lists over that period and never selected. Harper said the lists were always exhausted, the media said they weren't but where can specific cases be found where individual PPG members were actually ignored and how often?

[Antonia Z.]

Ben, I have addressed this elsewhere. The PPG says that that's not true. Please, keep up with the program

http://thestar.blogs.com/azerb/2006/05/harping_on_the_.html

[Jay Currie]

"What we are about to find out from Canada -- in an admittedly slight and imperfect way, as comparisons using alternate universes are wont to be -- is whether such a grand stand would succeed or whether, if a President were to hold his (or her) ground against a media coup, as Harper is doing, the public really would think for a period of time that it could do without a vigorous national press corps."

Cool: the PPG is staging a coup. Thanks guys. I mean Harper has been in office for, what, six months and it was about time that someone, well, unelected tried to topple the little fascist. So thanks. Up the Revolution and all.

[Bill-Muskoka]

This will help explain how it works, eh?

http://us.cnn.com/POLITICS/analysis/toons/2006/05/31/mitchell/index.html

[Scott Tribe]

Hey Jay.. would you prefer that the PPG be meekly compliant as they are south of the border?

[Jay Currie]

Scott, truth to tell I could care less what the PPG does. They have no legitimacy or power here. What interestes me is whether or not Harper has the spine to stay with his program and end run the PPG or if he goes "inside the beltway" and reaches an accomodation.

At the moment I am more interested in Harper's character than the pretensions of the 1200 strong, unelected, often lazy and apparently incapable PPG.

[sooey]

look - why are we having the debate? the pm takes questions from the ppg! that's it and that's all! geez louise. must everything be control freak harper central. it's a minority government, pal!

[sooey]

anyway, for a supposed policy wonk he sure does act like a politician. cripes, so far it's been government by photo op. who does he think he is - trudeau?