Pressing situation

Prime Minister Stephen Harper kicks back and chats freely (reg. req'd.) with the Western Standard's Kevin Libin about how he's ''got more control now'' over the media. According to Harper, the stand-off between the PMO and the Parliamentary Press Gallery is happening because reporters refuse to let him pick and choose who gets to ask questions:

"When we first started doing this and were doing this, the majority of journalists loved it," he says. "But of course, the problem was that we were getting our message out and a small number of ideologues didn't like that. So they've now basically forbidden all of their colleagues to ask questions, which I think is a fascinating use of press freedom when a small number of journalists can tell others they can't ask questions at a press conference. But that's the position of the left-wing ideologues who are apparently running the show."

That's quite the tar and feathering of very responsible and seasoned journalists who are not there to get his ''message'' out but to act as the eyes and ears of the people that they serve: their readers, listeners and viewers. Or, put in another way, voters. Citizens. NOT consumers of your ''message.''

The prime minister won't say to whom he's referring specifically--though he does allow, "the key journalists causing the problem are from CBC, but strictly the ones in Ottawa" (not, he's careful to point out, CBC reporters elsewhere).

No, of course he wouldn't dare name names. He just smears everybody. And why should he, when the writer of this piece is happy to jump in and do the dirty work?

But on the Hill, there are plenty of stories of how The National's Julie Van Dusen harangues colleagues who break rank (she also recently crashed PMO security and began banging on Harper's door while he was meeting with children battling cancer).

Let's not forget that an advisory went out to the PPG saying that Harper was meeting with the children while the press, fools that they are, took that to mean that they were invited -- only to find themselves confronted by a locked door and security guards.

Others name Radio-Canada's Emmanuelle Latraverse and TVA's Lina Dib as two key rabble-rousers.

Oh? So now the PPG is a "rabble'' that gets ''roused" ?

Is their campaign working? That's debatable. Harper laughs when he talks of how much easier the gallery has made his life. "I'm free to pick my interviews when and where I want to have them," he says.

Which is exactly how he wants it. This way he controls the coverage and gets his ''message'' out. He completely admits it.

Read the whole thing, if your disgestive system can handle it.

Comments

[Bill-Muskoka]

Tonight on Global National Harper spoke, and quite well in all fairness.

Excuse me, but one does not BANG on the PM door if one is a professional. Therein, lies the reason for the confrontation.

On the legal side of our fine society there seems to be a MAJOR increase in dealing with the criminal element, i.e., bikers, drug distributors, etc. with major busts. That is good. It does make one wonder why this is happening now?

Then there is the lingering question as to why our MP, Tony Clement the PMO's Minister of Health, still owns 25% of a a major pharmaceutical company as reported up here in the Black Fly Kingdom papers?

[sooey]

stephen harper - working hard to keep western standard subscribers in the conservative fold, posing for photo ops with children with cancer, and finding adoptive homes for stray kittens.

[Out there]

Star bullshit, Antonia bullshit.

There was no press advisory saying that Van Dusen had the right to hammer the prime minister's office door in a demand to gain entry.

Harper has now granted interviews to everyone (including the Red Star) who has requested one except for Van Dusen and her few acolytes.

[PhantomObserver]

Okay -- so he says he's got the PPG where he wants them.

In the immortal words of Jack Benny: "There will now be a brief pause while everyone says, who cares?"

Remember that the PPG is only a subset of the total number of journalists covering the federal government. It's not like the Gallery is a union issuing licenses, right?

[JDot]

Way to go Harper. I have seen Harper on everything from hockey night in Canada to the red star. I hope JVD never gets an interview with Harper.

Anyone who bangs on a door with cancer patients complaing that she is hard done by, well what can I say the lady has no class.

I might have had a little respect for the PPG but with people like JVD what is the point, there only there for GOTCHA journalism. I just think JVD represents what is wrong with the PPG.

They are a bounch of elitist swine who think they are better then the average Canadian.

I can't belaive that hack JVD gets a peice of my tax dollars.

[CapitalCat]

You have to watch out for dangerous types like Julie Van Dusen. She was raised amongst a cabal of rabble rousers. Her own dear dad abandoned journalism to work for the original renegade in power--John Diefenbaker. Her eldest brother is back in journalism, taking a break to work as a press flack for Mulroney's minister-of-everything Don Mazankowski. Suspicious company indeed!

To be fair, her husband did toil for several years for Andre Ouellet when he was a Trudeau cabinet minister. So obviously exposure to a Liberal, and a Kwee-becker at that, has turned the poor girl's brain into mush, forcing her to turn her back on all that Sir John A and Robert Borden hath wrought and somehow thinking that Tory prime ministers aren't dropped on earth at God's behest to lead us all into the Promised Land (currently located at the Mall of the Americas beside the Starbucks.)

[sooey]

heheh - according to franks passim, her husband is also a landlord... but back to our hardworking prime minister - what was the purpose of holding a meeting with children behind locked doors anyway? other than the resultant photo op for the prime minister, i mean. did he give the children his word that he won't further privatize healthcare, or something? WHAT?!

[sooey]

i dunno. it sounds to me like julie van dusen didn't go far enough. i'd have been yelling at the top of my lungs, "somebody! help! the prime minister has locked himself in an office with a group of children!" i mean, that's pretty weird behaviour if you ask me.