Roundup: No, it’s not media apathy

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The prime minister’s former director of communications writes that it’s perfectly natural that the government wants to create their own communications channels that bypass the media because We The Media are apparently “apathetic” to what the want to tell us. You will forgive me for saying, but I’m not sure there are words enough to express how big of a load of utter horseshit that this justification actually is. His definition of “apathy” is that the media won’t act as transcriptionists for their feel-good stories, which forces them to go around us. Fair enough – it’s not our jobs to retype your press releases and make you look good. But what is utterly galling is for him to turn around and declare that the media has a challenge function that’s important for democracy and that’s why they’re needed, when the very same government that he served is doing their level best to kneecap journalists from fulfilling that role. Whether it’s frustrating Access to Information laws, closing off all avenues of communication with ministers, not returning phone calls and delivering bland statements in lieu of answers to questions being asked, or simply dragging out responding to media requests until it’s well past deadline, it all amounts to choking off necessary information from the media because it fulfils its challenge function, and that challenge function makes the government look bad. When the media does write about the government’s use of their own distribution channels, it’s not because we’re sulking that we’re not the privileged distributors of information – it’s that we’re being denied the ability to do our jobs as we’re shut out of events, not allowed to ask questions at announcements, and that our independent photographers are not allowed to even capture those events and are instead being handed a staged photo to run instead that shows what the government wants us to see instead. That’s not giving us the space to perform our necessary challenge function – it’s trying to turn us into organs of propaganda. That he ignores those legitimate complaints and frames them as “sweating over” trivialities is part of what makes his whole construction utterly farcical.

Good reads:

  • Paul Wells looks at the backroom movements in the NDP, and what it says about Thomas Mulcair’s leadership.
  • It sounds like the forthcoming new anti-terror legislation will include changes to the no-fly list.
  • Claims and counter-claims have been filed between NDP MP Sylvain Chicoine and his former staffer.
  • Glen McGregor examines the stock photos used on the Conservatives’ new “tough on crime” website.
  • Omar Khadr is seeking bail because his attempts to appeal his American conviction is taking so long his sentence would be fully served before it gets heard.
  • Several senators not named in RCMP documents may also be subpoenaed for the Mike Duffy trial.
  • Andrew Coyne challenges Justin Trudeau’s apparent abandonment of carbon pricing to the provinces.

Odds and ends:

Rob Anders won’t be a leadership contender for the Wildrose party in Alberta because he didn’t get a party membership before the cut-off date.

The NDP want an emergency debate on the mission in Iraq once the Commons is back on Monday.

Here is the Ottawa Citizen’s roundup of smaller stories from the week.

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