“How politely you put it: ‘quote approval,’ ” Smith wrote. “There’s another not-so-polite word for it — Censorship.
“This is so ‘1984’ it’s creepy. The Ministry of Truth, or Minitrue, is upon us.”
As I wrote last week, it is a very good thing that Canadian journalists who cover politics, government and public affairs are not facing the same pressures as their American counterparts to agree to demands to allow politicians and public officials to vet, edit or approve their own words before publication as a condition of being interviewed.
But that doesn’t mean everything is tickety-boo here. Indeed, some alarming aspects of George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” as described in his classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, are the all-too-real truth for Canadian journalists whose role it is to hold the Stephen Harper government to account.
It is no secret that the Harper government has gone to extraordinary lengths to seek to control the agenda and thwart journalists’ dual purpose of holding politicians to account and making government more transparent to citizens.
In an open letter published in April 2010, nine Canadian journalism organizations contended that under Harper the flow of information has “slowed to a trickle.
“Genuine transparency is replaced by slick propaganda and spin designed to manipulate public opinion,” the letter stated.
Those who control information in Ottawa have various means of managing the message. A common tactic is the email “interview” (and I use that word loosely), now largely the only way that the Star’s Ottawa bureau staff can reach government ministers, deputies and other public servants, including, often, even government “spokespersons.”
As Ottawa reporter Susan Delacourt wrote in a July column: “It is now standard, for instance, for reporters to submit questions in writing to the government only to wait hours, days, or even weeks for a committee-approved response.”
Journalists in the Star’s Ottawa bureau tell me they resist sending questions in email. Diligent reporters aim to go directly to the source and seek an interview, in person or on telephone. That’s still the reporter’s best tool for gathering information.
But too often the only information reporters in Ottawa can get comes from email responses from government spokespersons that don’t actually address the questions at hand.
To understand why this is problematic consider this email response sent recently to national affairs columnist Tim Harper after he went to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ director of communications seeking answers from Toews about a Canada-U.S. border initiative. The response he got came from a “media relations spokesperson” in the department’s public relations arm.
“I understand you were looking for some information on Beyond the Border initiatives. I can tell you that the Action Plan sets ambitious, but achievable, goals that will advance economic opportunities and lead to greater security,” Lisa Filipps said in the email. “Many of these goals have already been achieved. A list of accomplishments that have been announced can be found at www.borderactionplan.gc.ca. More successes will be announced over the coming months and, as the action plan states, the first annual report is to be released by December 31, 2012.”
With all due respect to Filipps, who I expect is doing the job expected of her, that is a bunch of malarkey — to borrow the phrase bandied about by Joe Biden in the recent vice-presidential election debate.
It tells us nothing. All it does is offer slick government spin and directs Harper to a website he had already searched. It shuts the door to real information from the minister in charge and keeps the columnist — but more importantly you — in the dark.
This looks to me to be a fine exhibit of Orwell’s “political language,” intended, as he wrote in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, “to make lies sound truthful . . . and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Pure wind indeed.
But this is now standard operating practice in Ottawa.
“The Conservatives encourage this type of interface because it discourages tough questions and follow-ups,” said Harper (the Star columnist, not the PM).
So, happily we don’t have “1984-style” quote approval in Canada. But these email statements that prevent journalists from pushing and probing politicians and public officials for answers to questions we ask on citizens' behalf come awfully close to the line.
Shouldn’t we all ask more tough questions here? Of course, if you want answers from the Harper government you’ll have to send an email.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Kathy English
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