“He is a guy who really works sources, and a lot of reporters, believe it or not, don’t.
And he’s very determined and careful about what he reports,” said CTV’s veteran newsman Craig Oliver.
On Tuesday, May 14, Mr. Fife reported on CTV’s National News that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) chief of staff Nigel Wright wrote Prince Edward Island Senator Mike Duffy a $90,000 cheque to pay back inappropriate housing expense claims he made over the last four years.
According to his May 14 story, Mr. Fife learned of an email exchange discussing the arrangement for Mr. Wright to help Sen. Duffy repay the ineligible expenses in exchange for the government “to go easy on him” in the middle of an independent audit on his and three other Senators’ expenses.
Senators are allowed to claim up to $22,000 a year on housing expenses if their primary residence is more than 100 km away from Parliament Hill.
Sen. Duffy, a former CTV national reporter who hosted a supper-hour political show from the House of Commons foyer, claimed his P.E.I. cottage as his primary residence but had a long-time residence in an Ottawa suburb.
He originally said that the forms were not clear and therefore he could’ve inappropriately declared his Ottawa home, with a $360,000 mortgage, as a secondary home. An independent audit by accounting and audit firm Deloitte began and in late February he suddenly declared that he spoke with his wife and they agreed to pay back the expenses he inappropriately collected.
Mr. Fife reported however, that in a Feb. 20 email, Sen. Duffy said Mr. Wright worked out a “scenario” which included “cash for the repayment” and two days later, Sen. Duffy said he would repay the Senate. Sen. Duffy promptly stopped cooperating with the Deloitte auditors.
“It unravelled because Duffy couldn’t keep quiet. He sent emails all over the city and he told too many people about it and some of them told me,” Mr. Fife told CTV’s Lisa LaFlamme in a talk-back when the story broke that night.
Mr. Fife declined to be interviewed for this story because he said he’s not the story.
“I’m not the story. We should all keep our eyes on the unfolding drama. I don’t want this to be about personality journalism. All our colleagues on the Hill are digging into the story in the time-honoured tradition of good old-fashioned investigative reporting,” said Mr. Fife in an email to The Hill Times in which he copied his boss CTV News President Wendy Freeman.
“Fife’s been on the Hill for more than 30 years. He’s got great contacts in all parties and he works them. Bob Fife has one of the strongest work ethics I’ve ever seen in any journalist I’ve worked with. He works incredibly hard, works long hours, and he’s a pro,” former CTV Hill reporter Roger Smith told The Hill Times last week.
Mr. Fife started his career on the Hill in 1978, when he was reporting for NewsRadio and United Press International. He later joined The Canadian Press and spent 10 years as the Ottawa bureau chief for Sun Media. Prior to joining CTV in February 2005, Mr. Fife was the Ottawa bureau chief for CanWest News Service and the National Post. He’s currently the executive producer of Power Play with Don Martin and CTV’s Question Period, hosted by Kevin Newman.
Mr. Oliver said that when he retired from everyday news reporting at CTV and was asked who he wanted to replace him as bureau chief, he immediately said Mr. Fife.
“He has been beating reporters on the Hill with news for 25 years,” Mr. Oliver said. “So rather than try to beat him, I wanted to join him.”
Ontario Liberal Senator Jim Munson, also a former CTV reporter before joining former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s PMO, said he’s known Mr. Fife since the 80s when they were young reporters who both loved the challenges of the day.
“Bob Fife is a very good journalist who is doing his job. He is very experienced, thorough and determined to get to the bottom of every story,” Sen. Munson said in an email, also declining an interview when asked if he thought it could be difficult for Mr. Fife to be reporting on a former CTV colleague.
Mr. Smith said it would not be difficult for Mr. Fife because he’s a professional journalist.
“Mike Duffy was a colleague, now Mike Duffy is a Senator. I think that Bob is like any other journalist on the Hill,” Mr. Smith said. “I think Bob would not go any easier on Duffy because he’s a former colleague or any harder on him because he’s a former colleague. Mike Duffy is a Senator appointed by the Prime Minister, and he has to be treated like any other politician on the Hill. I think whether or not he’s a former colleague really would not cloud Bob’s judgment in any way.”
Summa Strategies vice-president Tim Powers, a Conservative pundit, agreed. Mr. Fife is a “hard-working, hard-driving reporter,” Mr. Powers said.
“He also possesses a fearlessness which is needed in that job. He gets things wrong sometimes, like all of us, but more often he is right,” he said. “He would have no trouble covering the Duffy story. Past relationships aside, when you cross over from journalism to politics you cross over. Those who cross over sometimes don’t get that, but Bob does.”
Mr. Oliver agreed, saying that he also is treating the story “like any other news story” and that he hasn’t communicated with Sen. Duffy or Senator Pamela Wallin, another former CTV journalist, whose Senate expenses are also being reviewed, since the Senate expense story broke.
Since the first story on May 14, Mr. Fife has almost daily been the first to report on new developments to the story. The day after, he got a confirmation from the Prime Minister’s office that Mr. Wright, a millionaire former executive at Onex Corporation, did indeed write the cheque “from his personal account” and emphasized that no taxpayers’ money was used. The day after that, Mr. Fife reported that Sen. Duffy was allegedly lobbying the CRTC on behalf of Sun News Network (whose news team is led by Mr. Harper’s former communications director Kory Teneycke) which at the time was attempting to receive a mandatory carriage license for basic cable subscribers. Mr. Fife later reported that the three-member Senate Internal Economy Committee “whitewashed” the report that said housing allowance rules were clear and that Sen. Duffy was in breach of the rules. The story didn’t die, and eventually led to Sen. Duffy resigning from the Conservative caucus, Sen. Wallin resigning from the Conservative caucus, and Mr. Wright resigning as chief of staff.
When MPs returned last Tuesday after a one-week House break, the Wright-Duffy scandal dominated Question Period, leading to Mr. Harper saying the government would change Senate rules on expensing items.
“He’s a pitbull,” Mr. Smith said of Mr. Fife. “I’m sure he’s really been working his contacts and, I mean, basically, after breaking this story, he drove it with exclusive details every night for four or five straight nights, waiting for other people to get in the hunt with him. I think he probably just had good sources and he worked them and once you start breaking stories like that, other people often come to you. Bob has done a great job in leading the charge on this story,” said Mr. Smith.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: BEA VONGDOUANGCHAN
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