“In effect, you are paying for access to the Prime Minister,” said Canadian Press reporter Stephanie Levitz, who has been on the Hill since June 2010. “When media outlets—I think often in the narrative of limited resources—are having to balance, ‘Okay, do we have to go on this trip, what’s the news value of this trip?’ and the news value of this trip becomes, as many of these trips have, ‘Well, we’ll get to ask the Prime Minister [a question],’ I think it raises a lot of questions about the implications of that decision. Are we paying for access to the prime minister? Now, the money doesn’t go into his pockets, but that makes me uncomfortable.”
But Parliamentary Press Gallery president Chris Rands, also a CBC TV reporter, said in an email to The Hill Times. “There has been no formal complaint from bureau chiefs about foreign trips with the pm and their cost.”
On his most recent foreign trip to Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the Francophonie Summit Oct. 12-14, Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) responded to four questions during an official joint press conference with the Senegalese President Macky Sall, two from Canadian reporters and two from Senegalese reporters.
At the end of the trip in DRC, Mr. Harper responded to six questions from reporters. No follow-up questions were allowed. In addition, before meeting with business leaders, reporters had to pool a photo opportunity with the Prime Minister and were only told after who Mr. Harper met with rather than seeing for themselves who attended. Journalists were promptly asked to leave the room before the private meeting started, according to media reports.
At the same summit, after holding talks with newly-elected Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, Mr. Harper did not talk to reporters, instead leaving the hotel through a side door.
Reporters on the trip told The Hill Times they witnessed this because they fought to go to the meeting site after being notified that that meeting would not be on their agenda.
Ms. Marois, meanwhile, took several questions from Canadian reporters, especially Quebec media who had been traveling with her.
“Restrictions are fewer when we’re on the road than when we’re not,” said CBC TV chief political correspondent Terry Milewski, who has been reporting for the CBC for more than 30 years, the last three of which have been spent on the Hill. “We got access to him for what, two questions, I guess, when he appeared at a press conference with the Jamaican Prime Minister. I guess that was Monday [Oct. 22]. And that’s it for this week. But when we go to India, I would expect every couple of days, at the very least, we’ll have maybe a couple of questions here and maybe three or four there.”
On Nov. 3 to 9, Mr. Harper will travel to India, along with International Trade Minister Ed Fast (Abbotsford, B.C.), Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.), Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz (Beattlefords-Lloydminster, Sask.), Minister of State for Sport Bal Gosal (Bramalea-Gore-Malton, Ont.), and Minister of State for Democratic Reform Tim Uppal (Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Alta.), along with a contingent of business and cultural sector representatives.
Andrew MacDougall, communications director to Mr. Harper, said Hill reporters have had a chance to ask questions on every trip with the Prime Minister “where we have brought media with us on the plane,” in his memory.
“This will continue to be the case going forward,” said Mr. MacDougall in an email to The Hill Times. “I would like all media outlets to travel on the Prime Minister’s trips—the more voices, the better…We won’t always see eye-to-eye on access but that has been a challenge for every director of communications from every government in every country since the dawn of time.”
Mr. MacDougall said the format for a press conference with a foreign dignitary is two questions per side, but on trips with the Prime Minister he said, “there’s no set quota. Depends on what events are happening…we try to get to all reporters with us on trips.”
Bruce Cheadle, a 15-year veteran reporter at The Canadian Press, said the number of questions allotted to reporters at media availabilities during trips abroad with the Prime Minister are something of a “moving target,” but said he’s noticed an increasingly trend that reporters will be given one question each at at least one media availability on the trip, typically towards the end.
Ms. Levitz told The Hill Times that 15 minutes before the PM’s event starts, the PMO informs reporters on the trip how many questions are allowed to be asked.
“It’s up to the travelling press to decide who asks what and then we submit a list of names to the PMO,” said Ms. Levitz. “We huddle and toss around ideas until there is some kind of agreement what to ask about. It’s rare for there to be a major disagreement on the topics as they are often fairly self-evident.”
Mr. Cheadle described it as an “awful little huddle,” and Ms. Levitz said the situation “can create a fair bit of tension among the journalists as each agency has questions they specifically want asked.”
Unlike with Members of Parliament and Ministers, there is no chance for reporters to catch the Prime Minister leaving or entering daily Question Period, or weekly caucus meetings. The last time Mr. Harper held a press conference in the National Press Theatre in Ottawa was on June 15, 2009. The majority of the media availabilities and interviews Mr. Harper has done are in small-towns with local media, away from the Parliamentary press gallery.
But the now limited media availability on foreign trips is making traveling with the Prime Minister less appealing for news organizations already struggling financially.
Mr. Milewski said travelling on a trip with the Prime Minister is expensive, though varied: “I would say it’s between $3,000 and $5,000, as high as $7,000, $8,000 on big long trips [per person].”
Mr. MacDougall said the PMO covers transportation, accommodations, and provides filing room for reporters, as well as some meals. The cost for these resources is then tallied by the PMO, and news organizations are billed a total amount.
“We will always cover the Prime Minister but it’s frustrating that the Prime Minister has limited access for the media who cover him on these trips. It’s very expensive and he deals with very important issues and he should make himself more available,” said Bob Fife, CTV Ottawa bureau chief. “Other prime ministers did regularly hold scrums with reporters.”
Mr. Cheadle said under previous governments the press gallery contingent travelling with the Prime Minister would “typically” have access to the Prime Minister “every single day. … The press pool screamed bloody murder if you did not have access for at least a few minutes to the Prime Minister of the day and usually it was in a very informal scrum-like setting where it was a free-wheeling opportunity to ask questions.” And follow-up questions, Mr. Cheadle said, were “absolutely” allowed.
Mr. Fife said former prime ministers Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien, and Brian Mulroney “almost everyday” held a 20-minute scrum on the road, and would hold daily briefings with officials, including the prime minister’s foreign policy adviser.
Mr. Cheadle said with limited questions and only so many availabilities in a trip, depending on how big the delegation of journalists is, he said, “there are trips where people in the press pool do not get an opportunity during the course of the whole trip to ask a question.”
But Mr. Milewski said although availabilities exist, they are “extremely limited” because no follow-ups are allowed. “He’s [Prime Minister Harper] completely free if he wishes to ignore the question and answer some other question that you didn’t ask and that he’d rather you had asked. And you can’t come back, and if you try, they’re shocked and horrified,” said Mr. Milewski.
Ms. Levitz said access is also limited to the officials and ministers that accompany the Prime Minister on trips. On Mr. Harper’s February trip to China, for example, Ms. Levitz said one of the announcements made was on the Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA).
“There were a bunch of journalists on that trip, there were quite a number of us, and none of us really understood, to be frank, what exactly a FIPA was, why was it significant, why did it matter, what were the implications for investment?” she said.
Mr. MacDougall said by email to The Hill Times that reporters are given the opportunity to speak with officials travelling with the Prime Minister but didn’t elaborate.
Mr. Milewski said reporters travelling with Mr. Harper receive the “same level of detail” in backgrounders as reporters still in Ottawa: a “prepared, sanitized” written document.
“How can you write about what was being hailed as this landmark agreement without really understanding what the agreement was, and there was no one to answer that question and we weren’t given access to officials even on a background basis,” said Ms. Levitz. “It makes for weaker story-telling.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: LAURA RYCKEWAERT
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