Media Scout on the PMO vs. the media

“There’s a time and a place for the media,” explained a plainclothes RCMP officer as he and his colleagues unceremoniously ushered journalists out of Charlottetown’s Delta Hotel. Evidently that time was not yesterday and that place was not the Conservatives’ annual summer caucus meeting. The officers, reportedly acting on the orders of the Prime Minister’s Office, kept journalists away from the meeting of Tory MPs and senators, as they planned their fall priorities on Liberal-dominated Prince Edward Island. Accounts from the PMO about its impetus to shoo the media from the hotel’s premises changed throughout the day: it was claimed at various points that the decision had been made out of respect for Tory families in attendance; that protocol dictates that the summer caucus meeting be held in-camera; and that the RCMP were acting for security reasons, and not at the PMO’s behest. The Big Seven roundly reject these explanations, deciding instead that they and other sources were kept from the hotel because Harper and his key advisors believe that “the news media is full of small ‘l’ liberals and that reporters distort their message,” as the Globe puts it.

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