X-post by former PMO chief of staff Norman Spector, who noticed something was up concerning how the Prime Minister’s team got its message out

Press Gallery members denied access to Carney’s Egypt photo opportunity dutifully repeat anonymous, unverified claims elevating the Prime Minister’s importance

Last week, the Parliamentary Press Gallery (PPG) and I had something in common.

We were both dismayed.

They, because they weren’t invited to join Prime Minister Carney on his last-minute trip to Egypt for a photo opp; Me because most of them didn’t seem all that interested in looking into the circumstances of the PM’s hasty departure and instead allowed themselves to be played in the most appallingly obvious manner.

What got the PPG’s knickers twisted was that they weren’t invited to accompany Carney when he departed Ottawa in a rush to get to the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh, a popular spot on the Red Sea for the world’s glitterati. It took PPG President Mia Rabson a couple of days to issue a statement, but she made it clear the PPG disapproved:

“The Parliamentary Press Gallery was not informed in advance of the Prime Minister’s trip to Egypt to participate in the Middle East Peace Ceremony on Oct. 12 -13,” she wrote. “The Gallery is disappointed and dismayed at the exclusion of Canadian media from the event and expresses in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again.

“It is unprecedented that Canadian media be entirely excluded from a Canadian prime minister’s foreign trip.”

The only reporting I could find on this was in Politico, where it was recorded that the PMO had posted this notice: “6:30 p.m. The Prime Minister will depart for Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to attend the signing of a Middle East peace plan. Closed to media.”

What first caused my jaw to drop and to become, like Rabin, disappointed and dismayed, were the stories left unpursued. On the morning of Oct. 12, Canada was not listed as among the countries invited to join in the “peace summit” associated with the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas. If it had been, the prime minister may not have had to charter a private jet because the usual Royal Canadian Air Force planes and crews were, as City News’s Glen MacGregor reported, unavailable.

There are two lines of journalistic inquiry there, neither of which appears to have been of interest. The first is: how can Canada’s military be so poorly equipped that there isn’t at all times a fully-equipped aircraft and crew on standby and is this an issue that will be addressed in the future? The second is: how did we wind up getting invited to the peace summit? Comments by US President Donald Trump indicate that we weren’t initially considered important enough to be on site but phoned to ask if we could join the party. (The Line – which doesn’t accept government subsidies – noticed.)

Trump, in remarks to media said: “You have Canada. That’s so great to have, in fact. The president called and he wanted to know if it’s worth – well he knew exactly what it is. He knew the importance. Where’s Canada, by the way? Where are you? He knew the importance of this.”

What was pursued, at least in comments online by journalists, was Trump’s inability to identify Carney by his correct title. (In an exchange that followed, Carney sarcastically thanked Trump for elevating him and, in response, was told “at least I didn’t call you governor.” Ha ha.)

Everyone is free to make their own decisions, but if Canada had to call Trump to ask to be invited, Canadians need to know if that means we are in the president’s debt. Trump, after all, seems like the sort of guy who keeps score.

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But it’s what followed that really got creepy. While Canadian reporters were not allowed to accompany the prime minister to Egypt, someone who says he or she was on the plane started phoning around to tell reporters what happened. And they went for it. The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Politico all reported unverified statements emanating from a single, unnamed source. The Globe’s Robert Fife reported that “a senior government official” said that while Carney and others thought they were just in Egypt for a photo opp, during a four hour wait for Trump to arrive from Israel “Mr. Carney had back-and-forth conversations with a group of leaders.”

Fife wrote that “The Globe and Mail is not identifying the official so they could speak candidly.”

Tonda MacCharles of the Toronto Star also quoted a “senior Canadian government official” who “spoke confidentially to provide background information on what was discussed at the leaders-only talks.” Said official was buzzing about the dynamism of the occasion and the ever so important role the boss played at the photo opp.

“Imagine the G20 without the talking points and pomp and circumstance. We all came out of it, staffers, like ‘wow that was a useful meeting,’” the anonymous source told MacCharles, whose report, similar to Fife’s, did not indicate that any efforts whatsoever had been made to verify the claims of the “official” with even a second anonymous “official.”

The Globe report expanded on how Carney’s attendance in Egypt was all part of a broader strategy, that he is well-known and liked in the region and how the invitation “was not a surprise” because Carney has “sought” to “act as a go-between Arab states and Washington.”

That doesn’t exactly appear consistent with the source’s concession that Carney’s office “first heard of the invitation on social media” but, whatever.

MacCharles and Fife tried to add greater context to their reports (the former doing the better job, in my view) but while The Free Press’s Rupa Subramanya wondered what all the fuss was about and Brian Mulroney’s former chief of staff Norman Spector (see frame grab above) smelled a rat, my conclusion is that what we have here is unacceptable.

The Prime Minister departed the country unaccompanied by even a single representative of the nation’s press. Upon his return, neither Carney nor any “officials” held a news conference to explain what took place. Instead, targeted media got fed what could be (I’ll use the polite term) pure fantasy. Two of Canada’s leading news organizations, apparently confusing themselves with stenographers, then – and without noting any attempts whatsoever at verification – dutifully passed it all along to their readers on …. faith.

Compare what took place here to what the Associated Press has to say about the use of anonymous sources in politics:

“No one wants news that’s built on unnamed, unaccountable sources and facts seemingly pulled from the air. Politicians and members of the public sometimes have cited such journalism as a reason for the fall in trust in the media….

“Reporting with loose attribution or anonymous sourcing can be dismissed as fake by the skeptical reader or politician. On the other hand, a report filled with verifiable facts attributed to named and authoritative sources of information is impossible to dispute.”

When all was said and done, the coverage of the Prime Minister’s visit to Egypt was denied to journalists and replaced with unchallenged reports from the leader’s staff, just like it’s done in tin pot dictatorships. And not a peep from the nation’s heavily subsidized journalism community.

Not a frickin’ peep.

(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)

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