Angry Prime Minister

Frigid relations with Ottawa media highlight Stephen Harper's reputation for being angry and controlling.

A HarperIndex.ca summer re-feature

Stephen Harper has taken on an adversarial relationship with most of the national media corps.

"The media represent two things [the Harper Conservatives] don't seem to like — the establishment and community," says the Toronto Star's Ottawa Bureau Chief Susan Delacourt. "Their resentment of the establishment and their failure to understand that Ottawa is a small town are all played out with the media."

In addition to all the standard bullying, like denying access — he simply refuses to be scrummed in the House of Commons lobby like other politicians and usually exits the House by a back stairway — and tossing off insults, a new form of cyber bullying has emerged. Conservative blog websites post material too radical for the politicians and encourage readers to bombard adversaries with email. Delacourt says that the cyberbullies are especially active after the Friday night journalists' panel on Don Newman's Politics show on CBC Newsworld.

She says she's been surprised by the ferocity of the Harper government's war on the media. Harper used to be a good listener, she recalls. "One of the things I used to like about [Harper] was that he was so good at stepping into your shoes." That all seemed to change instantly when he became Prime Minister.

The anger and impatience have become part of a pattern, especially as regards communications and the media. No one seems to have it right, according to Harper, who has or had quit three communications directors, Geoff Norquay, Jim Armour and William Stairs.

Maclean'snational affairs reporter Paul Wells writes that Harper's current communications director, Sandra Buckler, is "the first communications director anyone could remember who simply wouldn't return most routine phone calls from reporters."

Delacourt says Buckler is "obviously not in her job to communicate with the media, beyond the standard media lines and press releases. There's no reason for senior journalists to call the PMO."

Harper distrusts "the establishment" and sees the news media as part of it, says Delacourt. Like US President Bush, he actively seeks to "decertify" the media — a term coined by media analyst Jay Rosen — as a legitimate voice of public interest.

The Conservatives would prefer to go over the heads of the established media and reach voters through like-minded websites that don't face the same constraints as politicians. It fits with this mindset to set up a 17,000-square-foot war room in Ottawa to produce media that can be beamed directly to websites and media outlets without the bother of national news reporters "filtering" their message.

The angry Harper, however, has increasingly been on display for Canadians, and the response in opinion polls has not been encouraging for him. The Prime Minister's outbursts of name-calling in response to questions about his party's Afghan detainee policy in the Commons is a good example. Poll numbers went down almost in lockstep with Harper's outbursts, as well as with the recent deaths of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. An environment plan full of half measures and John Baird snubbing David Suzuki did not help.

"[Harper] has a mean streak, a thin-skinned nastiness that he can't even be bothered to conceal," wrote former Paul Martin communications director Scott Reid in the Toronto Star . "Never before has a prime minister sought to serve as his own hatchet man. Yet, Harper revels in the role.

"He spitefully labels his political opponents Taliban sympathizers or child pornographers. Small wonder that Canadians haven't warmed to him. The guy's miserable. And with this week's debacle surrounding Afghan detainees, he can't even continue to claim the mantle of competence."

Paul Wells' fascinating account of Harper's rise in his book Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism cites many eruptions of Harper's anger: at Stockwell Day for losing the 2000 election; at reporter Tonda McCharles for confronting him with the Canadian Alliance's own news release (of January 28, 2003) contradicting his contention that he hadn't favoured sending Canadian troops to Iraq; at his staff for mistakes, and so on.

Ottawa Citizen columnist Don Martin wrote, on May 5 2007, about the dispute between Harper and Newfoundland premier Danny Williams over oil revenues. "I'm always portrayed as the fighting renegade who just wants to take on the world, but you have to start listening to what other people are saying," Williams says. "Listen to Premier (Lome) Calvert of Saskatchewan or Premier (Rodney) MacDonald of Nova Scotia. Ask aboriginal leaders. Look at the promises he made to other people that he's reneged on. If he's done this to me and my province, take a hard look at what he promises you because the same thing could happen." The danger for Conservatives is that their leader is increasingly perceived as a brooding Nixonian figure compiling enemy lists and designating weak lambs for sacrifice on the altar of political expediency.

"On that score, Williams has him nailed. Harper's a chameleon whose colour changes regularly. Compare what he stands for now against where he stood a few years ago and they are two completely different things." No argument there, even from diehard Conservatives.

"I see a real danger for minority groups, disadvantaged groups and for poorer provinces on a go-forward basis, because I feel if he got a majority government, he would be in complete and full control and that would be very dangerous for the country."

Harper Conservative vs. Public Values Frame
  Message / Spin
  Responsible / Bullying
  Bias / Free press, democracy

Links and sources
  PM can't hide his media obsession, by Susan Delacourt Apr 14, 2007
  Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism, by Paul Wells, pp 120-121
  Spin Cycles Spinning into the 21st century: Episode 6: The sixth part of a series about spin, the spinners and the spun,
  http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/05/24/harper05242006.html
  http://www.canada.com/globaltv/national/story.html?id=89eafbaf-ddbe-45...
  No mystery to Harper's unpopularity, by Scott Reid Apr 28, 2007

Posted: May 10, 2007

Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca