I just wanted to apologize in advance if I'm not able to respond to whatever variation on the "you don't work for me; you're just a nefarious liberal fifth columnist filled with hatred and soggy discredited leftist ideals of journalistic independence, and by the way, you're also ugly and buffoonish and stupid and probably on the payroll of the LPC" that you might be about to pound out via email.
I thank you all for your comments, and appreciate your readership, but I have work to do, and can't reply to every single email. My apologies. Keep up the great work!
Save for one surprise visit by Harper Oct. 3 (a visit that shocked even his senior staff) the National Press Theatre has been shunned by "Canada's New Government." Now, documents obtained by the Toronto Star under the Access to Information Act reveal that government planning for a "special project for the PM, otherwise reffered (sic) as the Shoe Store Project" has been underway since at least last year. Civil servants were asked to investigate the possibility of renovating an old shoe store location on the Sparks Street pedestrian mall "for the possible use of the PM." "The rental sign will stay in place for now," says one memo, written in advance of a meeting with PCO Clerk Kevin Lynch, effectively Harper's deputy minister. One document says the "dedicated press availability facility" is part of efforts to "put in place robust physical and information security measures to protect the Prime Minister and Cabinet." Its estimated cost: $2 million.
If this double plus Machiavellian madness actually comes to some sort of fruition, and WeThePressGallery consider going along with it for so much as a nanosecond, we may as well just hand over our press passes, turn in our BlackBerries and move on, en masse, to some other profession; one, perhaps, not quite so essential to a functioning democracy.
For the last eighteen months, gallery members have agonized - in public, and in private - over how best to deal with the seemingly bottomless pit of emnity that our very existence elicits from the Prime Miniser, and his cabal of co-conspirators at PMO communications.
We have dithered over lists, considering everything from cooperation to complete capitulation. We have borne witness to the transformation of this town, from a place where, after hours, a staffer and a journalist can, on occasion, sit down for a companionable drink to one where the mere sighting of someone like PMO High Priestess of Press Alienation Sandra Buckler is enough to send tiny Tory leges and EAs scattering in terror, abandoning half-finished pints on the table, hoping that she didn't spot them fraternizing with the enemy.
We have had wars within our membership over the ethics of breaking rank on the list, of giving in to the fanatical demands for control in order to be granted the most fleeting access to the men and women (read: man) who run the affairs of the nation. Some of us have even thrown in the towel while waving the white flag, signing on as de facto mouthpieces for the government in hopes that it will placate the implacable.
None of it, not one thing, has made even the slightest dent in the wall of paranoia that surrounds this government. We have tried to meet them halfway, or even right outside the moat; in response, they have set the vats of oil on boil, and wait for us to come just a little bit closer to the castle.
No more. This - - this monstrous plan, this must serve as our wakeup call. We are journalists. We are not typists. We work on behalf of the people, not government - not this government, nor the next one, or any government in waiting that might, on reading this article, be hoping, in its heart of hearts, that this is one thing that the Prime Minister will be able to do, in order to spare them from doing the same in the future.
We are the fourth estate. We do not have to justify our existence, or our need for independence, to anyone. We are not a tame lion. If this goes ahead, it's time to roar.
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The other shoe just dropped.
Kady O'Malley | October 15, 2007 | 10:28:51 | Permalink
kady.omalley@macleans.rogers.com
I just wanted to apologize in advance if I'm not able to respond to whatever variation on the "you don't work for me; you're just a nefarious liberal fifth columnist filled with hatred and soggy discredited leftist ideals of journalistic independence, and by the way, you're also ugly and buffoonish and stupid and probably on the payroll of the LPC" that you might be about to pound out via email.
I thank you all for your comments, and appreciate your readership, but I have work to do, and can't reply to every single email. My apologies. Keep up the great work!
---
No. Just no:
Now, documents obtained by the Toronto Star under the Access to Information Act reveal that government planning for a "special project for the PM, otherwise reffered (sic) as the Shoe Store Project" has been underway since at least last year.
Civil servants were asked to investigate the possibility of renovating an old shoe store location on the Sparks Street pedestrian mall "for the possible use of the PM."
"The rental sign will stay in place for now," says one memo, written in advance of a meeting with PCO Clerk Kevin Lynch, effectively Harper's deputy minister.
One document says the "dedicated press availability facility" is part of efforts to "put in place robust physical and information security measures to protect the Prime Minister and Cabinet."
Its estimated cost: $2 million.
For the last eighteen months, gallery members have agonized - in public, and in private - over how best to deal with the seemingly bottomless pit of emnity that our very existence elicits from the Prime Miniser, and his cabal of co-conspirators at PMO communications.
We have dithered over lists, considering everything from cooperation to complete capitulation. We have borne witness to the transformation of this town, from a place where, after hours, a staffer and a journalist can, on occasion, sit down for a companionable drink to one where the mere sighting of someone like PMO High Priestess of Press Alienation Sandra Buckler is enough to send tiny Tory leges and EAs scattering in terror, abandoning half-finished pints on the table, hoping that she didn't spot them fraternizing with the enemy.
We have had wars within our membership over the ethics of breaking rank on the list, of giving in to the fanatical demands for control in order to be granted the most fleeting access to the men and women (read: man) who run the affairs of the nation. Some of us have even thrown in the towel while waving the white flag, signing on as de facto mouthpieces for the government in hopes that it will placate the implacable.
None of it, not one thing, has made even the slightest dent in the wall of paranoia that surrounds this government. We have tried to meet them halfway, or even right outside the moat; in response, they have set the vats of oil on boil, and wait for us to come just a little bit closer to the castle.
No more. This - - this monstrous plan, this must serve as our wakeup call. We are journalists. We are not typists. We work on behalf of the people, not government - not this government, nor the next one, or any government in waiting that might, on reading this article, be hoping, in its heart of hearts, that this is one thing that the Prime Minister will be able to do, in order to spare them from doing the same in the future.
We are the fourth estate. We do not have to justify our existence, or our need for independence, to anyone. We are not a tame lion. If this goes ahead, it's time to roar.
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