Not Just In Other Places

So you're disgusted by the way Donald Trump treats the press? Don't feel smug. We have the same phenomenon here in Canada. Michael Harris writes:

With oil prices around zero, [Jason] Kenney was asked by a reporter if he was prepared to speak to advocates of the Green New Deal. The GND is the ambitious plan to transition the energy economy towards renewables and conservation in order to address climate change. It’s just been rejected by the Republican-dominated Senate in the United States.

Instead of answering the reporter’s question, Kenney claimed the question, coming “from a Calgary-based media outlet,” threw him “for a loop” and then scolded for even having to entertain such “pie-in-the-sky ideological schemes.”

Kenney believes that Alberta's media should be selling his policies:

It’s true that then-publisher of the National Post Douglas Kelly made clear his paper would “leverage all means editorially, technically and creatively” to advance the cause of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. That’s the kind of media Kenney and the Cons love. Embedded.

Jason Kenney is plugging into an international phenomenon: right-wing leaders who mint their own facts and brook no opposition — kings of confabulation who rule with an iron microphone.

Kenney gives every sign that he is learning from Trump’s daily pandemic grandstanding. Reporters ask the president perfectly legitimate questions that are in the public interest. Before they get their queries out of their mouths, he responds by attacking them like a rabid chihuahua. Trump says their questions are nasty. He denounces them as terrible journalists and awful people. He bristles that they are employed by fake news agencies. He even accuses them of trying to undermine his presidency by withholding praise for his many good ideas. You know, like mainlining Lysol, or burning your innards with pulses of light to purge COVID-19.

He forgets that journalism is the fourth estate in a democracy:

Journalists are the anti-venom for the snake bite of government spin and messaging. And Kenney doesn’t like that one bit. In fact, his relationship with the truth, and his commitment to democracy and free speech, have often been underwhelming. Which is one of the reasons he doesn’t like answering questions. Edicts are more his thing.

Everyone remembers how as federal minister of immigration, Kenney used his own civil servants for a televised, fake citizenship ceremony. At the time, Kenney refused to apologize. Instead, he went with the line that it was the government workers who deceived the public, only to walk back that story when found out.

Kenney didn’t get much more democratic when he moved to provincial politics. This is the guy who earmarked $30 million of taxpayers’ money for the Canadian Energy Centre, a so-called “energy war room.” The government employees who worked there called themselves “reporters” when interviewing people for their pro-oil propaganda articles.

The idea was to use the resources of government to slap down anyone who dared criticize Alberta’s energy industry or the government support is receives. Not a war room at all really — merely an exercise in ideological thuggery aimed at curbing free speech.

There's a lot of that going around these days -- not just in other places, but here at home, too.

Image: Macleans