Does any of this make sense?

Posted by ealboim under All, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

 

Elly Alboim

 I’m afraid not.

First, there’s the scavenger hunt. Lisa Raitt’s aide loses her tape recorder in February and allegedly never asks for it back, despite the reporter’s claim that he offered to return it. Then months later, presumably more alert now, she leaves a briefing book behind and doesn’t claim it either. Is this normal behaviour for an aide in the most secretive government we’ve had in memory? 

In both cases, the reporters wait to report on what they have. In CTV’s case, they wait a week. In the Halifax Chronicle Herald case, they wait months and claim not to even have bothered listening to it until the briefing book affair. Does this sound like the competitive journalism that has led to the breathless scandal-chasing we’ve come see as normal in Ottawa?  

Then the unemployed aide goes to court to get an injunction and everyone in government and the Conservative Party who is asked, claims not to have funded the process and not to be involved in any other way. The attempt at prior restraint fails as every other such attempt has and the story gets wider exposure as a result.  And now a dying story without “legs” has become the Eveready bunny. Is this competent crisis management from the allegedly strategic political machine currently in power?

None of it makes any sense or stands up to scrutiny. It is baffling.

Elly Alboim is an associate professor of journalism and a strategic communications consultant at the Earnscliffe Strategy Group. He was CBC TV’s Parliamentary Bureau Chief  for 16 years during which time he thought he’d seen just about all there was to see on the Hill. He was wrong.