Without a Yard

My favourite political blog post this week was penned by Garth Turner about the Lisa Raitt controversy.  It’s a succinct & tartly delivered case study that reflects many observers’ frustrations with partisanship & the unflattering cut’n'thrust of ‘real’ politics.

For those outside the Canuckistan borders, or otherwise not tuned into this stuff:

- Political staffer leaves Minister’s briefing binder at a television studio – Big whoops in Yawnsville, right? Well, erm, it was backgrounders & talking points about NUCLEAR ISOTOPES & our $1.7B/3 year investment in these facilities (which wasn’t listed in the last federal budget…)

-  Studio decides NOT to broadcast info & contacts Minister’s office to arrange pick-up, no doubt partly because docs’re stamped ‘secret’, which makes’em tough to get under Access to Information Act (for an opposite approach, check out Day One of MyBO in office).

-  Word gets out + Calls for resignation + ‘Ministerial Responsibility + Outrage in the Legislature + Public hanging, etc = Staffer got quit.

-  Some who’d worked with politicos kinda felt sorry for the staffer ‘thrown under the bus’ in light of the Minister’s resignation not being accepted by the PM.

-  Then it got worse.  Really worse.  No REALLY – involves a taped conversation by the Minister.  Left on a recorder.  Left behind (you guessed it!) at a media outlet – a good ol’fashioned newspaper.

-  All fairness to the Minister, it was very old convo, taped unknowingly…but the media outlet patiently gave the staffer months notice/reminders to pick it up (tiny Ottawa geography fact – the Press Gallery is across the street from the Main Legislative Buildings)….& when they heard of the staffer’s dismissal…they pressed ‘play’. (& so can you!  cilck here to launch Halifax Chronicle Herald media player)

© Bette Burgoyne

-  Staffer tries to ban the paper’s use of the tape’s contents -> Futile – a Halifax judge (rightly, IMHO) ruled that the contents of the conversation were more important than ‘reputation’ of staffer:

“It is wrong to deprive the press, and the public it serves, of remarks made privately but not confidentially in the sense of trade secrets…The issue of the political oversight of Canada’s medical isotope system is literally a matter of life and death for cancer patients. It is a matter of intense public interest…The handling of this issue by the government and the cabinet ministers is a matter of immediate public and political interest.”

The comments were tough to take on two fronts – Minister assesses a policy decision that could have been potentially fatal for cancer patients as a ‘sexy’ political win & describes a political colleague with a different cultural background as being disadvantaged due to her cooperative & collaborative approach to public service.

Drama & hype aside – why do I love this story so much?

-  Demonstrates that Access to Information is a vital piece of legislation to monitor, maintain & strengthen (less than half of FOI requests are met within 30 days, & 1/3 go longer than the most extended timelines allowed by law)

-  Humanizes politicos/staffer caught in rat-raciness of work (we all screw up, leave things behind, indulge in gallows humour & have ALL said things to close friends & colleagues that we’d be mortified to have distributed on a newspaper’s pop-up media player – Blatchford has a valid point & is often the first to remind us how overhyped stories in this vein become)

-  Serves up perfectly parallel karmic retribution finale (eventually when Raitt is shuffled off…just wait for it…) for losing sight of what it means to be a public servant

-  Completely reaffirms the imporance of mainstream media sources – & their Job-levels of patience – in staying professional with politicos & staff…& holding public interest above all – fighting to publish documents that are necessary for an informed citizenry

-  Proves online content & media-rich resources have changed the way we expect to consume this information.  Immediately after the court decision was announced the paper posted an audio file of the conversation – blogs & other news sources can grab this file & link back in seconds.  News hounds can watch the apologies online as they happen or archived at their leisure

That’s the REAL ‘sexy’ part of the entire schmozzle – swoon-tastic three part harmony of old media, new media & karma.