Recently, I got a message from a CTV viewer in Calgary who asked:
Media reports of the Prime Minister's recent diversion of his aircraft to Cyprus mentioned that all journalists were offloaded. When members of the media travel with the Prime Minister do they receive this service gratis or are they required to pay the government?
This viewer sent this question to me and to the Prime Minister’s Office. Here’s the response from the PMO, which the viewer passed along to me:
July 28, 2006
Mr. [xxx]
Dear Mr. [xxx]:
On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, thank you for your e-mail of July 20 regarding travel expenses and the media. Members of the media who travel with the Prime Minister on commercial flights are expected to pay their own way. When travelling with the Prime Minister on non-commercial flights aboard his aircraft, their expenses are covered.
Once again, thank you for your e-mail.
Sincerely,
Salpie Stepanian
Assistant to the Prime Minister
/kc
For the record: CTV’s expenses are covered mostly by CTV when we travel with the PM. When I stay at a hotel while travelling with PM, I have to present my own personal credit card to which the hotel charges are billed. I’m responsible for paying that bill and submitting an expense claim to my employer, not the PMO. As for travel on the PM’s plane, it works this way:
When the PM’s itinerary for a trip is finalized, the PMO organizes media logistics — making sure there are enough seats on the PM’s plane, booking hotel rooms, arranging for catering services when we will not have time to seek out our own restaurant, and providing for a media filing room with appropriate telecom services wherever we travel. The PMO then provides members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery with a per-reporter estimate of what it will cost to provide all those services. Media organizations that agree to travel with the PM, then, agree to pay invoices we receive from the PMO based on that estimate. Knowing ahead of time what it will cost is an important consideration for newsroom managers who have to weigh the cost of newsgathering with the potential news value of a certain trip. So, for example, last year the CBC did not send anyone on Prime Minister Martin’s plane when he travelled to a NATO meeting in Brussels. CTV and Global paid to be on that plane. CBC still covered it, but decided to use reporters already in Europe to cover the NATO meeting. It’s quite possible — though I don’t know this for a fact — that budget considerations were part of CBC’s assignment decisions for that trip. (We like to be on the plane because sometimes, the PM will come to the back of the plane during the flight to make some newsworthy comments. Prime Minister Harper, for example, made his very newsworthy comment about Israel’s “measured” response in mid-flight en route to Europe.)
It’s not cheap to travel with the PM and that’s why only larger media organizations tend to do it. We’re the only ones who can afford it. I don’t know how much a seat on his last trip cost — the invoices are not sent to individual reporters but to a bureau manager — but, to give you a sense of the cost of travelling with a politician, media organizations paid about $10,000 a week for a seat on the election planes and that did not include hotel charges. If a media organization wanted to cover all three major campaigns, that’s about $30,000 a week. For broadcasters, it’s a lot more because we have to put camera crews and editors on these plans — each one costing another $10,000 a week.
And, of course, the response from the PM’s assistant on this question doesn’t pass the common sense test: If, as the PM’s assistant claims above, “expenses are covered” on the PM’s plane, you could be sure that every single seat on his Airbus would be filled and that the roughly 300 members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery would have to have some sort of lottery to get an “expenses covered” trip to London, St. Petersburg, and Paris.
Those were our destinations, of course, for the last trip and only about 21 media representatives were on board an aircraft that could certainly carry about five times that many. The TV journalists alone — CTV, CBC, SRC, and Global — took up nine of those spots.
Now, as I said, media organizations pay their share for travel with the PM. But on this last trip, of course, the PM made a last minute decision to ditch the media in Paris and take his plane down to Cyprus to load it up with Canadian evacuees in Lebanon. The PMO announced that it would then assume responsibility for the additional cost of an additional night’s accomodation for journalists in Paris and the additional cost of putting us all on the next available commercial flight back from Paris to Ottawa. I’m certain those costs were substantial but they were the only costs the PMO assumed. For those journalists — Les Whittington of The Toronto Star was one — that did not wish to return to Ottawa, the journalist would have to pick up their own tab for airfare. Les’ desk dispatched him from Paris to Turkey and so The Star paid the freight to move Les out of Paris.
I should note that most media organizations operate under the “we will pay our own way” concept. So whether it’s sports reporters travelling with a pro hockey team; drama critics heading to the Stratford Festival; or business reporters covering corporate conference in a faraway city — most major media organizations will accept logistical help from outside organizations but will insist on paying fair market value for the travel services provided.