Hill Times reporter Harris MacLeod talks to me, Paul Wells, and Don Martin about the Prime Minister's director of communication Kory Teneycke and changes to the PMO's communications strategy since he succeeded Sandra Buckler last month:
PMO's media charm offensive very much alive, Cabinet ministers more available
'Reporters, myself very much among them, are extremely susceptible to mistreatment and to flattery,' says Paul WellsThe PM's new chief of staff Guy Giorno and new director of communications Kory Teneycke seem to be implementing a more friendly, accessible and available approach to dealing with the Parliamentary Press Gallery, but CanWest reporter David Akin said the government's dumping of three negative reports on the Friday before a long weekend shows that the message is still tightly managed.
“I get the impression that things are shaking loose, that there's different, new protocols for ministers to be made available to media, but again I'm not so sure how that's going to shake out,” Mr. Akin told HT last week. “Last week we saw the report on Bernier come out. I happened to be working and that came out Friday before a long weekend at 6 p.m., and do you think we found [Foreign Affairs] Minster [David] Emerson [Vancouver Kingsway, B.C.] anywhere to talk about it? [Read the full story...]
“in that case they certainly managed the availability of that minister, Mr. Emerson, to make him completely unavailable”
With all due respect, David, it was 6pm on the Friday before a long weekend and the guy lives in Vancouver. Where do you think he would be ? So the government were trying to minimise the impact of the report, what's the big deal ? I think when you make really picky comments like this, it makes you seem somewhat biased.
Anyway, doesn't Global have a reporter in Vancouver that could bang on Emerson's door ? And what happened to the telephone as a means of communication ?
We tried the phone. No luck.
And while I while happily stand outside Ministers' cars parked on Parliament Hill, we are not at the point in Canada — which I'm very pleased about — where we need to stake out their personal residences.