“It is a private meeting” - Tories’ bizarre farce

I am surprised and angry of how arrogant the Conservative government/party has become when it decided to selectively invite some media outlets while excluding some large media outlets including the Canadian Press, the CBC, Maclean's, the Globe and Mail (original scheduled but later canceled) and the Halifax Chronicle Herald. Here is an excerpt from CBC report (with video) (emphasis added),

CBC News requested to attend the briefings, but was rejected and told by party spokesman Ryan Sparrow that it was a private meeting, Boag said, adding reporters from the Canadian Press, Maclean’s magazine and Canwest Global Communications Corp. were also not permitted to attend.

Giving some reporters a briefing before Monday’s court release of the warrant allows the party a chance to shape the story, but it also creates the impression that the Conservatives need to spin it, Boag said.

Here is an excerpt from Canadian Press report “Conservative effort to limit raid damage leads to bizarre farce” (emphasis added),

The federal Conservatives made “false and misleading” statements in their financial returns for the last election and exceeded their campaign spending limit by over $1 million, Elections Canada says in a warrant that led to a raid on party headquarters.

A copy of the warrant and supporting materials was provided to The Canadian Press.

The documents were supposed to be made public Monday, but a bizarre attempt by the Tories to get ahead of the news by briefing select reporters on Sunday led to a slapstick scene that saw party representatives switching hotels, slamming doors and scampering down fire exits to escape pointed questions from journalists who weren’t invited to the meeting. [K: Are they for real here?]

The Conservatives have contended ever since the raid last week that they did nothing wrong and were surprised when the RCMP, acting on a request from Elections Canada, showed up with the warrant at their offices.

Elections Canada officials offered stark disagreement.

“The Conservative party of Canada exceeded its election expense spending limit for the 39th federal general election,” the 68-page supporting affidavit for the warrant alleges.

The document maintains that the Conservative Fund of Canada, the party’s official agent, filed financial returns “that it knew or ought reasonably to have known contained a materially false or misleading statement.”

And the affidavit, signed by Elections Canada investigator Robert Lamothe, alleges that Tory advertising transactions - commonly known as the “in and out” scheme - allowed the party “to spend more than $1 million over and above” its legal campaign limit of $18 million.

Here is an excerpt of a report from The Globe and Mail (emphasis added),

In releasing the abridged version of the documents to select media, the party hoped to give Mr. Sparrow, campaign organizer Doug Finley and party lawyer Paul Lepsoe a chance to explain the Conservative point of view.

In the end, the plan went horribly awry.

On Saturday night, Mr. Sparrow called a number of reporters to ask them to come to meetings that had been scheduled for yesterday at the Lord Elgin Hotel in downtown Ottawa saying it “would be worth their while.”

But media outlets who were not among those invited got wind of the meetings yesterday morning and began to ask what was going on.

When one reporter asked in an e-mail about the news conference, Mr. Sparrow replied: “No conference, not sure where you got that from.”

The reporter then flipped Mr. Sparrow back an e-mail in which he had told another reporter who was on the list that the briefing would be at “4:30 Lord Elgin, Boardroom 800. Embargo until 7:30 pm Sunday night.”

To which Mr. Sparrow replied: “I meet with journalists privately all the time.”

Shortly thereafter, the Liberals found out about the briefings and advised all of the Ottawa press gallery, some of whom were quite miffed to find they had been excluded. When they threatened to show up at the Lord Elgin, despite the lack of an invitation, the meeting was secretly moved to the Sheraton.

The first briefing for select television outlets took place but, by that time, the excluded reporters found out the new location and began to stake out the hotel.

That led the Conservatives to cancel all subsequent briefings, including the one they had planned with The Globe. And Mr. Sparrow, Mr. Finley and Mr. Lepsoe fled from the Sheraton down a back set of stairs.

CTV News (see its report) and Toronto Star (its report) are amongst the media outlets that got invited. But sadly, they now have, in my eyes, credibility problems simply for the fact that they were the “chosen” media outlets. Can I trust them to report fairly? Or are they known to be easily controllable and are on the “good side” of the Conservatives?

I haven’t gone to J-school and don’t know what is the proper journalistic and ethically right thing to do. But I wonder if and should the reporters from CTV News (Mike Duffy) and Toronto Star (Tonda MacCharles) have done the honourable thing and share their media package (hundred of pages of documents and CD) with their colleagues in other media outlets that got excluded?

Canadian Press said it right, it is surely one “bizarre farce”!

P.S. Here is an article in The Hill Times, "Conservatives confusing public on 'in and out' financing says Prof. MacIvor - It's the content of Tory Party's ads in question", analyzing some of the original issues that Elections Canada is investigating.

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Apr 21, 2008 Update: From CBC, "Tories overspent on election by $1M: HQ raid warrant"