NOTLEY’S ABOUT- FACE
It’s awfully rare to see a government backtrack as quickly and unequivocally as the Alberta NDP did this week. It’s especially hard for such a government to gracefully concede to Ezra Levant, a man who has made a successful career of taunting the progressive left.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s government deserves just a tiny bit of credit, then. Lesser governments would have tried to blunder forward even in the knowledge that its actions were totally and inexcusably idiotic.
Over the past year, since it has emerged from the more gaseous remnants of the implosion of the Sun News Network, the Rebel has engaged in a crusade against the Alberta NDP and many of its policies and appointments. The target selection is no coincidence: there is no politician who has done more to undermine the mojo of the Canadian conservative than Notley, who robbed the right of its safest, bluest heartland last year.
However, i t would be hard to deny that the Rebel has grown into a feisty foil to Alberta’s reigning government. It’s often more effective than the official Opposition i tself, drumming up distrust of Bill 6, for example, the NDP’s farm safety legislation. One of its main contributors, Sheila Gunn Reid, has recently released a bestselling e- book on the rise of the NDP titled, The Destroyers. This in a province — and a country — that prides itself on its comparatively tame media culture.
A clash between the Rebel and the provincial government was inevitable.
According to Reid, the past few weeks have witnessed three incidents when she or another of the outlet’s writers were denied access to a media event or asked to leave a common area. There may be some dispute about whether they followed proper protocol — it’s standard practice to register in advance of a media lockup, for example.
However, when the Rebel sent the government a note on legal stationery asking it to allow Reid and other reporters into future events, t he NDP’s response was shocking.
A curt email from the Ministry of Justice read: “Our client’s position remains that your client and those who identify as being connected to your client are not journalists and are not entitled to access media lock-ups.”
The premier’s spokesperson, Cheryl Oate s , doubled down on this explanation to the Post: “Our rationale on this is very simple and it comes down to one thing: It’s the fact that Ezra Levant himself has testified under oath that he is not a reporter and so we don’t consider him a reporter,” she said. “If you go to court and testify under oath that you are not a reporter, the government doesn’t consider you a reporter.”
Levant has indeed admitted that he is not a reporter under oath. “I’m a commentator, I’m a pundit,” he told a court in 2014. “I don’t think in my entire life I’ve ever called myself a reporter.”
The problem with this logic was not immediately obvious to those who were keen to latch onto any halfbaked excuse to score a point against a despised critic. You see, I’m not a reporter, either. I’m not even an accredited member of the Edmonton legislature. Most of my writing is now commentary. That doesn’t mean I’m not a journalist, and the Alberta government has yet to bar me or any other columnist I know from a media event.
Further, why would the Rebel be denied the status of journalistic outfit just because its founder considers himself a pundit? What morally infallible figures did the NDP imagine run respectable media outlets nowadays?
There are dozens of different roles that fall under the umbrella of journalism, ranging from reporter, editorialist, blogger, tweeter and pundit to cat-.gif listicle writer. And as traditional newspapers and broadcasters find themselves in the trenches with an emerging cadre of online outlets that blend activism with reporting — the Tyee, Rabble and the National Observer come to mind — our definition of what constitutes “journalism” has only grown more expansive.
So it’s easy to see the problem when governments conclude they have the power to decide who is deserving of access to media availabilities — particularly when those who are unique- ly denied it also just happen to be among the government’s most voluble critics.
Of course, this doesn’t mean the government must always grant everyone access to every event. Accreditation is usually a matter of practicality and logistics. Sometimes space is limited. Governments weed out potential security concerns and discourage attendance by people who are only there to cause a disturbance. A degree of professionalism is expected.
But the government didn’t claim any such practical defence for its decision to permanently bar the Rebel from accessing media availabilities. Instead, it demanded the power to define who is a journalist and who isn’t.
The attempt is completely out of step with standard practice. In Ottawa, for example, accreditation is managed by the Parliamentary Press Gallery, which is run by journalists themselves. Frankly, I’m not comfortable with even this arrangement, although it’s probably an unavoidable necessity.
A press pass isn’t supposed to signal entry into an exclusive club. It’s not a license to be a journalist. It’s just a way to get through security. The term “journalist” isn’t some sainted designation. It’s just a job description. There’s no formal prerequisite or training required. Any citizen who does journalism is a journalist and should be granted access to government-funded events without fuss.
( These theoretical practical limitations aside, trust me when I say that mid- day technical briefings really aren’t that popular with the general public. We’ve yet to resort to barricading the doors.)
At first, t he NDP attempted to quell the controversy by asking Heather Boyd, the former Western Canada bureau chief for Canadian Press to review its media policies. Frankly, and with due respect to Boyd, this is a waste of the government’s time and money. It only will only mire it in a deepening existential media quagmire — one that it has no right to mediate at all.
At some point, the NDP must have realized that, journalistic umbrage aside, the real problem with its j ustification was that it was just plain daft. There is nothing to be gained in picking a fight with a person who has built a career out of successfully chall enging governments for this kind of overreach. Ezra Levant knows when he’s right and the Alberta NDP gave him its greatest gift, a moral victory — one that he duly lorded over his base to drum up fundraising. I can only imagine the Rebel Commander’s disappointment when the NDP backtracked so entirely for its mistake on Wednesday.
He seems to have bounced back alright, I’m happy to report. By mid- day, he was already promising to oppose the Boyd review, accusing Canadian Journalists for Free Expression of spinning for Notley and trashing the media “industry cartel” on Twitter. Bless his heart.
IT COULDN’T BE EASY FOR THIS GOVERNMENT TO CONCEDE TO EZRA LEVANT, A MAN WHO HAS MADE A SUCCESSFUL CAREER OF TAUNTING THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT.