Reporting on PM’s visit to China
Reporter Alex Ballingall faced a challenge in covering a trip among tight-lipped leaders
How Ottawa bureau reporter Alex Ballingall covered the prime minister’s trip to China amid failed trade talks.
This story is part of the Star’s trust initiative, where, every week, we take readers behind the scenes of our journalism. This week, we look at how Ottawa bureau reporter Alex Ballingall recently handled the challenge of reporting during the prime minister’s trip to China.
Star reporter Alex Ballingall was hunkering down for the 17-hour flight to Canada from China, where he had been covering Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit earlier this month, when a staffer from the Prime Minister’s Office appeared in the aisle of the government Airbus.
Would anyone like an off-the-record chat with Trudeau?
It was a tempting offer for any journalist. A chance to chat with a prime minister who might be candid about the behind the scenes events of what was considered a failed effort to spark trade talks with the world’s second-largest economy.
The only catch: journalists had to promise not to report what Trudeau said. Some reporters on the flight agreed. Ballingall was conflicted. “The PMO made the case that it’s a fun tradition, and that it benefits both the media and the prime minister to get to know each other on a ‘human level.’ I see where they’re coming from,” said Ballingall, a political reporter, based in Ottawa for a year.
“But my gut feeling is that I shouldn’t agree to go off-the-record with the most powerful politician in the country — maybe ever. As a reporter, I’m a representative of the public. It didn’t feel right to potentially hear his true feelings about what happened in China, on the condition that I would never report them.”
The episode on the plane capped what was a challenging four-day trip for reporters, with hard to come by information — from both the notoriously controlling Chinese government, and from Canadian officials.
The prime minister was travelling to China to build stronger trade and investment links. Many reporters who travelled with Trudeau expected that he was setting the stage for formal free trade talks with the Asian nation — talks that ultimately did not get off the ground during the trip.
On the issue of the off-the-record chat, the Star’s Newsroom Policy and Journalistic Standards Guide states that going off-the-record with sources — promising not to report information provided — should be used rarely, if at all.
In an email to the Star, Cameron Ahmad, manager of media relations for the PMO, said on every international trip since Trudeau was elected, the prime minister has joined the travelling delegation of journalists for an off-the-record chat during the flight home.
“This informal conversation is an opportunity for the prime minister and journalists who travel with us to have an additional discussion about the trip — or anything else they wish to ask about. And it resumes a tradition that had largely been abandoned by the previous prime minister,” Ahmad said.
He stressed that during the China trip Trudeau held three on-the-record media conferences.
“The off-the-record chat on the plane is an added opportunity for dialogue and, as far as we can recall, has always involved the participation of every single journalist who travels with us on every occasion,” he said.
Julie Carl, the Star’s senior editor of national and urban affairs and social justice, said Ballingall’s call to decline the chat was the right one.
“In my mind, all his move did was underline the fact the mission was a bust and he was trying to do damage control in (almost) the worst possible way — using his charisma to sell a private story to a group of reporters he had taken into the fold,” Carl said.
Going into the trip, there was good reason to expect the two countries would launch formal free-trade talks. China’s ambassador to Canada, Lu Shaye, had said publicly that his country wanted a trade deal. And the contingent of staffers and cabinet ministers accompanying Trudeau for a series of meetings with highranking Chinese government leaders left the impression that trade talks were imminent.
So it was with some surprise that reporters learned following discussions between Trudeau and Premier Li Keqiang that no formal trade talks would be launched. While the two leaders characterized their discussions as “productive,” talks were held up, the leaders said.
The question was, why? Getting a clear answer wouldn’t be easy for reporters on the trip, Ballingall said.
For one, the only opportunity for Canadian reporters to ask questions of Chinese leaders was cancelled.
Reporters are obliged to provide audiences with an accurate representation of any news event, and to do this they must be diligent in attempting to ensure subjects included in their report are given a chance to represent their side of the story.
But when information is scarce it is difficult to provide a full picture, much less representations from both sides.
Later, at a press conference held at Trudeau’s hotel in Beijing without Premier Li, Ballingall asked the prime minister what issues or obstacles were holding them up. The answer he got wasn’t forthcoming.
“He said there was no ‘single issue’ and underlined that trade talks between China and Canada would be a big deal, given the size of China’s economy and the fact that it would be China’s first trade negotiations with a G7 country,” Ballingall said. “It would have been very interesting to hear the Chinese leadership answer that question, but we never had a chance to ask.”
In the end, Ballingall spoke to Canadian industry representatives and trade experts to get some context and insight to provide to readers.
“I just worked as hard as I could to get as much information as possible and then was careful to report it accurately and fairly,” he said. Email your questions to trust@thestar.ca.