Reading Andrew MacDougall’s farewell to the turnstile at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) yesterday, you have to be puzzled. You wonder that, after the experience of serving Prime Minister Harper as his communications chief, MacDougall is not only leaving Ottawa but leaving the country. How bad can that job be?
That makes seven communications chiefs in that office in seven years. MacDougall says in his farewell that until he joined the PMO as a communications underling, he had never dealt with the news media. It might come as a surprise to his new bosses in an international communications firm that he still has not. The only thing the news people in Ottawa have written about him is that he is a good golfer and is polite.
But he obviously bought into the Anglophilia of Prime Minister Harper. He is going to work for a British communications firm in London. That might sound exciting but we expect the English media will have him for lunch. Maybe if he wears one of those inflatable sumo wrestling suits when working with them, it might save him from some serious bruising.
The problem is that the principal form of communications used by the PMO is better known as propaganda. That is what is practiced at that office.
They do not deal with the news media, they dictate. By no stretch is what they do considered reasonable negotiation, or even reasonable. They corral and control the media and it is only the equal fear some reporters have for their editors and news directors and their desire to keep their jobs that keeps things on an even keel. The communications people spew endless propaganda, call it information and the news media can like it or not. It is there for them and you get that or nothing.
The PMO communications people are the only ones we know who can pick a perfect locale for an announcement and then put up a trade show backdrop to put behind the speaker. And the traditional back shots of the speaker are not allowed.
You would like to think this is all a matter of opinion and this is just another Liberal diatribe over the Conservative way of running the country. If you are not aware of the constant lies this government uses our money to promote in advertisements on radio, television and in print, you are part of the problem.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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