Oct 6, 2023
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Flexing power by stifling dissent, conducting affairs in secret, and obsessively controlling message.
Jeremy J. Nuttall, writing in The Tyee.
The more I cover the Conservatives this election, the more I feel back in Beijing, where for a time I worked inside state media. I took that job hoping China was opening up, lured by a false promise I'd be helping the media there grow into an independent and free one. Instead, before I quit, I got a real schooling on how totalitarian manipulation of the news works.
Having completed that education, these days I am increasingly startled by similarities between tactics of the Tories and those of the Chinese Communist Party. Both seek to preserve power by stifling dissent, conducting affairs in secret, and obsessively controlling the message.
The latest example from the Conservatives is MP Paul Calandra blocking journalists (myself included) and other people he doesn't like on Twitter. It's a bigger deal than people might think. Here you have a government official trying to prevent the media and some of the public from seeing what he says to other people whose votes he seeks
Former MP Inky Mark suggests that Harper didn't call an open candidate's meeting in the Labrador by-election, instead just allowing the national party to nominate Penashue without opposition, for fear that the local association might pick a candidate he could not control.
Parks Canada and the Nova Scotia government, which had co-operated over a year to turn Sable Island into a federal park, began months earlier to plan a public event and announcement to celebrate Parks Canada's centennial in 2011. The intention was to use the event as an opportunity to publicize Parks Canada's contributions.
Only days before the announcement, however, Harper administration's Privy Council Office intervened and made striking changes. All mention of Parks Canada was removed from the background information released to the media. The Parks Canada officials, including the CEO, were removed from the event. The Parks Canada banner was ordered to be taken off the stage. Two paragraphs describing Parks Canada's work and its recent award from the WWF were deleted from Defense Minister Peter McKay's speech and replaced with a reference to the "Harper government's" signing of the agreement.
The PCO did not release access-to-information documents about the changes requested by the Canadian Press in October 2011 until long after the legislated deadline, and only after a complaint to the information commissioner.
Employees of Library and Archives Canada must now get permission to perform the "high risk" activities of teaching and speaking at conferences. Their new code of conduct stresses their "duty of loyalty" to the "duly elected government".
The numerous barriers to publishing or even talking about their work set for Canadian scientists by Harper's Conservative government have been laid before Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault.
Campaign Consultants’ Wikipedia Problem
Last Thursday, Politico reported that controversy-prone freshman Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) had encountered another public relations problem in the form of Wikipedia.
While Rivera’s Wikipedia entry includes several brief paragraphs about his service in the state legislature, his 2010 election to Congress, and his family life, the bulk of it is concerned with controversies surrounding the congressman. Among these are a 1994 domestic violence accusation, a 2002 traffic accident, and two increasingly serious allegations that Rivera received unreported income from USAID as well as a Florida dog track. Rivera’s problems have led to speculation that the Republican Party may support a primary challenge in 2012 if he appears sufficiently vulnerable.
The controversies swirling around Rivera have been compounded by the recent discovery that his press secretary, Leslie Veiga, has repeatedly edited his Wikipedia entry to remove these controversies and replace them with a boilerplate rundown of his voting record and history in the Florida legislature.
In response to Veiga’s edits, Wikipedia’s universe of citizen content editors quickly amended the entry and replaced the controversies section in Rivera’s entry. In the process, the Wikipedia editors added one more item to the list of controversies on Rivera’s page: the fact that his press secretary had attempted to cover up his past by deleting unflattering details from his Wikipedia page.
As the Internet encyclopedia becomes more popular and the information contained in it more reliable, Wikipedia has become an indispensible tool for individuals seeking a quick overview of a subject or individual. In fact, a voter’s first source of information on a candidate is increasingly likely to be through Wikipedia. All of which means that unflattering entries have the potential to become a public relations nightmare for candidates.
The episode with Rep. Rivera has revealed a blind spot among consultants, many of whom do not have a strategy to deal with Wikipedia.
“My strategy doesn’t even include Wikipedia at this point,” says Lois Marbach, president of the New York City–based Democratic consulting firm Promotional Strategies. “It is not even on my radar.” Marbach adds that, while she doesn’t agree with the method that Rivera’s press secretary employed to polish his image, she understands the desperation one can experience in trying to control what the public says about a public figure. “It is just insane the methods we have to use to monitor and maintain the message.”
Maurice Bonamigo, Chicago-based Republican consultant and president of Maurice Bonamigo & Associates, says that there is not much a candidate or consultant can do about Wikipedia, beyond ignoring it or leading an unimpeachable life. “The best thing to do is just ignore it or issue a press statement saying that what you read on Wikipedia is not true,” he says.
While some consultants see uncertainty in a future in which new communications platforms like Wikipedia proliferate, others take heart in the continuity of the unchanging fundamentals of campaigning. Ryan Hawkins, president of the nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.–based Winding Creek Group, says that while the game has evolved, the rules remain the same.
“Campaigns and good campaign managers who ‘get it’ know you cannot manipulate sites like Wikipedia without paying a price,” says Hawkins. “It falls under the, ‘don't do something stupid’ rule, which more times than not will kill a campaign.”
Noah Rothman is the online editor at C&E. E-mail him at [email protected]