Source : Toronto Star

In this much more mediated world, where "communications professionals" and spin doctors determine the message and feed it to ever-outgunned journalists, gaining access to newsmakers gets tougher and tougher. It's a particularly insidious practice in show biz. The gatekeepers can be attack dogs, ensuring that, say, movie stars doing promotional interviews or (haha!) "in-depth" Vanity Fair profiles, never even get asked the uncomfortable questions, let alone respond to them. Any intrepid interviewers actually doing journalism who cross that line not only risk getting cut out, they also jeopardize their entire news organization's ability to cover a particular movie studio or distributor's product. Write a bad review and wham! You might find yourself unable to even buy a ticket to this theatre's next play or that venue's next show. This is not to say critics pull their punches. They don't — unless, of course, they're the professional blurbmeisters or junket whores who always rate a movie as "the best picture of the year" in the ads that come out weeks before the film does. When news media such as your fine upstanding Toronto Star get cut off by enraged movie distributors — or even political parties with which we don't agree on policy issues — we keep it to ourselves, weather the storm and eventually prevail. The truth will prevail. The pen is mightier than the boycott and all that. But not the National Post. Last Saturday it made a cause célebre of how it was "banned" from access to NBC's late night talk show host Conan O'Brien when he makes his "much-hyped visit to Toronto next month" as part of the effort to bring tourists back to town. According to a page 2 story, Peter Soumalias, the Toronto organizer for "Conan In Toronto," issued the ban after the Post "ran a front-page article in which representatives of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation questioned the legitimacy of all Canadians footing part of the tab ..." A fair question, no? Why not ask if taxpayers in provinces not SARS-struck should be hit with part of the million smackers it will cost for Conan and crew to decamp to our fair city for a little levity and positive p.r.? Which is why I had to hold my nose and agree with Post chair David Asper when he accused Soumalias of "trying to censor the media" — although he could be accused of inconsistency when he demanded a "Senate inquiry" into the ban. This from a guy who wants to keep government out of the media business? Give me a break. Also on Saturday, the Post ran Soumalias' complaint on its letters page. As printed, it seemed whiny and naïve: "One might deduce that the Post has a slanted agenda and is only serving its own interests." No kidding: The Post does have its agenda, and tax cuts are way at the top, along with crawling up U.S. President George W. Bush's digestive tract, bashing welfare mothers, trashing CBC and praising just about everything the right-wing Fraser Institute comes out with. So what? This is a free country with a free press. The Post can and does print whatever it wants, fair or unfair. Besides, it's preaching to the converted. And hardly anybody reads the thing anymore anyway. Banning the Post, or even threatening a ban, from something that the taxpayers are funding merely gives it more ammunition. It's unprofessional and out of line. It's bad publicity. And it's undemocratic. That said, do you think I can get executives from CanWest Global Communications, which owns The Post, to return my calls, answer my questions and grant me interviews?

Nah.

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