Scrum Wars: The Prime Ministers and the MediaThe image of the scrum -- a beleaguered politican surrounded by jockeying reporters -- is central to our perception of Ottawa. The modern scrum began with the arrival of television, but even in Sir John A. Macdonald's day, a century earlier, reporters in the parliamentary press gallery had waited outside the prime minister's office, pen in hand, hoping for a quote for the next edition. The scrum represents the test of wills, the contest of wits, and the battle for control that have characterized the relationship between Canadian prime ministers and journalists for more than 125 years. Scrum Wars chronicles this relationship. It is an anecdotal as well as analytical account, showing how earlier prime ministers like Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier were able to exercise control over what was written about their administrators, while more recent leaders like John Diefenbaker, Joe Clark, John Turner, and Brian Mulroney often found themselves at the mercy of intense media scrutiny and comment. |
From inside the book
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... Free Press for more than forty years, after listing the many li1nitations of journalism argued that the journalist, nevertheless, “must go forward with a sort of reckless courage; and unless he is to fail, he must, out of his half ...
The Prime Ministers and the Media Allan Gerald Levine. Mackenzie at a costume ball at ... free lunches and cheap whisky and sadly in need of a bath.” At about half ... Press. “It was enclosed by walls that rose sheer and unbroken, save for ...
The Prime Ministers and the Media Allan Gerald Levine. Ottawa Free Press, Halifax Chronicle, and Toronto Globe — “the parent of all the journalistic scurrility” in Canada in Griffin's biased estimation. Indeed, just as the Commons was ...
... Free Press. Further west in Regina, he put out a call for capital to finance the founding of the Leader by Nicholas Flood Davin in 1883.25 Nevertheless, because of Macdonald's own interests, political and personal, as well as the ...
The Prime Ministers and the Media Allan Gerald Levine. Cook and Robertson favoured the British connection ... free to criticize any or all of these, a situation unacceptable to a politician like Macdonald, who needed daily partisan press ...
Contents
No League of Gentlemen 19141956 | 83 |
Illustrations | 104 |
The Unofficial Opposition 19571992 | 207 |
Notes | 365 |
Bibliography | 380 |
Index | 383 |