Praise, and a ray of hope

I've in the past been critical of David Pugliese's reporting, and I'm fairly certain I'll be critical of it in the future.

But today, he has a piece in the Ottawa Citizen with which I agree wholeheartedly:

A crackdown by the Harper government on what members of the Canadian Forces can say in public will only hurt the military in the long run, warn Defence Department officials.

The Conservatives have put in place a new policy that requires all media requests of "regional and national" importance to be cleared in advance by the "centre," according to Defence Department officials. The centre is a term generally used to describe the defence minister's office, the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office.

Defence officials say the crackdown involves most of the day-to-day interviews military officials give to the news media. The "centre" has already cancelled a media day at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Some officers have pulled out of previously scheduled media interviews at the last minute, citing the new policy.

A large number of defence officials confirmed the existence of the new measures, but all declined to allow their names to be used for fear of retribution by the government.

Read the whole thing, but pay special attention to the last line, because it's key:

The last time a policy was brought in to limit what military personnel could say was during the Somalia affair. Those limitations were imposed by the Defence Department itself but backfired. While military personnel were limited in what they could say, critics of the Canadian Forces were under no such restrictions and dominated news coverage at the time. [Babbler's emphasis]

If you support the Canadian Forces, if you want them to be able to inform Canadians about who they are and what they do on our behalf, then I'd suggest a phone call to your local MP's office and the PMO might be in order. The only people who are going to change this situation are the elected politicians who can rein in the staffers and bureaucrats driving this short-sighted policy.

On a related note, it seems Pugliese - who is decidedly not a fan of this blog, if his e-mailed legal threats are any indication - has started a blog of his own: Defence Watch.

I'm going to be extremely interested to see how this develops. You see, one of the things I have trouble with in the Citizen's coverage of defence affairs is what I perceive to be a lack of balance in their "straight news" stories. But the best blogs make no pretensions to objectivity, instead taking an open and transparent approach to the leanings and personalities of their writers. It's undeniable that Pugliese is one of the most informed defence writers in Canada, so I'm hoping this blog allows his readers to get to know his unique and personal perspective on defence issues, so they can better interpret what they read in his newspaper articles.

"Objectivity" in journalism is a fairy tale. Reporters have opinions just like the rest of us, and it requires a monumental suspension of disbelief to assume those opinions don't creep into the way they report the news. But if we know those leanings and opinions up front, we, the consumers of the news can more reasonably make sense of what we hear, see, and read in the media.

Besides, there are a great many defence stories that simply don't fit the traditional mainstream media mold, and fall by the wayside as a result. I hope Pugliese learns to appreciate the freedom of not having to write for an editor, with one eye on the saleability of the story, and instead embraces the idea that he can tell the stories he wants in the way he wants to tell them.

It can be a hell of a lot of fun.

If he does it right, Pugliese's blog could make a huge contribution to the understanding of defence issues in this country. And you won't find anyone happier for that development, or more willing to give credit where it's due should that come to pass, than me.