Angry in the Great White North

CTV's Robert Fife reports this evening that it was the Liberal Party who concocted the false story of Prime Minister Stephen Harper pocketing a communion wafer at a Roman Catholic mass, and that these people within the Liberal Party delivered the story to a Liberal-friendly newspaper publisher, who then passed it down to a Liberal-friendly editor, who published the story under the byline of two professional reporters who had nothing to do with this.

Here's a transcription of Robert Fife's stunning report:

Lisa, most of us will remember the story that went all around the world about the prime minister apparently not eating the host when he was at the funeral of former governor general Romeo LeBlanc.  That story was first published in the St John Telegraph Journal which is owned by the billionaire Irving family.  The prime minister hit the roof.  Well, today, a grovelling apology from the paper.  They said the story was not true.  So what happened?   Well, I'm told that the Liberals passed the story to young Jamie Irving who was the publisher of the paper.  He passed it to the editor who put it in the paper without checking it out, and today the editor has been fired, and Jamie's father has suspended his son for thirty days, and I'm told the prime minister is pretty thrilled with that.

The person or persons in the Liberal Party who did this must be called to account.

• The person or persons cost an editor her job (though it appears she deserved to be fired).
• The person or persons has cost The Telegraph-Journal a large portion of its credibility.
• The person or persons has damaged the reputation of two professional journalists.
• The person or persons has stirred up religious anger for political gain.

If Robert Fife's allegations are true, then I don't believe for a second that senior members of the Liberal Party don't know exactly who did this, and indeed they might have even authorized it.  You don't approach a scion of the powerful Irving family without the high-level authorization that causes doors to open.  The Liberal Party must immediately reveal the names of:

• the person or persons who constructed this story
• the person or persons who delivered the story to Jamie Irving
• the person or persons who managed this operation and authorized it

I would start with Paul Zed.  He was the MP for the New Brunswick riding of Fundy-Royal.  He is now the interim chief of staff to Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff.  He is related by marriage to the Irving family, having been married to Judith Irving, the granddaughter of K.C. Irving.

I'm not saying Paul Zed had anything to do with this.  But he would know all the players, and has personal connections with the Irvings.  If anyone in the Liberal Party can discover who did this and repair the damage being done to the Liberal Party now that this operation has been reported on, it is Paul Zed.

Michael Ignatieff ought to direct Paul Zed to uncover the identities of those did the deed and who had knowledge of it.

But I bet he won't.  Michael Ignatieff will just hide and hope this blows over.

A distinction without a difference:  Did the Liberals actually create the story?  Bob Fife says the story was "passed" to The Telegraph-Journal by someone in the Liberal Party.  Well, the story had to come from somewhere, and no one has found an original source other than The Telegraph-Journal, so we don't have any evidence of a source outside of the Liberal Party from which the story was extracted, repackaged, and delivered to Jamie Irving.  But even it there was an allegation on a website or a message board that is the original source, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference.  The fact is that the story would never have seen the light of day had not the Liberals taken it, given it their stamp of approval, and delivered it to a friendly newspaper by bypassing the normal journalistic channels that would have seen the story vetted for accuracy, and probably rejected.  To me that is concocting the story, no different than if the story had first appeared in a word processor on the desk of a Liberal staffer.  Bob Fife's allegations boil down to a political party creating the news (on the back of a funeral, no less).

Corruption: Political parties feed stories to the media all the time.  To bloggers too.  But journalists, professionals or amateurs, attempt to establish the veracity of the story before running it.  It is part of their job, and a political party trying to push a story into the headlines knows that this is the case.  Indeed, a story without any credibility would not likely get this far, the pols knowing it would never get past even the most sympathetic journalist.  But in this case, as per Bob Fife's report, the political party bypassed the journalists to go to the publisher who then injected the unverified (and as it turns out, false) information into the story filed by two professional journalists.  This is corruption in the classic sense -- the data delivered was not the data originally reported.  This is not an example of trying to influence the media.  This is an example of corrupting the media.  The Liberals have to respond to Bob Fife's allegations -- admit that the allegations are true and reveal the details so the corruption can be rooted out, or accuse Bob Fife of being mistaken, and challenge him to provide more substantiating information.  Because if the allegation is true, and that corrupting influence remains in the Liberal Party, unrevealed and free to continue his or her effortsat the credibility of the media is at risk.