Does “nerdprom” need to die?: Last night’s Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner may have proven that the annual piss up, in its current iteration, has outlived its utility.
This morning, after the return of one of the premier events on the Ottawa cocktail circuit, National Post columnist Chris Selly tweeted, “If the PPG [Parliamentary Press Gallery] is as concerned about credibility as it claims to be, this event must end…..I’m not suggesting it’s fair.”
Based on what transpired last night, he might not be wrong.
For the uninitiated, the event in question is Ottawa’s annual Parliamentary Press Gallery (PPG) dinner. Journalists who are accredited members of the corps of media who cover the goings-on of Parliament Hill turn out with Members of Parliament for a cocktail hour followed by a multi-course dinner. Once dessert emerges and everyone has been sufficiently lubricated with table wine, leaders of political parties take the stage to deliver speeches. Or perhaps more accurately, to roast and be roasted.
Now, the obvious complaint about this event given the current cost of living crisis are the optics of it. This morning, many Canadians will be seeing posts in their Instagram and Twitter feeds of a bunch of gussied-up Ottawa elites sitting around laughing it up over canapes and glasses of bubbly. Given the current unaffordability of basic necessities, this might not be the best way to show people that the nation’s press corps and politicians are in touch with the average Joe.
But I don’t think this is the core of the problem that the event now has.
The Met Gala this is not - by fancy events standards it’s a decidedly a mid-range affair. This so much so the case that Ottawa locals colloquially refer to the event as “nerdprom”. So for me, the problem that has emerged with this event is less about the optics of politicians and jounros rubbing shoulders over dinner, and more about the impact the event’s program has on the ability of the Press Gallery to convince the Canadian public that it is a valuable, competent and impartial component of Canadian democracy.
To see why, you need look no further than the news coverage of last night’s dinner in today’s headlines. Setting aside the minor hilarity of a news article about a dinner for journalists, the main takeaway was that Justin Trudeau’s “roast” went far beyond light-hearted jabs at himself. Instead, the Liberal leader used the opportunity to give a fairly mean-spirited preview of what his political narrative on Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will be.
A Global News article on the event reported a quote from Trudeau’s speech that implied that Poilievre is a Nazi.
(Poilievre did not attend the event).
Now, some will say that this was just a case of the arrogance and extreme bad taste that has plagued Trudeau’s public appearances, and that it’s not the Press Gallery’s fault this happened.
That’s not fair. And it’s not the first time the PPG has made big mistakes in the event’s programming. For example, allowing former and possible future Green Party leader Elizabeth May to deliver this speech was an incredibly inhumane lapse of judgment on their part (God bless Lisa Raitt in her moment of compassion on getting May off the stage that night).
To be clear, the problem here is that last night, the Parliamentary Press Gallery - who prides itself on its impartiality and civility - gave a platform to one leader of a political party to insinuate that another is a Nazi. Worse, this was witnessed with much laughter by dozens of the most senior members of the press in the room.
There may be places for this type of thing to happen, we live in a country with free speech after all. But a formal event hosted by Canada’s supposedly independent press corps probably shouldn’t be one of them.
At this point, depending on your political leaning you may be shaking your head and thinking that I’m simply being a partisan and clutching my pearls.
That’s the wrong reaction to have. The public’s trust in the media and in the political establishment is at an all time low. There are many people who suspect the Canadian media are incapable of impartiality and are only focused on producing opinion content which has a political bias, and last night saw Canada’s top press corps platforming some fairly divisive shit.
The impacts of this perception are negative and far reaching. They include eroding the ability for the media to be seen as a credible source of information which can be used to debunk conspiracy theories. This in turn, allows conspiracy theories to flourish. Moreover, incidents like this give proof points to a narrative that “the media are out to get” certain political parties, and erodes the public’s faith in the institution's ability to impartially assist in holding political leaders to account. It turns people away from seeking balanced investigative content produced by trained journalists as opposed to biased opinion produced by pundits.
During a week when several media outlets are trying to make a case for a Liberal bill that would force Facebook and Google to pay them for content posted on their sites, how should members of the Canadian public take the PPG platforming and applauding one leader implying that another is a Nazi? After events like this, how is the public supposed to digest news that the CBC is considering formally changing the rules surrounding “impartiality” in its Journalistic Standards and Practices?
An argument for an event with this type of a program might have been able to be made 20 years ago. But it’s not 20 years ago, when there was no Facebook and Twitter to influence the news cycle. Hell it's not even ten years ago, prior to the emergence of hostile state actors seeding misinformation across these platforms to influence politics in democratized nations like Canada.
At a moment when our nation is divided after the pandemic, in the middle of an economic crisis, and when there is the greatest level of geopolitical instability in a generation, the last thing Canada needs right now is its nation’s press corps to platform things that give proof points towards a narrative that impedes its credibility. Instead, the PPG needs to be upping its game and being infallible on the credibility issue.
I’ll close with this. It’s not just the job of the press gallery to hold itself to a higher standard in this regard. In the last few years I’ve found myself questioning what events I attend with a lot more rigour, because I know that my attendance could be construed by the media and the public that I’m endorsing the message of any speaker or attendee therein. I’ve had to adjust my social media output accordingly as well - what I post and say has an impact. Same goes for hosting events - if I’m not sure what’s going to be said from the stage of an event I’m hosting I’m not going to take the risk of shit getting twisted. I don’t want to contribute to the polarization in our country. Lord knows I haven’t batted a thousand in the past on these fronts, but I’m attempting not to make the same mistakes twice.
It shouldn’t be too much to expect the PPG to do the same.
And this isn’t to say that there isn’t room for events that allow the media and the politicians they cover to get to respect each other’s roles under non-hostile circumstances. But there’s a stronger case emerging that the PPG dinner, in its current iteration, doesn’t fit that bill.
So this morning, as some members of the PPG wake up and nurse hangovers from last night's festivities, I hope there’s a moment of sobriety on the impact the Press Gallery dinner can have on the institution of journalism in Canada. If there isn’t a willingness to change the event to address these problems, I think Chris Selley was right.
Canadian politics and journalism would be better off if “nerdprom” went on permanent hiatus.