Are reporters covering the legislature getting too cozy with politicians? Progressive Conservative leader John Tory, an MPP only a few months, invited members of the press gallery to his cottage saying he wanted to get to know them better in more relaxed surroundings than news conferences and scrums.
About a dozen of its 30 members went, had hamburgers and a few beers and chatted for three hours. The Conservatives drove some of them there and back.
A website run by senior Liberal insiders close to Premier Dalton McGuinty accused the reporters of putting themselves in a serious conflict of interest by this ?coziness? with Tory and helping the Conservative leader but not their readers.
Its implication was reporters who accepted Tory?s hospitality would repay by favouring him in their writing and readers would lose nonpartisan reporting.
But the most Tory could have hoped for was to break the ice so he and reporters could feel more at ease talking to each other ? not much of an advantage.
Reporters have faults and some have political biases, but they are not going to write more favourably about a politician because he served them a hamburger and a couple of beers.
Some ? this reporter was not among those who went - would have gone feeling a politician who knows them slightly may be more informative and they should be there in case he announces news.
The bigger story is politicians entertaining media is very much in decline. McGuinty as Opposition leader occasionally invited reporters to wine and cheese parties and lunches that cost more than Tory?s frugal offering.
In the 1960s, Conservative premier John Robarts threw parties for reporters and spouses at tasteful locations that included an art gallery and an historic home.
Conservative speakers used to have annual dinners to which media were invited in hotels flowing with booze. These are now watered down to sedate receptions with finger food and wine.
The Conservatives invited reporters and their families every summer to tour Niagara Falls parks and dine in their most elegant restaurant.
Reporters at the legislature and its Quebec counterpart felt the two provinces should understand each other and coaxed their premiers to pay for costly exchange visits for themselves and their spouses.
The Conservative government also took reporters and MPPs on a week-long tour viewing northern problems, on a private train stocked with enough food and drink to keep them happy if they got snowed in for the winter, from Toronto to Moosonee.
They then flew off in small planes to sample the hardships of wilderness fishing.
Tory premier William Davis gave a lavish dinner for reporters in a ritzy hotel when he retired, but when Mike Harris left as Tory premier, relations had deteriorated so the gallery had to invite him for a last drink.
The tradition of politicians lavishly entertaining media has almost vanished, which is just as well, because it created a perception they could be bought.
The bigger parties around the legislature are now given by the media, whose Christmas party and silent auction, with cash bar, last year raised $33,000 for charities.
A good example among many of reporters not protecting political friends was that of Chris Stockwell, a Conservative who as Speaker had many dealings with reporters and was the politician closest to them in recent years.
But when Stockwell became a minister and spent public money extravagantly on a foreign trip, reporters cast aside friendship and fell on him like a pack of wolves? getting to know a politician does not mean loving him.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen?s Park press gallery.
