EDMONTON—Postmedia has hired a former chief of staff for the United Conservative Party to lobby the Alberta government about getting involved with its energy “war room” — an initiative promised on the campaign trail to combat what the government says is misinformation about the energy sector.

Postmedia owns newspapers across the country, including the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald and the Sun papers in both cities. According to a filing posted to the lobbyist registry Thursday, the company has hired Nick Koolsbergen to lobby the government “to discuss ways Postmedia could be involved in the government’s energy war room.”

According to the registry, Koolsbergen is employed by Wellington Advocacy Inc. But his LinkedIn page says that up until last month he was working as a campaign director on Premier Jason Kenney’s election campaign. He’d been in the role since September 2018, according to his profile, and prior to that, was chief of staff for the UCP caucus while they were the Official Opposition starting in October 2017.

In a statement sent to Star Edmonton, Phyllise Gelfand, VP of communications with Postmedia, said the company “has engaged Wellington Advocacy with respect to the commercial content area of the business and the previously announced Alberta government’s energy war room.” The content area of the company is separate from the news media part of Postmedia and it deals with advertorials — editorialized advertisements that can read as though they’re objective news articles.

The war room was a campaign pledge made repeatedly by Kenney during the provincial election. He’s described it as a $30 million project that will counter misinformation and be overseen by Alberta’s Energy Minister, Sonya Savage. Critics have called it a waste of time and resources, and an operation that will suppress people speaking out about environmental issues.

Savage told reporters on Tuesday that more information about the war room would be coming out next week when the legislature is back in session.

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Sean Holman, an associate professor of journalism at Mount Royal University, called the move by Postmedia “outrageous.” He said advertorial articles can be “easily confused as journalism” when they’re not and that the war room goes against what media companies should stand for.

“The war room that the Kenney government has promised to create is essentially a government mechanism for trying to suppress and punish speech that it doesn’t like,” Holman said.

Its stated purpose is to combat misinformation about the energy sector on social media and in conventional media, but also to push back on what Kenney sees as a campaign of environmental misinformation being funded by foreign interests.

“The idea that a news media organization would be getting into bed with this kind of operation is an absolute abrogation of their societal mandate,” Holman said. “They should not be in the business of supporting efforts to punish and suppress speech.”

Furthermore, the issue of political staffers like Koolsbergen moving between the private sector and world of politics is “a perennial problem,” Holman said.

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“That in and of itself, on its face, is another sort of illustration of the problematic nature of lobbying in this country.”

Holman said the move will not only hurt Postmedia’s credibility as a news organization but impact the credibility of all media companies in Canada — “and it is now more important than ever for the media to be seen as a beacon of truth.”

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