In June 2004, Stephen Harper found his campaign bus surrounded by journalists demanding a response to his party’s extraordinary assertion that Paul Martin supported child pornography. After the election, Harper told associates he would never allow the media to put him on the defensive again. Through aggressive tactics and indomitable will, he largely succeeded — until recently.

Here’s a significant sub-plot of the Senate-PMO scandal: the parliamentary press gallery is back.

The sad fact is that the gallery, an institution that endures as governments come and go and to which I belonged for nearly a decade, has been forced back on its heels throughout the Harper years. Partly this reflects a general loss of confidence within an economically disrupted media world. But even more, it is the product of a diffuse and disorganized grouping of reporters outwitted by a determined PMO.

When he came into office, Harper threw out long-held rules of government-press engagement. He sowed fear and showed favouritism. Access was severely restricted and doled out based on perceived friendliness of given journalists. Public servants were forbidden from providing background on serious policy matters. A system was introduced by which the PMO, rather than the gallery, decided who could ask questions at press conferences. The List, as it came to be known, was an early flashpoint. The PMO refused any compromise. A Fourth Estate short on self-respect quickly folded. In time, a number of Ottawa reporters were subjected to harassment and vilification and PMO minions exerted pressure on publishers to reign in recalcitrant reporters and editors.

Now, weeks into the Senate-PMO scandal, it is the government that looks uncertain and the journalists determined. The tipping point probably came with the ascension of Justin Trudeau to the Liberal leadership. National capitals are famously evolved political ecosystems, with a variety of intermingling elites constantly sniff testing who is up and who is down. Trudeau surprised everyone with his mystical appeal and strong poll numbers. The PMO has looked rattled; the gallery concomitantly emboldened.

Ottawa reporters scoffed instead of quaked at the Conservative attack ad and derided the prime minister for stepping out of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral to put his personal stamp on the ad. The Twitterverse derisively jumped on his pronouncement not to “commit sociology.” These reactions are not the work of Liberal lickspittle-ism, as Senate majority leader Marjory LeBreton suggested last week, but the natural by-product of the gallery reclaiming its indispensable adversarial role.

Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright, with their easily comprehensible and utterly indefensible actions, walked right into the gathering storm. Many journalists have contributed, but two who couldn’t be more different stand out: CTV’s Robert Fife, a dogged old school reporter, who knows that the best stories emerge in dribs and drabs with one break leading to another; and Andrew Coyne, a first-principles commentator long perturbed by Conservative comportment, who has used his various pulpits, particularly CBC’s At Issue panel, to grimly dissect logical inconsistency after logical inconsistency.

Then there’s the odd galvanizing role played by social media, particularly Twitter. The gallery vacillates between pack mentality and institutional incoherence. The Harper government was skilled at dividing and conquering. Increasingly, though, a group of Ottawa reporters gather every evening on Twitter, bucking one another up by sharing their journalistic humour, biases and insight. That they may well reinforce pack prejudices is beside the immediate point. Their virtual salon is reminiscent of the old days, when gallery members worked at close quarters in the famed Hot Room on the Hill and then hit the press club bar.

It is pure folly to dismiss Stephen Harper. For sure, his loathing of the media predisposed him to underestimate the brewing Senate scandal as the frothing of gallery members envious that some in their ranks had been elevated to a higher calling. But as prime minister he has repeatedly proven to be most lethal when seemingly down and out. And he knows how to play out the clock.

The sniff testing never ceases in Ottawa, but for now a noteworthy shift is in the wind. The PM lorded over the media for a long while, but he’s missed the smell of a gallery losing its fear.

Edward Greenspon is vice-president, strategic investments, at the Star. His column appears monthly. egreenspon@thestar.ca

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