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By Lloyd Mackey
 FOR MONTHS, now, the opposition Liberals have kept up a barrage of questions -- sometimes with the seeming support of a selection of journalists and news organizations.
The questions have related to certain practices of the governing Conservatives, which are being portrayed as unethical and even, close to the inner or outer edge of the law.
The issues specific to the questions relate mostly to what opposition members call "the Cadman affair" and the "in and out advertising scheme."
Now, there seems to be a push-back by the Conservatives. That is best illustrated, I believe, by an early June appearance by Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam MP James Moore on Don Newman's Politics show on CBC television.
The subject was Moore's press conference, a day or two before, in which he presented the findings of some audio experts that, Conservatives have contended, show the tape of author Tom Zytaruk's interview, almost three years ago, with Stephen Harper, was somehow altered.
When Moore repeated that allegation, he suggested that the whole interview was not on the tape, including information that, Harper maintains in an affidavit for court action, would have provided a different perspective.
In the affidavit, Harper maintains: "The only reason I agreed to be interviewed by Mr. Zytaruk was to provide him quotes for his book about my relationship with my friend Chuck Cadman -- the audiotape that purports to be my entire taped interview omits all of this part of the interview."
In his interview with Moore, Newman pointedly asks if journalists need to include complete interviews with their subjects. Moore, just as pointedly, replies that if information that was left out of an interview would have altered the context, then it is not right to leave it out.
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I have never talked with Moore about this particular subject, but I have raised the question on other occasions about other subjects.
In my dotage, I have sometimes suggested working journalists need to take care that, by engaging in tight writing -- in the cause of heightening reader interest -- they do not take quotes out of context.
In my modest view, I do not believe that Zytaruk purposely altered the tape. But, based on Harper's affidavit, I would submit that the author had some conversation with Harper about Cadman before the taping began. And, if that part of the conversation had been on tape, the context would have changed.
The Conservatives, by raising these questions, about both the Cadman and the "in and out" cases, are trying to determine if some journalists and some Liberals are consorting to amplify some situations. Please note my repetition of the word "some." The implied reasons for such actions relates to an apparent desire to undermine Conservative attempts to be ethically "different" from Liberals.
Their quest for more information is logical. Some journalists and some Liberals are not happy that the Liberals are out of office. It might be a bit paranoiac to suggest that those journalists and those Liberals are consorting or even conspiring to gang up on the Conservatives. But perhaps consulting and comparing notes might not be giving too strong a bent to the reality of the situation.
I am not touching, today, on the "in and out" issue. But the Conservatives are raising similar questions, with respect to it.
One of the things that I know frustrates Zytaruk is that there has been little media attention given to broad themes of his book, Like a Rock: The Chuck Cadman Story. And my reading of it would confirm that -- particularly the spiritual aspects of what was happening during the various phases of Cadman's personal and political life.
For that reason, I would like to gently suggest that, when Conservatives raise questions about journalistic or Liberal ethics, they should not be completely ignored.
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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006). He can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.
June 26/2008
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