My government minder is making a bloody nuisance of himself.
The Western Producer has been getting an earful lately from readers who believe the government has been telling newspapers what to print in return for corporate handouts, but that’s not the half of it.
The government isn’t satisfied with simply telling newspapers what to print. It has actually insisted on moving official monitors into the homes of newspaper editors in an effort to keep a better eye on them.
For me, it has meant that my official government content supervisor has moved into the spare bedroom across the hall.
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At first he just showed up during regular work hours, installing a makeshift desk next to the spare bed and occasionally crossing the hallway to see what I was up to.
But then the Subsidized Press Content Supervisory Directorate decided this was inconvenient for the civil servant assigned to my case because of the travel that was required between his hotel room and my home at the beginning and end of each working day.
It wasn’t long before I was informed that my content monitor — let’s call him Charlie — was now going to be living with me.
At first it was only going to be Monday to Friday, which was bad enough. But then Ottawa’s news czars must have started worrying I might decide to work on a story about clubroot on a Saturday and run the risk of violating the government’s official position on canola diseases.
As a result, the arrangement soon became full time.
Oh, and did I mention I also have to feed Charlie, and do his laundry?
So now I’ve got him underfoot, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, hogging the TV remote and eating all my favourite cookies, the ones my mom sent me for my birthday.
It wouldn’t be that bad, actually, except Charlie also has bosses, and they’re getting increasingly demanding when it comes to what we can and can’t print.
For example, stories about flax are now verboten because they too closely match the official colour of the Conservative party. And don’t get me started on the government’s official position on the fababean/favabean spelling controversy.
The entire affair is too inconvenient for words, but what’s really rich is I still haven’t seen any of that government money yet.
