Conservative columnists on board. Two journalists, one each for the National Post and the Ottawa Sun, have set off to stalk Stephen Harper and their less favourite leaders in a vehicle only a neoconservative schmuck could love. Rather than riding along in Harper’s pressmobile, Don Martin and Greg Weston have convinced their newspapers to rent them a teched-out Hummer to cruise from sea to shining sea over the next seven weeks while covering the election campaign.
They claim they switch was to “save their bosses a bundle of cash” — a seat on Harper’s bus carries a $9500 per week tab. But their own columns reveal more hedonistic forces at play.
“However environmentally unfriendly is this gas-guzzling monster wagon,” Weston admits, “it is still fun to imagine driving it over a line of Smartcars at a Jack Layton rally.”
Running into bus-bound journalists in a hotel, the unfortunately named Martin laments: “Ethically it would be hard for us to crash their filing room while whining about the tour cost, so we were directed to file our columns from the cozy hotel bar. Life is tough.”
It’s nice to know that the Post and the Sun are rich enough to send two lacklustre journalists with a collective sense of humour approaching that of a field mouse across the country in the most environmentally destructive vehicle on the market. Sure, it might be cheaper than the ego-wrapped tour buses, but they’re still getting a raw deal, as they still aren’t reporting any real news.
Is it too much to ask for the mainstream media to go beyond echoing platform promises and actually cover the stories beyind the hype?