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Mike Duffy puffery

And they’re off.

The corporate media lurched out of the starting gate last week doing what it loves most: covering scandal.

Suspended Conservative Senator Mike Duffy’s criminal trial had finally begun after two years of pent-up anticipation.

Climate change, war, child poverty, a phantom federal budget, and the government’s anti-terror Bill C-51… it’s all quickly fading in the rearview mirror as the Parliament Hill tribe revels in a delicious and daily dose of money, power, deceit, secret diaries and betrayal.

Duffy faces 31 charges, including fraud, bribery and breach of trust related to, among other things, his lavish use of his Senate expense account. And the secret $90,000 cheque he received from PM Stephen Harper’s then chief of staff Nigel Wright to pay off said expenses.

So rather than making the trek to Parliament Hill to watch that predictable pantomime known as Question Period, the caravan headed for a courthouse just down the road to report the “news” on Duffy. 

Predictably, the TV news networks have decided to provide “insight” during the Duffy trial by corralling the usual suspects as “experts” to dissect the Crown and defence strategies and to tell viewers which side had the “best” day or who won or lost the latest “round.”

This kind of court reporting bears a remarkable resemblance to political reporting – all horse race, all the time. Call it autopilot journalism.

Exhibit A: Last Tuesday’s At Issue edition of The National. The brain trust at the public broadcaster’s flagship news program invariably has the same three people on with chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge to unspool events in Ottawa – the ubiquitous Andrew Coyne, Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn and pollster Bruce Anderson.

Ditchburn kicked the proceedings off by informing CBC’s audience that the courtroom was small, quiet and packed.

Meanwhile, Duffy was apparently typing away while his lawyer slammed a binder full of as-yet-unseen emails on a table in dramatic fashion. The message to be taken from that presumably is that there’s dirt to go around.

Did anything newsworthy happen? Coyne didn’t think so. Which raises the question: Why sit in a TV studio to talk about a non-event? Oh well.

Anderson chimed in that it had been “a bad day” for Duffy.

It went on like that for another eight minutes, including a long, sonorous discussion of the broader cultural questions about why unelected Senators feel they can spend other people’s money willy-nilly and get away with it. No secret there, really.

The spot ended with a question from Mansbridge about how “attentive” the judge was in court. Gripping stuff.

On cue, Rex Murphy used his three minutes that followed to basically say that it had been a bad day for Harper, to even out the score on the “bad day” count. Over at CTV News, Robert Fife told audiences that other Senators would be watching the proceedings carefully.

Even before Duffy stepped into court, however, columnists were writing the whole thing off, suggesting “the political trial of the century” would have little, if any, political effect if a proverbial smoking gun doesn’t go bang in court.

The smoking gun these scribes are referring to is any evidence that Harper had a direct hand in the $90,000 bribe Duffy is alleged to have accepted from the PM’s ex-chief of staff Wright.

According to the RCMP and Crown’s version, Duffy accepted the money alright. But, in effect, the bribery fairy, not Wright, gave it to him because Wright has not been charged with anything to the wonderment of many. Wright ended up resigning over the furor, saying he didn’t want to continue to be a political liability for the PM, and insisting the boss had nothing to do with it. Gee, I hope the next time my kid loses a tooth the bribe fairy leaves behind a $90,000 cheque.

Our accountability-averse PM won’t be asked to testify under oath to all those prickly questions about the role he may have played in his handpicked chief of staff’s curious decision to write a five-figure cheque to his handpicked Senator from P.E.I. Or for that matter, the alleged cover up by the PMO of an independent outside audit of said expenses. The PM maintains he knew nothing. Anyone with working synapses knows why Stephen Harper is ducking.

As Democracy Watch, which has been following the permutations of this story from the beginning, has pointed out: evidence sworn in an affidavit by the lead officer in the Duffy investigation reveal that at least three people other than Wright, including Senator Marjery LeBreton, the government’s leader in the Senate, were involved in the secret negotiations “involving offers of benefits, and payments of money, to Duffy.”

Indeed, unlike some members of the media, Democracy Watch, is not only adept at ferreting out smoking guns, but also actually reading the Criminal Code. The group is calling for charges against Wright, and PMO and Conservative Party officials who may have aided Wright.

Two years ago it launched a petition, signed by 33,000 Canadians, calling for an independent prosecutor to examine the evidence relating to Wright’s cutting a $90,000 to Duffy (and ongoing questions about the independence of the RCMP in the  matter). And to make recommendations, if need be, on possible charges against the prime minister’s former right hand man.

At about the same time, the group also filed several complaints with the Ethics Commissioner, the RCMP and the Senate Ethics Office against Wright, PMO and Conservative Party staff.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Democracy Watch plans a private prosecution against Wright, PMO and Conservative Party officials “who aided him [in] bribing Senator Mike Duffy.” The group notes that the RCMP has yet to provide a written explanation as to why charges have not been laid against Wright.

I wish Democracy Watch every success, in and out of court.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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