He hasn’t taken to Twitter to rail against the media like Donald Trump, but the government of Doug Ford, one of Canada’s best-known politicians, has been picking a fight with the journalists who cover him, says the Washington Post. Ford, brother of the controversial late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, took office in June as leader of Ontario, Canada’s biggest province. Political reporters in Toronto soon began to notice changes. In a holdover from news conferences on the campaign trail, for example, government staff members would suddenly start applauding as the politicians left, drowning out any further questions. Ford’s administration also launched Facebook and Twitter accounts called “Ontario News Now,” featuring taxpayer-funded, TV news-style spots. At the same time, journalists’ access to government officials was curtailed. Among other things, they were roped off 15 feet from government officials during Q&A “scrums” common in the hallways of legislative chambers around the world.
They were told to get in line to ask a question and then speak into a microphone held by a political aide. Questions were cut off after five, and aides yanked the microphone away from any given reporter at will. “Gotta admit, I’m pretty furious about this,” tweeted Jameson Berkow, a Bloomberg News reporter who was photographed at a July 27 news conference as the mic was taken away from him. Things came to head last week when government minister Lisa MacLeod used the term “fake news.” Canada has its own history of strained relations between government and media, especially under the country’s last Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper. But “fake news” crossed a line, journalists said.