It's now well-known that Stephen Harper was proud to join the militarist hordes ready to accept an easily-debunked story in order to equate Iran with Nazi Germany. But I haven't yet seen any discussion of who asked the question to begin with - and how it ties into Harper's media policy.
After all, it's been often discussed that Harper's office is insisting on deciding who asks questions at the PM's press conferences. With one of Harper's fellow hawks on hand, it's not hard to suspect that Harper was looking for a chance to talk tough - and that any "canvas" of reporters by the PMO could have included some screening of the topics to be discussed.
So, a few questions that I'd like to see answered. Was the questioner in this case hand-picked by the PMO? Was the topic screened? If so, did anybody in the PMO attempt to determine whether the story was true? And would the questioner have received the same priority under the Press Gallery's system?
Needless to say, these aren't rhetorical questions. It could well be that the topics are generally out of the hands of the PMO, or even that a different system than the usual PMO-generated list was used due to Howard's presence. (For that matter, it wouldn't be entirely surprising if the PMO moved to restrict the types of questions asked in the future due to the eventual embarrassment.)
But after yesterday, there can be little doubt just how much impact a single question can have. And that makes it worth asking all the more whether we want the PMO to dictate who gets to ask what.
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