Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Warren Kinsella, media columnist for Canada’s National Post and prominent Canadian blogger, recently challenged Canada’s Federal Liberal leadership candidates – via an email that is subsequently posted to his personal blog on July 17 - to comment on the ‘escalating conflict in the Middle East’. You can read the email request here, and I’ve included Mr. Kinsella’s preliminary squib on his blog below as it requires a bit of scrolling to find it…

“I am posting the email here to ensure that no one can say they didn’t see it/didn’t receive it/etc. They all read this web site (I certainly hear from most of them on a regular basis), and I want to ensure there is no room for excuses, post facto.”

The next day in the Post, Mr. Kinsella recounts his approach, and reports on responses received to date. Over the next several days, and seemingly spurred on by Mr. Kinsella’s request, most of the candidates (including Ken Dryden, Gerard Kennedy, Hedy Fry, Bob Rae, and Carolyn Bennett) subsequently post statements of varying length and legibility to their respective web sites. 

This, in my view, is a good thing. I question if many of these candidates would have made any statement without being publicly exhorted to do so? Given the volatility of the issue, methinks not (Scott Brison’s July 13th post aside). In reading some of the responses, you almost feel the campaign scribes’ collective pain in having to undertake such a messy task.

But from a PR and public affairs perspective, it raises additional questions. Is this format of transparent questioning a harbinger of things to come, or simply an extension of what traditional media already does? Of course, activists and others have been publicly calling out politicians and businesses for years. However, will this type of on-the-record ‘public’ solicitation of elected officials (and increasingly others, ie. CEO’s) by journalists and professional and amateur pundits alike further transform the political landscape, empowered by the Internet and the growing influence of social media? Will it be influential bloggers, and not only journalists, that politicians will be required to respond to next. Politicians are already engaging with bloggers regularly. At the same time, should there be a quid pro quo that requires journalists/pundits, who elect to call out these folks, to publish in full the responses their solicitations receive, or at least link to the responses in each of the candidates web sites? And will corporations find themselves being similarly challenged, held to the same level of accountability and transparency on specific issues as their political counterparts?