Mr Fife Goes to Washington: Watch Out Mr
President as Bob is on the Premises
By Michael J Morris
As the official visit of Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau was getting underway, Alexander Panetta, the Washington
correspondent of the Canadian Press issued a "warning" to President
Barack Obama on Twitter.
It read: "Warning, Mr. President - @RobertFife is on the
premises." Gerald Butts, the principal secretary to the prime minister
"liked" it.
Actually it
was high praise for Bob, and a mark of respect for his reporting abilities from
one of his fellow journalists. Bob, as Chapleau folks know him, was in
Washington as Ottawa Bureau Chief of The Globe and Mail to report on the prime
minister's visit. Bob joined the Globe in January this year but remains host of
CTV's Question Period.
Mr. Panetta
was likely warning Mr. Obama that he best watch out as he may be in danger of
getting "Fifed" by Bob -- a term I was not aware of until now, even
though I have followed Bob's journalism career since 1978 when it began.
Although others may have used the term, I
discovered an article on Buzzfeed by Craig Silverman, the Founding Editor
Canada, in August 2015 entitled "Why Getting Fifed by CTV Reporter Robert
Fife is the Worst Thing That Can Happen to You".
Mr. Silverman also provides a definition:
"Fifed. (v.) to strike terror into the hearts of Canadian politicians by
Robert Fife." He goes on to provide examples mostly centred on the Senate
scandal surrounding Senator Mike Duffy.
It was Bob who broke the scandal wide open,
and when I saw the tweet that once again Robert Fife had proven why he is
simply the best, it immediately captured my attention. Kevin
Newman, was retweeting a comment by Rosa Hwang, senior broadcast producer
with CTV National News. "Once again Robert Fife proves why he's simply the
best." Bob has received several awards for his reporting.
"What had Fife done now?", I
wrote in my Cranbrook Guardian column that Bob had broken the story that Nigel
Wright, the chief of staff to Stephen Harper, then the prime minister, had
written a personal cheque to Mike Duffy, the senator appointed by Harper,
for $90,172 to pay back expenses to which the senator was not
entitled.
The Duffy scandal was placed squarely in the
office of the prime minister by Bob Fife,
In November 2008, Deborah Howell, the
ombudsperson at the Washington Post wrote that "good reporters are the
heart of news gathering. If it's news, they have to know it. Without them, the
public wouldn't have the news and information essential to running a democracy
-- or our lives. Whether the story is local, national or foreign, it has to be
gathered on the ground by a reporter."
Ms Powell added in answering the question
about what makes a good reporter, "Endless curiosity and a deep need to
know what is happening. Then, the ability to hear a small clue and follow
it."
That's Bob.
Bob is one of those reporters who certainly
fits the comment by former Washington Post Post executive editor
Ben Bradlee who thought that a reporter's most important quality is energy:
"They've got to love what they're doing; they've got to be serious about
turning over rocks, opening doors. The story drives you. It's part of your
soul."
In the interests of full disclosure Bob was in Grade Nine when I arrived to teach at
Chapleau High School in 1969, and once he learned I had been a daily newspaper
reporter, he never stopped asking me questions throughout his high school
years. And when he was attending the University of Toronto, he challenged me on
every issue when he came home on vacation or to spend the summers. Maybe I was
one of the first people to to be "Fifed".
Happy St. Patrick's Day. My email is mj.morris@live.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment