Canadian Association of Journalists

Cover Story

Oh, Ralph

Should reporters covering the Alberta premier have written about his drinking problem because before it became an unavoidable pre-Christmas news story? Mark Lisac finds that a difficult question to answer.

A few days before Christmas, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, faced with a mildly embarrassing story of a liquid night out and a strange trip to a men's shelter in Edmonton, told the province he had decided to lay off the booze.

The subject of Ralph Klein's drinking has vexed Alberta journalists since Klein decided in 1980 to quit being a journalist himself and become a politician.

Drinking, long an amusing character quirk, had become a "beast" or a "devil" which he would fight.

On a personal level, he has a problem. So do many people in the world. One wishes him well.

On a political level, this story is the latest variation in a 20-year theme: "Ralph" does something he regrets, apologizes, says he will do better, rallies public sympathy and support.

This story was a little different though. The next step was a question for the province's journalists. Media and some non-media people asked it. Why hadn't anyone reported that Klein was a drinker? Or, as one Toronto writer put it, how come no one "blew the whistle?"

These responses made up a predictable mix of commentators' hand wringing and some genuine public puzzlement. They implied that with more or stronger stories about Klein and that old devil drink, something would have happened. One wonders what. What was supposed to happen? Would the public have been better prepared for the presumably inevitable shock? Would the media have saved the premier from himself?

The subject of Ralph Klein's drinking has vexed Alberta journalists since Klein decided in 1980 to quit being a journalist himself and become a politician.

Did journalists tell Albertans what they needed to know? What are the duties and ethics of reporting on the drinking habits of public figures?

There have been struggles with libel law, uninterested editors, highly uninterested readers, fairness and the newsworthiness of particular incidents. But no one in Alberta had any reason to think that Klein was anything less than a frequent drinker of long standing. Drinking was part of his public persona, although he usually managed not to appear drunk in public. He admitted freely to late mornings. In one widely reported comment a few years ago, he admitted to drinking the equivalent of a bottle of wine a day, which any reasonable reader would have taken as a warning.

Three things were missing from the picture.

No one stated flat out that he had a drinking problem. Only he could do that.

No one reported every occasion on which someone thought he smelled alcohol on him or heard he had been seen drinking heartily in a restaurant. If you wanted to do something about those reports you had to face the question of whether you really wanted to tail the premier's maroon Buick and see for yourself.

You could have poked around into various other rumours about Klein and about other Alberta politicians if you thought their private life was fair game.

Journalists can write what they want, or what editors and owners will let them write. However, they are probably wisest to follow old and conservative guidelines when it comes to a subject like a drinking politician.

Finally, Klein has left an impression over the years, with me anyway, of going through up-and-down cycles of looking after himself physically. I suppose a person could have asked him if that were so. I'm not sure why. He has actually looked like someone who managed to make drinking intrude less and less into his public career over the years.

His nine years as mayor of Calgary were often a fairly fun time, I'm told. One hapless political challenger walked in on a councilors' meeting, saw drinks all around, made this an issue when he ran against Klein in the 1986 election, and was rewarded with one per cent of the vote.

Klein's move into provincial politics saw him become environment minister and something of a jocular legend around the Legislature Building. One story is still told by reporters who claim they saw him arriving at a morning cabinet or caucus meeting looking suspiciously worse for wear and sporting a white ring around his mouth, generally deemed to have been left by an emergency gulp of Maalox. But who could be sure? Were hangover checks part of a reporter's job?

After he became Conservative leader and premier in December 1992 the suspicious signs of drinking receded. We can take his word now that he has had a problem for about 30 years. But if so, he kept it segregated into his personal life through most of the 1990s. Anyone around the Legislature Building for the last nine years would have mostly seen him either doing a good job in question period and at daily news conferences during legislature sittings, or looking ready for the day, fresh from a shower in the building's basement gym after a workout on the treadmill.

That may have changed in the last year or so. He left the impression of having been drinking at a few speeches, some private and some, like his introduction of Bill Clinton in Calgary late last year, highly public. His televised victory speech in the 2001 election made him look as if he had been celebrating early and hard, but that was out there for everyone to see. There were also more rumours and hearsay reports of drinking after hours.

These more recent incidents were probably heading to a point where something would be written about them. But what and by whom?

Klein took care of that dilemma with his late-night visit to the Herb Jamieson Centre and his subsequent statements. He saved the province's journalists some tough decisions. He also became the subject of a story, the first time he combined drinking with a significant interaction with members of the public. The time Alberta media most clearly let down their audience was after Klein's disastrous speech in early 1999 to a blue-chip executive audience called the Policy Forum in Toronto. It was not a public event but it led to some scathing Toronto newspaper comment afterward, all pointedly remarking that he had been rambling and barely coherent. Alberta media let it pass.

Should there have been more written earlier? There could have been. British tabloids would have roasted him. Some American papers or TV networks might have done something. It's hard to see what exactly. The story would have been that the premier drinks, which was firmly on the record.

It's not a job I would have taken on. Skulking and scolding have some place in journalism, I suppose. Journalism is free speech. You can practice it any way you want. But journalism is also the normal discourse of daily life, including gossip.

Reporting on Klein has been difficult at the best of times. Ashley Geddes, a colleague at The Edmonton Journal, had to wait a year to get a story in print in the early '90s about cabinet minister Steve West's shenanigans in local bars. References to West's sometime drinking buddy of the day, Klein, were removed.

Geddes did get into print in 1991 a tale of Klein having a strange day in the Legislature Building — groggily answering what he thought was one question from a reporter when the reporter actually asked another. He also wandered into a closed New Democrat caucus meeting, mumbling later that he still found the legislature corridors a puzzle. The result was a wakeup call to Geddes from a "shrieking" Rod Love, who was Klein's right-hand man and chief media adviser for 19 years. Klein's people have always thought him strong, but never invincible. They try their best to stamp out any kind of unwelcome media attention. The Klein team approach over the years has also involved a mega-carrot and mega-stick: if you're in the club you get stories that enhance your career, if not, you're the doormat on a muddy day.

Some might say a compliant frame of mind has tainted Alberta journalism.
I've seen a lot to be unhappy about in the province's political journalism over the years. But it has never been a one-dimensional picture. Nor has Alberta been the one-dimensional province that a number of newspapers and networks, here and in Ontario, like to pretend it is. That picture serves the Toronto media nicely.

Alberta is always that place that alternates between cute and cranky. Roger Gibbins, president of the Canada West Foundation, astutely pointed out that the Klein drinking story could have the same result; it could enhance the notion of Alberta as that strange spawning ground of unlikely politicians whom the rest of Canada can not take seriously. (Klein was the man who made Stockwell Day's career — another case where people somehow missed what should have been fair warning in the media.)

Why did no one blow the whistle on Ralph Klein? Actually, people did. You could say that's exactly what happened within a day of his visit to the men's shelter. Some reporters wrote about his habits before too, as circumstance demanded and allowed. They just did not do it obsessively or with much public response.

It didn't have to be just a drinking story. Klein was performing poorly in a number of ways before and after the election last March. Those lapses in judgment and attention were reported.

I ended up writing a column May 17, 2001, which concluded: "This is a leader losing his grip. He could pick up his performance. If he does not, anyone looking back from the future and wondering when the slide became noticeable can pinpoint this spring."

These do not strike me as superficial comments. I did not make them lightly. They were published. The comments dropped into a well of silence in the Edmonton Journal, the largest-circulation daily in the province. There have also been other kinds of warnings over the years about bad policy choices. Unfortunately, one of the functions of the heavy focus on Klein's personality has been to help deflect public attention from these unreported issues about policy.

There's a whiff around all this of the mystique of booze. Journalists looking for stories about personal habits that may have damaging effects on politicians could write about sex. Based on past numbers, it's almost guaranteed that at least one male member of the legislature will dump his wife before the next election for one of the office staff.

They could write about the MLAs who are obviously and dangerously overweight. One recently had a multiple bypass.

What makes alcohol different is cultural habit. We think about it as a moral issue. There is also the notion that alcohol uniquely impairs health and judgment. It does impair, but it is hardly unique. Nor is Klein unique as an Alberta politician who drinks. (Whatever is the press gallery going to do about the way it tenaciously holds on to the odd tradition of the gallery beer fridge?)

Does the drinking interfere with the performance of his or her public duty? Does it cause public embarrassment? Does it cause or threaten to cause illegal acts? Alternatively, one can ask from the other side: Can I write this story without trying to be a physician, a public scold, a babysitter?

A journalist can be any of these things. He or she can even be a friend of the premier, someone willing to shape the news to serve the interests of the premier (and the journalist) rather than the interests of voters.

The way Alberta journalists have covered Ralph Klein has run all over the map. I think their handling of the decades-long drinking story has been sometimes slow and restrained, sometimes too friendly — especially in the predictions immediately after Klein's visit to the men's shelter that the story would not hurt him — but roughly proportional to the reality of the story and to honest service of the public interest. The coverage of some other issues has been far worse.

The job is not grounded in arcane scribblers' ethics. It is grounded in treating the subjects and the readers of news stories like your neighbours, in treating them the way you would hope they treat you. You do the job. You do it the best you can based on honesty, fairness, humanity and hard work. You don't worry about what happens next or what someone might say. Funny, one would hope politicians approach their work the same way.

Mark Lisac, a copy editor at The Edmonton Journal, was the paper's provincial affairs columnist from 1987 to last August. He is also the author of The Klein Revolution, a study of the early years of Klein's government; the book contains stories about Klein's drinking and his obstreperous night in jail.