The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson on the Prime Minister Stephen Harper's antipathy towards the news media and its roots in the Conservative mindset.

From the column: (behind a paywall; must be a G&M subscriber)

On Saturday night, Prime Minister Stephen Harper skipped the 100-year-old Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner at which politicians roast the media and poke fun at themselves.

Big deal. Pierre Trudeau didn't enjoy the event, either, and skipped it once. Cabinet minister Don Jamieson replaced him at the last minute and gave a much funnier speech than anything Mr. Trudeau could have managed.

Mr. Harper doesn't like the dinner, the press or events where he has to talk to people, as opposed to talk at them. He doesn't even attend gala events where his quite charming wife is the honorary chair. In this sense, Mr. Harper is the anti-politician: a politician who doesn't much like people, except, presumably, for a few close friends.

Mr. Harper took his disdain for the media, however, one step further at the dinner. He discouraged all his ministers and MPs from attending, as a spiteful signal to the media and as part of his government's attempt to keep contacts between journalists and Conservative politicians to an absolute minimum. ...

The Prime Minister travels in a kind of public relations cocoon, with manufactured backdrops and photo ops, teleprompters, and ministers and MPs reduced to nodding for the cameras. The only thing missing from these set pieces are flesh-and-blood people, except as props.

Curiously, when Mr. Harper speaks without sticking to a prepared text, he can be quite effective. But he apparently fears spontaneity, perhaps because he knows his own personality, or feels the media will pounce on the slightest error.

This media strategy, therefore, reflects Mr. Harper's personality, but also his Conservative heritage. Read Brian Mulroney's memoirs or, more revealingly, his interviews with Peter Newman to understand what we might call the Conservative mindset: that the media are irredeemably hostile to the party and its leader.

It is a view so deeply held as to defy rational discussion. To this is then added a particular Western Canadian Conservative attitude: that the national media are Liberal, liberal, leftist, anti-Conservative and, therefore, must be considered the "enemy." It's a very popular view among core Conservatives, and it drives this government.