Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who electioneered by promising Canadians a more "open" government, took two measures last month aimed at establishing a more "closed" one – closed, that is, to the media. In so doing, he appeared to have declared war on the parliamentary press gallery.

First, he decreed that all public communications from his cabinet ministers – everything from speeches, to press releases, to policy statements, to letters to the editor – must have the prior approval of the Prime Minister's Office.

Second, he ruled that the meetings of his cabinet will no longer be announced in advance, and press access to the chamber outside the cabinet room will henceforth be closed to the media. This meant that reporters could no longer waylay ministers as they left cabinet meetings for on-the-spot televised "scrums," which occasionally result in unbecoming and often-incoherent shouting matches between reporters and cabinet ministers.

The announcements, particularly the latter, set off a furious media protest, and much editorial denunciation. A formal meeting between the press gallery executive and officials of the Prime Minister's Office broke up after 20 minutes because, said a gallery spokeswoman, "we weren't getting anywhere."

Meeting the press directly, Harper defended both actions. All his ministers are new, he said, and he wants every public statement to reflect uniform governmental policy. This necessitates central control of all public statements. As for the cabinet meetings, they are constitutionally "private," not public, and should be treated as such

This implicit one-finger salute to the Ottawa media must, of course, have been a carefully considered decision, probably reached, like many of Harper's decisions, long before he took office. He knows that he owes journalists no thanks whatever for his election, and that during the remarkable five years when he gained the leadership of the right, and unified it into a force capable of forming a minority government, the media in general jeered and deplored him at every step.

So what hope, he will have reasoned, did he now have of securing their unbiased coverage once he had formed a government? The answer is none whatever. By winning the election, he had proved them dead wrong. So a hostile reaction to his government was the only thing he could expect.

Winning a majority in the next election is his uppermost objective. That election can be called at any time the opposition unite to defeat a government bill in the house, or whenever Harper himself decides to call it. To win it, he needs the support of the electorate, not necessarily of the media. The media always assume that a government requires the latter to gain the former, that it is they and their coverage that really decides the election.

This is the assumption that Harper has now challenged. He knows, as Macleans magazine columnist Paul Wells glumly observed, "that we're not nearly as good at rallying public opinion to our side as we are at feeling sorry for ourselves."

Indeed, Harper is no doubt gratified by the media's loud outrage. That is, he may be trying to turn their own weapons against them. Every time they write an anti-government story, the public will be inclined to conclude: This just demonstrates their hatred of the man and all he stands for. So instead of hurting the government, bad publicity will have the effect of vindicating him. He said they were out to get him, and now look what they're doing. Bad news, as it were, becomes good news.

The initial public reaction was divided, the liberal Globe and Mail published four condemnatory letters, the conservative National Post published three siding with the government, one of which voiced precisely the response Harper doubtless hopes for:

Oh those poor, poor reporters. They are shunted aside and ignored – no more self-absorbed men and women with an exaggerated sense of self-importance to breathlessly report out-of-context snippets and ministerial misstatements. How our understanding of the world will suffer, without the scrums, the jostling, and the total disregard for substance. Now these poor wretches may actually have to do some serious analysis.

Thus, the government's strategy is to depict the media, not as observers of the game, but as players in it, zealously intent upon making points and scoring goals. In this way, media bias gradually destroys media credibility, and the press become the enemies of the truth rather than the purveyors of it. But did Steve Harper actually figure all this out before he was even elected? To those who know the man, it's altogether likely.