The Conservative government's controversial choice to ban media from repatriation ceremonies has drawn mixed reactions from former communications directors.

"It's not so much the decision they took ... but the motivation," Scott Reid, the former spokesperson for Paul Martin told Question Period on Sunday. "It was that they are concerned that permitting these pictures to be published will lead to a deterioration in public support for the mission in Afghanistan."

Reid argued that the decision shows a new need to control the media, saying the Conservative government has "torn a page from the Bush White House."

The Bush administration, worried about diminishing public support for the Iraq war in 2003, imposed a publication ban on images of coffins carrying the bodies of American soldiers.

"(The Conservatives) are pursuing a very deliberate media strategy, which is 'non-information,'" Reid said.

Luc Lavoie, former communications director for Brian Mulroney, dismissed the notion that controlling the media is a Conservative tendency, arguing instead that it has a Liberal precedent.

"If a page was torn from anyone, it was torn from Pierre Elliott Trudeau," he said.

"The years of Pierre Eliot Trudeau Elliott Trudeau were years when Trudeau never spoke to (reporters). There were fights all the time and he couldn't care less about the media."

Lavoie also dismissed the idea that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is uncomfortable with the media, saying the idea that he ignores reporters is an invention of reporters themselves.

"What is sometimes really ridiculous - because I have seen it on all the major networks in Canada-- is that some evenings you have a story about a major issue, and then you see Stephen Harper commenting on it and answering questions. But then you see a story following it about Harper blocking the media from answering questions," he said.

Peter Donolo, the former communications director for Jean Chretien, said the Prime Minister is reluctant to engage with the media. He also said any tendency by Harper to control his image shows he's not comfortable with what decisions he makes as the nation's leader.

"I think part of it is that as prime minister you have to have the maturity not to freak out over every newspaper headline," he said.

"When I was on the job I lasted longer than most people, but through no skill of my own. I had the second-lowest blood pressure in Ottawa and my boss had the lowest. He was a grown up when it came to this."