My goodness. Can the country withstand a repeat of the national outpouring of disinterest that erupted during last year’s CBC strike?
In parliamentary press gallery story #1,356 about the parliamentary press gallery…
Prior to the start of a news conference in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada would contribute $40 million in humanitarian and military assistance to the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, members of the press gallery simultaneously got up and left, moments before the prime minister arrived in the room, in an act of defiance against new news conference rules imposed against the media.
Seems a perfect time to present the SDA Quote Of The Week – “Ural” on the Media Opposition Party;
“Greens would kill to get the press that the press gets”
If I were Stephen Harper, I’d use the opportunity to change the locks.
Global being non-partisan? Note that you can sign the anti-Emerson petition at the bottom. Nit wits.
Change the locks… that’s consistent with my own thoughts.
I mean, hahaha… does the MSM really believe that PMSH is going to lose any sleep about not having to put up with that pack of salivating mongrels?
I think perhaps this is what the PM was counting on… now he can get back to the actual job of fixing what the Liberals broke and not have to waste time with those imbeciles with notepads.
Those imbeciles are guilty of aiding and abetting those liberano crooks from the onset.
But to not have to put uup with there shit must be wonderful for our Prime Minister.
I’d say the PM is shaking in his boots… with laughter now that he has more free time.
Personally, I’d revoke the presses credentials and security status and let the MSM try to find new reporters that will report and not make up the news.
Does the Ottawa Parlimentary Press corps actually think that this was a mature thing grownups should be doing?
They have a problem with being told the blunt truth.
They have no issue with being lied to as long as they get their ass kissed.
Sad.
enough
Um, what exactly is being handed out at these press conferences that I can’t find for free on the Govt of Canada Web site already? What are we missing if the media walks out? I thought the reason I paid for a newspaper was to get original investigative reporting, not some regurgitated government handouts that can be found online at no charge.
From the article: “The media claim that Harper is attempting to control the parameters of when and how questions are directed at him.”
No. Really? No kidding? You mean that the media doesn’t really have absolute control over press conferences with the head of the government of Canada? Shocking.
Oh, well. Remember, “they made him and they’ll break him.”
Self-importance brought to a new low.
I like the previous idea of revoking all their press credentials and permanantly baring them from the hill.
Let the MSM hire and train a new bunch of usefull idiots – more like useless idiots.
What they forget is that Parliament and the government don’t work for them to get a news story. They work to do the people’s business and in that they make the news for the reporters to report. End of story. Deal with it.
The PPG are getting more silly everyday. The polls are going up the press is being ignored and it is a good day in Canada. The media, like the opposition, are playing right into the hands of the PMO. They don’t want to answer stupid questions from a vacuous press gallery who know really nothing about the serious issues and are only after gossip, sleaze and gotcha journalism. So Mr. Harper does not need to worry about press conferences and he can get on with doing the peoples’ business…and we like it.
So their amour propre counts more than doing their job as reporters concerning what everyone is trying to make a major issue.
“Pearl Harbor Bombed–Washington Press Corps Boycotts Roosevelt’s News Conference”
From sit-in to walk-out. Soon no-one will notice. Or care.
Mark
Ottawa
And we still learned the important facts to be presented in the news conference, which was pretty much all anybody wanted to know. All we didn’t get was an endless line of questioning to the effect that it wouldn’t be enough, why don’t we pull out of Afstan and go there…etc.
I like this new efficient style. More facts, less hissy…
Who needs the PPG now?
All the PM needs to do is post his announcements on:
http://www.conservative.ca
And we bloggers can post and discuss.
Poor, poor, pitiful PPG moonbats! They had their day… flew too close to the sun of Librano corruption…
(Stifling laughter)
Interesting. What happens to a system when it loses its relevance? What happens if it does not disappear but has lost all meaning?
The political press has, over the years, become the unofficial propaganda arm of the Liberal Party. Now that a different party is in power, it cannot handle its loss of relevance and identity.
The new power is not interested in making the press a propaganda tool. The press is expected to, instead, communicate information. The Press cannot do this; it has, for over a decade, functioned as a propaganda office.
In reaction to this loss of identity, and its rejection of a role of communicator of information, the press turns viciously against the new political power.
What to do? Ignore them. Harper (and we) don’t want them as the Ministry of Propaganda. We want them as a method of communication of accurate information. They refuse. Tough.
At http://www.conservative.ca/ you can sign up for e-mail updates which give you are the notices, speeches, announcements etc. coming out of the PMO, so who needs the MSM ???
The sad thing is that they will be back.
I hope the PM enjoys it until that time.
This is like watching every Law & Order episode you’ve ever seen. The brilliant prosecutor gets the criminal to blow his cool… and spill the beans.
In today’s episode, our MSM has outed itself to be anti-CPC. Brilliant strategy by Harper.
For decades, the Canadian MSM maintained the illusion of impartiality. While anyone who cared to notice could see that the press was largely liberal (i.e. pro Liberal & NDP), the masses believed what they were served because the press isn’t supposed to have an agenda.
The illusion of impartiality was very damaging to the Tories.
But now the illusion is gone. The Liberal foot soldiers have been goaded into outing themselves.
Harper could have screamed from the rooftops that the press was biased against him. But he didn’t. He tricked them into showing their true colours.
How maddening for the liberal media that in spite of their tears about their treatment by Harper, the Tories’ numbers have shot into solid majority territory.
The fact of the matter is that these people have been on the Liberal team for years and now they’re crying foul because they’re being treated like the enemy they are.
Good for Harper. My respect for the man grows every day. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.
It will be interesting to watch the prima donnas
spin the whole story. They (the press gallery )
are a bunch of disgusting manipulative children.
That they should get a life. Unfortunatley, these are the people who control so much information in our country. Truth has been set aside again
I think the PM should go for a “twofer” and get himself a press secretary like the President of the United States does to play silly bugger with the MSM. Besides freeing up his valuable time (one) the obvious Bushlike move would give the press a regular hissy fit (that’s two).
As the folks at Guiness would say,”brilliant”.
Great post ET: The Canadian MSM and the PPG as the Ministry of Propaganda!
That’s exactly what they’ve been for far too long, aiding and abetting, heck promoting, the sleaze oozing from the Librano$’ corrupt and despicable government (sic).
What does pond scum do when the swamp’s been drained and it’s left open to the sun?
Well, not being a scientist, I can only guess: dry up, wither, and die? ‘Sounds like a good plan to me.
Oh yeah. And I forgot one thing about pond scum when the swamp’s just been drained:
It stinks.
Anyone catch Laurie Goldstein in Sun Media? Brilliant idea of moving the press gallery to a barge in the middle of the Ottawa river then setting fire to it! Or else moving the gallery to Kingston – Kingston Jamaica that is!!!
In this day and age who needs the MSM? Bloggers and dicussion forums will keep us all well informed.
If I were Harper, I’d ignore the walkout, whether they repeat it or not.
The MSM are the out-and-out enemies of conservatism, the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper. The MSM have done their worst against them for years, are continuing and will continue to do so.
That being the case, Harper & Co. have and should use the power to force the arrogant MSM to go by GOVT rules, not MSM rules. The MSM will hate it but so what? They can’t do any more damage to the Conservatives than they’re alread doing and have no choice but to come crawling back.
The funnies thing about this is that they claim it wasn’t planned. Yeah… dry that one out you can fertilize your lawn with it.
If I were Harper, I’d simply say that the list stays and if they decide to come or not is up to them. After all, if they choose not to cover the news, what are they going to report about?
I understand that Bob Fife was one of the only journalists that did not walk out of the news conference. Good for him. Have you also heard that Craig Oliver has stepped down and Bob is taking his place as Bureau Chief for CTV News.
The Liberal-controlled MSM will eventually have to come to terms with Parliamentary press gallery protocol. Since everybody knows they are controlled by their Liberal-friendly media mogul bosses they will either accept or lose their jobs. No need to have a dedicated press gallery if they refuse to show up to do their jobs.
A Parliamentary press gallery must abide by the rules or just bugger off. Harper will not give his enemies any advantage so let them stay away and find other jobs.
In another life I was in public relations and organized many news conferences. My client and I would set up the location, the topic for the conference, the duration and I would either ask for the names of the attending media or do an orderly lineup at the mike. I would then invite the reporters one at a time to ask the question. If it was off topic there was no reply from my spokesperson required unless it was a general Q&A session. The answer would be that they could contact him or her at another time for an interview but the topic of the day was …
No screaming all at once; no ignorant reporters crawling over each other shoving each other out of the way.
This showed respect for the spokesperson and also allowed much more detail to be covered about the story at hand.
I can tell you that if anyone had asked “do you love Canada?” or had been known to call my spokesperson “fatty” or “a lardass in a fishing vest” or his wife a “ballsy biker chick” these reporters would have been black balled not only by me but they would have earned the disrespect of REAL journalists.
That Ottawa bunch have no class; no couth; no scruples and the more they protest the more I believe that many of them were “on the take” so to speak and miss the largesse of the Liberals who bought their favours with OUR money.
I applaud Stephen Harper. I have gotten more access to REAL government information since the Conservatives took over on the regional media; with news releases sent to my inbox and on the government news page.
The Ottawa Press Gallery have not earned the right to be treated with respect by the Prime Minister. They are simply unelected hacks for large for profit conglomerates who have tried to control this country’s agenda and hijack it for their own purposes.
The cleaning up of corruption in Ottawa HAD to include the Liberal apologists in the Press Gallery. The regional media is far more relevant and the internet is also replacing this gaggle of self absorbed hacks.
Harper’s hidden agenda: Let the PPG act like the corrupt fools that they are and show the voters why the crooked and inept Libranos were able to steal so much without a peep out of these usefull idiots.
I mean really, how were that bunch of dummies in the Liberal party able to steal so much from us without the MSM reporting on it? Was it because the media are stupid and incompetent, or corrupt and biased, or all of the above? You gotta admit, the Liberal party isn’t exactly in the intellectual heavyweight division.
Are any of these media clowns even able to feel shame anymore? In real democracies, the media are one of the cornerstones of a successful society, in Canada they are a bunch of pathetic monkeys that dance for the corrupt Liberal organ grinder.
Now they are all confused and whiney because the party is over and they are expected to act their age and act like real journalists, and they haven’t the faintest clue about how to do that.
Good riddance to Oliver, if true.
I remember after one of the debates in the last election when he came on ranting like an unhinged lunatic how Martin had won and how the format was rigged in Harper’s favour… blah, blah blah… and some guy posted that he sounded like Mortimer Duke screaming pathetically to ‘turn those machines back on’.
I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.
Old Liberal hack. He must be kicking himself for not quitting earlier. Because his dreams of being put out to pasture in the Senate for all his years of faithful service to the Libranos… have gone up in smoke.
This is quite possibly the funniest thing I have read in a long time.
Go Harper go!
Lorraine, thank you, input from an expert is very much needed and apprecaited.
I’ve worked with PR people and found the scenarios you describe to be the case. On occasion when I didn’t listen to the advice of a person like yourself and tried to be be more open is when things could go off the rails. In other words I’ve had to learn the hard way. Harper obviously is getting good media advice and his ego allows him to take direction from the experts, this is a very good trait for a PM to have.
Harper’s poll numbers this morning must have been the final straw.
What a bunch of children.
My little comment is that Nealenews has had this story up all afternoon, while Bourque has had nothing as of 7:15 PM PDT.
Through all the indignant posturing and belly-aching,even the PPG themselves have acknowledged that when replying to a question,Harper is more direct and clear in his response than the previous government.He would also tend to remain longer,however I doubt that is most recently the case.
I have NEVER met a Canadian that wasn’t completely fatigued by the doublespeak baffergabble we’ve been victim to these last dozen years.Yet the gallery seemed quite content to accept deflections to questions such as “Well,what I think Canadians really want to know is…”.What a breath of fresh,not-hot air.
I would have guessed that this would be gold to a serious journalist,but instead they rebel against some SIMPLE changes in protocol.
Their overall unprofessional behavior is more enlightening to Canadians than the items they write!
The polls are proving that point!
Prime Minister Paul Martin speaks from the National Press Gallery Tuesday afternoon following the release of the report.
.
(Boycott Bourque)
I actually like Bob Fife. He was a bit partisan during the election campaign (i thought) but he did a good job on the trip to Afghanistan. I think he has been reasonable since. Maybe its just that the others are so far out, lol. Anyway, im interested to see how this all plays out. As has been mentioned before, its easy to get a lot more factual information from the government website.
BTW: 4-2 Edmonton!!!
Go oilers go!!!!!
Last week at the Liberal caucus meeting they had to ban blackberries and cell phones when one of the Liberals was caught blackberrying Bob Fife on speed dial DURING the meeting to give him a leak.
The Harper government have said they are trying to prevent leaks as it is not fair to all of the other media outlets and Canadians should all get the information at the same time.
Poor Bob Fife and others who were on Liberal leaker’s speed dials. Like Jane Tabor. Like how many others?????? They also get leaks from beurocrats as we have seen lately – drafts of reports and memos that are incorrect but used anyways without verification; lots of anonymous sources which end up being bafflegab.
This is NOT news about government programs that Canadians want and need. This is this batch of ego maniacs trying to turn the Parliament of Canada into a soap opera for ratings, personal bylines or promotions or to sell advertising.
They have done such a huge diservice to this country treating opinion as “news” and allowing misinformation to stand unchallenged. One small example amongst hundreds – when the media talks about Kyoto they show large polluting smokestacks and let people talk about their asthma or getting sick on the bad air is why we need Kyoto, blah blah. Even the dimmest reporter should know that CO2 grenhouse gas is NOT a pollutant.
But, to further the Liberal lie….
Hear Hear SDA. If I were running the media companies these clowns were working for, I’d fire them. They became the story, which is a huge no-no in journalism.
Journalism 101 as taught to me by Roy Wilson, Sheridan College Journalism.
1) Verify everything
2) Accuracy
3) Be as un-biased as possible
4) Never become the story.
F-Minus for those clowns!
Phil
“They have done such a huge diservice to this country treating opinion as “news” and allowing misinformation to stand unchallenged.”
Lorraine,if I had to choose one sentence to articulate the lack of integrity I feel the MSM has demonstrared,you nailed it!
It was the best press conference I’ve seen in a long time!! A nice clear crisp message from the Prime Minister directly to the people of Canada. Let the MSM wallow in their own self-importance, while Stephen Harper speaks directly to the people of Canada.
Good riddance to the PPG–here’s hoping that they stay away. They are incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial–they only know how to propagandize for the corrupt Liberals–as my mom used to say–“you are known by the friends you keep” so we know what the PPG is–
Edmonton won!!! Now that is something important–not the PPG having PMS!
I’m leaning towards Bourque not posting this while posting the message from the PM as a slap in the face to the MSM in so much as the message still gets out sans their sorry half brained “protest”.
Maybe Bourque has it right – this is NON NEWS as the petulance and disrespect by the Parliamentary Press gallery is NON NEWSWORTHY.
WHO CARES! It is about time and they are NOT missed by Canadians. Bourque carried the story about the $40 million to Darfur and DID NOT NEED the facts filtered through some opinionated talking head with half the facts and a personal agenda.
Good for him.
The PPG really stepped over the line today. Not because they are ticked with the PMO over its so called list but because the story was of national importance as it relates to the actions the government is taking to assist Dafur. But no, the whiney media decided to show their petulance and leave with their ball. However, the last laugh was on them. The PM made his announcement which Canadians got unfiltered which as it should be. However, if I were the owners of these newspapers and TV stations I would be mighty unhappy paying a bunch of so called professional journalists who have to write columns made up from their imaginations or based on information they obtained through unverified leaked documents which prove to be untrue. The PPG is making themselves more irrelevant everyday. That’s in the best interest of Canada. If I were Harper I would simply set up the podium, make his announcement without the knowledge of the PPG. Nobody would be any the wiser and Harper would have less aggravation.
“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”
Joseph Paul Goebbels
Wait a minute now anonymous, you couldn’t possibly be comparing the former Liberal Government to the Nazis would you? 😛
No, the Liberals used the media to form public opinion.
“It is the absolute right of the MSM to supervise the formation of public opinion.”
MOP
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental
principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
Joseph Paul Goebbels
Harper’s Five Key Priorities?