Who let the Blogs in?
Steve Taylor was doing interviews on Parliament Hill. Silly Steve: he didn’t realize Parliament Hill is a closed shop for the 700 members of legacy media’s Parliamentary Press Gallery. Elizabeth Thompson, a scold at the Montreal Gazette, seeing her job ending before her eyes, tattled to Parliamentary President Richard Brennan who got security to ask Steve to leave the foyer area where the post budget scrums were occurring.
Now, as it happens, Steve had permission from the Speaker of the House to cover the Budget.
What is actually happening here is, as legacy media sees its market share fall off a cliff and its credibility evaporating faster than a Liberal election promise on a globally warm day, the PPG is beginning to realize that only its monopoly on access can keep it in business. And if you want to keep a monopoly you have to actually act to enforce it. The airheads and the partisans and the scolds who make up our so called national media are acutely aware that Steve, with a few hundred dollars worth of equipment and a loyal readership, is building a national, personal, brand that virtually none of the losers writing for single city outfits like the Gazette can ever hope to attain.
When you are both scared and incompetent competition is terrifying. Especially competition as intelligent and engaging as Mr. Taylor.
(h/t SDA)
Update: Suzanne who leaves a comment below provides a link to Gauleiter Richard Brennan in the Globe and Mail:
Parliamentary Press Gallery president Richard Brennan maps out his rigid blogger strategy: “They will be ejected and if they continue, they’ll be prohibited from coming into the main block, particularly here, I should say, the Foyer of the House. You’re not to use anything collected in the Foyer of the House, be it video or voice that could be used in some kind of a nefarious way. That’s what these guys want to do. They want to collect tape, video, voice, people making mistakes or saying something that’s not exactly correct, they want to use it for some kind of an attack ad. That’s what we’re afraid of. They’re not supposed to be here anyway. They’re not members of the Press Gallery. This area is for the members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery or visiting media only.” globe and mail
It would seem to me that Steve Taylor is rather clearly “visiting media”. Lord knows he would not want to be mistaken for the dumb bunnies who are embedded in the PPG.
And doesn’t Gauleiter Brennan sound paranoid? Coming from the President of a PPG whose lame members think it the height of journalism if they get a “gotcha” it is more than a little rich.
The Sergeant-at-arms told me that to be able to cover an event on the Hill, a journalist who is not a member of the PPG would have to get a temporary permit from the PPG for a price.
Nobody seems to know why the PPG has a monopoly on political coverage on the Hill. The Sergeant-at-Arms told me “it’s always been that way”.
In the end, though, the buck stops at the Speaker of the House.