Sunday, August 05, 2007

PPG Hissy Fit

CTV's Question Period was quite a snooze today, except that I did get a bit of a chuckle out of the self-obsessed Parliamentary Press Gallery and their total indignation at not being allowed to stay in the hotel lobby where the CPC was holding their caucus meeting in Charlottetown.

Anyway, before the link disappears, go to the CTV Politics site, and click on QP - "Journalists Panel on Conservative Tactics". And just who forms the panel? Well, we have Jane Taber, Jim Travers, Robert Fife and Craig Oliver. All the usual suspects.

No bias there, right?

Fife makes a reference to the use of the RCMP to clear ' half a dozen' (i.e. six) journalists from lobby and set them up in a media centre across the way, as something from 'Vladamir Putin's Russia'.

Travers agrees, saying it felt something like being in Russia before the wall came down...etc.

He talks about the "authoritarian", "controlling" character of the CPC that he doesn't think goes over well with "most Canadians".

Gee, I wonder where he got his statistics from.


And then we have Craig Oliver chiming in with a comment that over the years his view is that the Press Gallery is a reflection of public opinion!!!

"...And I can think of many governments that went down hard, and I think of Martin, I think of Mulroney, I think of Joe Clark who were also very unpopular with the press gallery by the time they were defeated and I think of governments that lasted a long time, like Trudeau and Chretien who a had relatively off and on, but a good relationship with the press."

So there you go, folks. If you want your party to have a long-lasting government in Canada, all you have to do is suck up to the PPG.

No need for democracy. No need for elections.

Canada only needs the Parliamentary Press Gallery.



It just goes on and on. Quite nauseating, but also quite an eye-opener.


* * * *

Related: Sheila Copps on the same subject:

...In a turf war between the prime minister and the media, there is only one winner. And it isn't Harper.

Good grief! They are so used to being coddled and thrown little tidbits that they just don't know how to do anything else but whine and complain when they don't get their way.


Maybe Jim Travers was right with one comment- "I mean, they (Canadians) don't care much about the conditions that we have to do our job in, but..."

You should have just stopped there, Jim.

* * * *
Oops! PPG busted here. It was the hotel! Not the RCMP. (H/T Jad)



23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty funny shit. If it wasn't so insidious.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Yeah, I guess if you can't find any news, you make yourself the news.

Insidious - exactly. It tends to become the norm.

Anonymous said...

The media won't let the REAL story about their so called eviction stand in the way of a good pout and spout off:
Apparently it was the HOTEL management that asked the RCMP to help move the media to the designated media centre across the street from the hotel.

They said the media were interfering with the registered guests at the hotel and causing congestion in the lobby. It also interefered with orderly security measures and causing chaos trying to do some gotcha intercepts of the delegates who were there for confidential meetings.

So, the media had their own place. They just did not want to be put in their OWN space as they feel they have a divine right to impose themselves on other's spaces - private and confidential meetings be damned.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Apparently it was the HOTEL management that asked the RCMP to help move the media to the designated media centre across the street from the hotel.

Wow. Now I am totally disgusted. Talk about manipulating the facts. Do you have any kind of source for that Anon? Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Ah, if you want to rant democracy you better remember part of our democracy is "freedom of the press".

You must be a very unhappy person because all you do is rant about some silly thing or another.

If it was the Liberals that did this to the press you'd be all over them.

Personally, I like the idea of freedom of the press - this isn't Putin and Russia here. C'mon you don't think Harper's communications people instructed the hotel?

Anonymous said...

And when the previous gov't ran their caucus meetings at Lester Person, were the media allowed in anywhere but the lobby?

And when? What was the standard then. Bet it was as "restrictive".

Torian said...

ahh, yes freedom of the press...

But with any freedom comes responsibility. And right now, the PPG is showing none, especially when they seem to think that THEY are the ones responsible for long term govts and THEY alone are the reflection of "most canadians".

I guess it would be different if the media did not have its own bias to sell, but they do. No one is without bias. And lately, their bias is really starting to show.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

And when the previous gov't ran their caucus meetings at Lester Person, were the media allowed in anywhere but the lobby?

Actually, if you watch the QP clip, Craig Oliver makes that point - that this government isn't the first to use such tactics. Probably the only non-partisan comment of the whole episode.

Always, why does the Press figure it has the God-given right to try to infiltrate a private caucus meeting? It isn't their business.

They had their own venue set up across the way. What a bunch of crybabies!

Anonymous said...

The one who seems to be always having hissy fits is you Joanne - I bet you don't show this one either.

Go for a walk, have a drink, relax.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

I bet you don't show this one either.

Huh?

Anonymous said...

The truth is that next to slimey politicians, I'd think that most are silently cheering Harper on because the public has had their fill of annoying media who tend to do more to spin and whine than they do about reporting for the purpose of balancing information and allowing viewers to come to their own conclusions.

Just like cheating politicians, most mainstream media must think their playing to idiots and that idiots will buy what they're selling.

Liberals aren't always supportive of what CTV does either folks.

Anonymous said...

Tango Juliette sez:

Any leftoid "journalist" participating in Sunday's embarassing circle of jerks in their cirlce-jerk, who is brain dead enough to, even in a drunken stupor, compare what exists here to what exists in Putin's Russia and what existed there before "the wall came down," obviously hasen't got the slightest clue of what he is talking about.

"These people," if I may lift a phrase from Dan Matheson, when he covered this story, see themselves as the arbiters of all things democratic(mainly Liberal Party of Canada.) What a joke.

As for freedom of the press? No problem there.

Maybe a problem of where the press can hang out looking for leaks, but no-one is restricting what the press says, even if it's mostly slantred, biased and untrue.

It's usually the Bolsheviks' fellow travellers who like to throw out those wild accusations like Jim did. For a guy getting a paycheque cut for him by the Red Star on the Don, that's pretty damned funny. Or, it would be, if it wasn't so bloody offensive.

He would never, NEVER consider publicly comparing anything here to Nazi Germany, would he? No! Just proves that, in his mind, the Soviets were nowhere close to being half as bad as the Nazis. Yet the numbers and the facts prove otherwise.

what a disgusting pack of yutzes.

Must go. My barf-bag is just out of reach.

tj

e. typos & o. e.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Good rant, T.J.

As a matter of fact, if you listen to the clip carefully you'll hear Travers make some reference to Germany as well. I just couldn't catch the exact phrasing. Maybe you can pick it out.

Candace said...

What I wouldn't give for a truly independent news source! Jeez, I'm tired of the nonsense.

What I really liked is the teeny tiny clip at the end, where "journalists discuss Harper" - oops, it seems to be gone today. It was Oliver & I think Fife looking at the camera, then reminding everyone to watch next week.

Anonymous said...

Tango Juliette sez:

From the looks of it: Fife pulled the pin on the "Putin" totalitarian bias. The rest of the pck just chewed on the grenade till it went off. that includes Copps in the sunday Sun.

traverse referenced the GDR[East German "Democratic" Republic] Nothing to do with Nazis. Just German commies. In fact, life was so good on that left side of the political divide, that the communists and Bolsheviks finally had tyo resort to building what they called the "anti-Fascist Prtective Barrier" to keep us capitalist westerners out of paradise. We called their sad Commie-assed Protective Barrier nothing more than the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.

How anyone else perceives this abomination, should pretty well prove to ba a great indicator of where they should probably choose to live, work and enjoy the various persuits of happiness afforded to us by our various and respective benevolent states and political masters.

Moi?

Jàime ca, bien, ici.

I love THIS place, cause we came from THAT place. My family, and countless millions like us -- KNOW the difference.

Travers, Fife, et al, know not of what they speak. They spit on our freedoms, for they have never lived without freedom. If their lives depended on it, and their lives probably do, they couldn`t tell the difference between freedom,political agitation and silly attempts at pay-back, on the one hand, and true, real, infringement and subsequent loss of fundamental freedoms under actual totalitarian repression, on the other.

They love to talk through their rear trouser pockets. these locations are well-known for their proximity to what is more than likely the precise source of their inane blathering. I speak here of their individual, posterior openings for senseless sound emissions.

Have not yet seen Harper strangle any homeless or `homed`people objecting to his behaviour yet, have I? Or did I doze off for a moment or two, and missed all the fun?

back in a few days.

tj

typos e. & o. e.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Tango, thanks for the translation and the eloquent rant. Well done!

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Candace, I just checked out your blog and found that column by George Jonas. Priceless! I missed that one somehow. That's a really good read.

Anonymous said...

" ... I speak here of their individual, posterior openings for senseless sound emissions."

I wish they were SOUNDLESS too ...

Fife's high-pitched whines, delivered like a third rate soprano trying to hit an unattainably high note, have become one the most grating sounds emitted by the CTV newscasts.

Taber's delivery is equally grating, usually done in a giggly near-adolescent squeal.

And Craig Oliver? Well, he just looks dyspeptic ALL the time. Somebody PLEASE give him some Maalox.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Gabby, hilarious! As T.J. would say, I'm luvving it!

jad said...

"Apparently it was the HOTEL management that asked the RCMP to help move the media to the designated media centre across the street from the hotel."

There was a clip on ChuckerCanuck's blog last Wednesday August 1. The blog piece is actually about Calgary Grit's Best Premier contest, but halfway down the comments there is one from Springer ("and here you watch Jim Travers act like an ass") showing a very polite hotel manager suggesting to a couple of reporters that they might be better off across the street in the Media Centre. No sign of the RCMP. Also a hilarious clip of an extremely chubby Jim Travers (now I know why he always wears a jacket) walking across the street mugging for the camera and yelling "They threw us out of the Gulag !"

The clip was actually from CBC, and is at http://www.cbc.ca/clips/mov/erickson-2torycaucus-070801.mov. You have to watch to the end for the funny bits.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Oh, good stuff, Jad. Thanks!

Joanne (True Blue) said...

For anyone having trouble accessing that video just click here. Sometimes the end of the URL gets cut off in comments.

Brian in Calgary said...

Never let it be said that our friendly neighbourhood PPG let the facts interfere with a good smear.