Canadian Prime Minister To Capital Press: Drop Dead

By: E&P Staff Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he's had it with the journalists who cover Parliament, so he's through talking with them.

Harper, in office only since February, told a television station Wednesday that the parliamentary press gallery is politically biased against him. "Unfortunately, the press gallery has taken the view they are going to be the opposition to the government," Harper told the TV station, according to a Canadian Press (CP) account Thursday. "They don't ask questions at my press conferences now."

CP noted that on Tuesday more than 20 reporters in Ottawa walked out on a Harper event when he refused to take their questions.

And Harper has a rigorous way of taking questions, the Canadian media report. He will not hold a press conference unless his staff is able to choose which journalists will ask questions from a list compiled in advance.

Not surprisingly, the press gallery has refused to accept those conditions.

This confrontation between the press and prime minister has been brewing for some time. Last month, his administration announced that journalists could no longer cover the ceremonies for the return of the bodies of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

CP quoted the Ottawa press gallery's president, Quebec television reporter Yves Malo, as saying he was neither pro- nor anti-Conservative: "I'm just a journalist who's trying to do his job."