Friday, December 9, 2016

Susan Delacourt on the shrinking Ottawa press gallery

Susan Delacourt writes in the Star:
"What if they held a press conference on Parliament Hill and no one showed up?
"Actually, that’s always been a possibility, but the chances of it happening are a bit greater these days, with the dwindling ranks of reporters on the Hill.
"This week, we learned some hard numbers. According to an iPolitics analysis of data provided by the parliamentary press gallery, the number of accredited journalists on the Hill is the lowest it has been in 22 years.
Gallery membership this month stands at 318, a sharp decline from its peak of 377 journalists in 2002. And as the iPolitics report notes, you have to back to 1994 to find membership numbers as low as they are today.
"To put this in some context: the House of Commons has 43 more members of Parliament than it had 22 years ago, to reflect Canada’s growing population in those two decades. The press gallery, on the other hand, has been cut by about 15 per cent."

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