For reporters it seems that getting media access to senior government officials is becoming more difficult with an increased emphasis on controlling the messaging.
Stephen Harper’s cold war with the Parliamentary Press Gallery is legendary complete with limiting questions, requiring reporters to sign into press conferences, trying to remove a cameraman from a flight after he asked a question, banning reporters covering speeches, from and even a walkout of journalists from a press conference protesting new restrictions.
While nothing in the Ontario Liberal’s recent past can match Harper’s disdain for the press getting access to MPPs and cabinet ministers is still challenging.
For campus media it’s even more difficult as the student press is often seen as being at the bottom of the media pecking order and skipped over in favour of larger outlets.
So it was refreshing when the Ontario Minister of Training Colleges and Universities Brad Duguid organized a teleconference with campus media to talk about some recent policy announcements.
There was about half a dozen campus journalists on the call with Duguid who talked and took questions for over 40 minutes about online learning, credit transfer, and a plan to give volunteers at the 2015 Pan Am Games a break on their student loans.
The student press, making the most of the rare opportunity, pressed Duguid on the issues as well as the recent goal of the federal government to double the number of international students over eight years.
Duguid, of course, tried to stay on message but he didn’t limit questions and stayed on the call until the campus journalists had exhausted their queries.
This follows an earlier experiment by Duguid that included a live Google hangout session with student leaders from Carleton, McMaster, Waterloo, Queens universities and St. Clair and Confederation colleges. Duguid used the Google hangout to announce $42 million in funding for Ontario Online, an e-learning hub, and took questions from students and journalists.
Of course, there’s still a lot of serious structural and political barriers to the press in accessing information from the government but Duguid’s initiatives to communicate more directly with students and the campus press should be applauded as a small, but important, shift towards a more open government.
To listen to the raw audio of the campus press media conference call with Duguid please play the below recording.
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