Sep 15, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min · 15 segments
NTV News co-anchor Michael Connors joins Andrew Parsons and Alex Bill for a conversation about journalism, political history and the challenge of assembling the ultimate Newfoundland and Labrador…
Andrew ParsonsHostMichael ConnorsGuest
Alex BillHostIt kind of, it started as a project of me learning about a particular role I had taken on as I was doing it.
In 2016, Dave Cochran left and moved to Ottawa to work in CBC's Parliamentary Bureau.
He had held a sort of an informal position known as the President of the Press Gallery.
And that's kind of like an informal liaison that exists between all the media that cover the House and between the Speaker's office.
The Speaker is the person that has administrative responsibility for the House of Assembly and has control over it.
And actually, I'll even just want to get a little bit maybe esoteric, but the name of the book, Admit Strangers, Admit Strangers is the phrase that the speaker says every day to signal that outsiders, strangers, people who are not officers or members of the House can enter.
It's the constitutional authority of the legislature to control its own premises and control its own debates.
And so a lot of people might assume that the ability of the media to cover the legislature flows from the right to freedom of the press, as outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it actually doesn't.
It flows from the power of the speaker and the power of the legislature to admit or exclude strangers from its premises.
And so the entire legal framework in which the press gallery exists, it exists within that framework.
They'll organize themselves into associations and they will work out basically an agreement with the speaker's office, whereby the speaker kind of delegates their authority to the press gallery to kind of administer their own internal affairs.
Media themselves make the decisions about who gets to cover the house as opposed to the politicians Who they are covering and it's a way of trying to maintain their independence, but it can be kind of a complicated relationship and What I discovered is as I you know, when I took on this role the press gallery was a very informal body, but some bankers boxes filled with old records.
And the speaker's office at the same time had come to me saying that they wanted to kind of formalize things a bit and get some things down in writing.
So I started researching these records and I found that once upon a time, I'd sort of been generally aware of this anyway, but what I found out in more detail is that many years ago, there had been a much more formally structured press gallery where, you know, all the member media organizations paid fees and there was a board of directors that was elected every year.
It kind of, it started as a project of me learning about a particular role I had taken on as I was doing it.
In 2016, Dave Cochran left and moved to Ottawa to work in CBC's Parliamentary Bureau.
He had held a sort of an informal position known as the President of the Press Gallery.
And that's kind of like an informal liaison that exists between all the media that cover the House and between the Speaker's office.
The Speaker is the person that has administrative responsibility for the House of Assembly and has control over it.
And actually, I'll even just want to get a little bit maybe esoteric, but the name of the book, Admit Strangers, Admit Strangers is the phrase that the speaker says every day to signal that outsiders, strangers, people who are not officers or members of the House can enter.
It's the constitutional authority of the legislature to control its own premises and control its own debates.
And so a lot of people might assume that the ability of the media to cover the legislature flows from the right to freedom of the press, as outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it actually doesn't.
It flows from the power of the speaker and the power of the legislature to admit or exclude strangers from its premises.
And so the entire legal framework in which the press gallery exists, it exists within that framework.
They'll organize themselves into associations and they will work out basically an agreement with the speaker's office, whereby the speaker kind of delegates their authority to the press gallery to kind of administer their own internal affairs.
Media themselves make the decisions about who gets to cover the house as opposed to the politicians Who they are covering and it's a way of trying to maintain their independence, but it can be kind of a complicated relationship and What I discovered is as I you know, when I took on this role the press gallery was a very informal body, but some bankers boxes filled with old records.
And the speaker's office at the same time had come to me saying that they wanted to kind of formalize things a bit and get some things down in writing.
So I started researching these records and I found that once upon a time, I'd sort of been generally aware of this anyway, but what I found out in more detail is that many years ago, there had been a much more formally structured press gallery where, you know, all the member media organizations paid fees and there was a board of directors that was elected every year.
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