Does the MSM own Parliament Hill?

Nice little graphic. (h/t SDA) I thought Parliament Hill belonged to us... the people? Guess I must have been mistaken.

A few excerpts from Stephen Taylor's day:

I have a Hill pass that indicates that I have been pre-screened by security and allows me access to a variety of places in the Parliamentary district. While hovering on the periphery of a budget-day scrum with Jack Layton, I was spotted by Elizabeth Thompson of the Montreal Gazette. She scolded me and expressed to this lowly blogger that he wasn't allowed to scrum with Layton. Largely ignoring her, I continued to mind my own business and started to needlessly check my camera settings. Thompson alerted Parliamentary President Richard Brennan to my presence and minutes later, security asked me to leave the foyer area.

Unbelievable! Yes, the Parliamentary Press Gallery, with no powers granted to it by constitution or statute, used security to remove somebody who had the right to be present on the Hill granted to him by the Speaker of the House.

Of course, this brings up a few questions. If security on the Hill is the responsibility of the Speaker, and if I have been granted access to most non-privileged areas of the Hill by the Speaker, what authority does an official of the PPG have in calling in the guard to have me removed from perhaps the most public area of the Hill?

Again, why does the power reside in a largely unelected, unaccountable body of Parliament that is not defined by statute? I've made a sport out of taking on institutions with artificial and inflated senses of entitlement, maybe the Press Gallery is next.

News Flash for the MSM: We used to rely on the Parliamentary Press Gallery for our information on the goings on up there on the Hill. My dear members of the PPG... we, the people, still want to know what's going on. We just don't want to hear it from you. We're sick of your bias, and the force feeding of your views that we've been getting for years. Get over it.

In the meantime, would you please stop trying to block the access of the common man to his Government? Now there's an irony for you... the media, who are supposed to keep the people apprised of what their Government is up to, is actively seeking to prevent the people from getting their information from the source.