FILDEBRANDT: Cowardly Carney kicks WS reporter out of his news conference

Liberal Leadership "outsider" candidate Mark Carney just kicked Western Standard Reporter James Snell out of his campaign launch event in Edmonton.

The man who did it on Carney's behalf was former "Chief of Stiff" to Alison Redford and Jyoti Gondek, Stephen Carter.

The reporter that Carney's team found so objectionable was no random blogger. He is an experienced career journalist and a member of the Alberta Legislative Press Gallery in good standing. He isn't the type of journalist to yell "gotcha" questions or not wait his turn. The guy has chill. He is a professional.

Former Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley also tried to ban the Western Standard from asking questions at her events. It didn't help her.

We didn't blink when Rachel Notley banned us. And we certainly aren't going to blink when Mark Carney cowers from us.

Why would Mark Carney's team be so afraid of a single reporter? Here are a few guesses.

The Western Standard is the leading news organization in Alberta as the government-subsidized legacy media collapses. We have a big audience.

We are independent media, but we have hired highly credible journalists that are out of the legacy media.

We are successful and growing despite refusing to accept the Trudeau media bailout (even though we are eligible for it.)

Carney isn't used to real questions from real journalists. He travelled all the way to the United States to soft-launch his campaign on the Daily Show. There, he got a nice softball interview with Jon Stewart — who, to be fair, is not familiar with the intricacies of Canadian backroom politics.

Eventually, he had to come home and take questions from Canadian journalists. From the look of it thus far, he will limit those questions to journalists being paid by his party's government with taxpayers' money.

Carney can run, but he can't hide. Beyond Edmonton, we have full-time journalists based in Calgary, Vancouver and Regina and many more freelance journalists between Victoria and Ottawa. There won't be anywhere he can go in Western Canada without a Western Standard reporter there.

These reporters are all polite and professional. They aren't going to make a spectacle of themselves if they are continually refused access to Carney's campaign events. But they are going to be there, and they are going to demand the right to ask questions alongside the government-funded journalists.

And because we do this job without the federal government's media bailout subsidy, the Western Standard team would be grateful if you'd consider making a donation to support our work.