PMO asks Tory MPs not to answer Herald reporter's queries

[Posteritatis]

From the local paper:

The Prime Minister’s Office has told Conservative MPs not to talk to two newspaper re­porters about MPs’ homes in Ottawa.

The Chronicle Herald and The Ottawa Citizen are collab­orating on a story on expense claims, and contacted MPs from the Tories, NDP and Liberals over the past week.

But when word filtered back to the PMO on Friday, Conser­vative staff sent out an email gag order. It was obtained by CTV News Channel’s Power Play with Tom Clark, a daily politics program.

While the PMO is often suspected of controlling the communications of govern­ment MPs, the email gives a rare peek at how it’s done.

The last time the federal government tried to suppress a Herald story they rather entertainingly went on the warpath about it for awhile. That time was a bit nastier than this - Harper tried to legally order the Herald not to quote a cabinet minister, basically - but still, this isn't a newspaper that gets terribly happy about government interference in its reporting.