Outrageous is an overused word in politics, but this is truly outrageous.

Former Sun Media columnist and Sun News Network host Ezra Levant’s new online news site, The Rebel (therebel.media), has become one of Albertans’ top Internet sources of reporting and commentary in just its first year in operation.

So how come Rachel Notley’s NDP government is doing its best to censor Levant and his reporters?

If I hadn’t read for myself the letters back and forth between the Rebel’s lawyer and the government, I wouldn’t have believed even the NDP were capable of such anti-free speech behaviour.

Back in late January when it was announcing the results of its royalty review, the NDP held a closed-door technical briefing (a “lock-up”) where government experts explained the details to journalists.

When Rebel contributor Sheila Gunn Reid showed up for the briefing, she was turned away. The event was for “accredited media only.”

Now Reid never went to journalism school. (Neither did I.) And she has never worked in a formal newsroom. But she used to be part of the Corus radio network’s Hockey Moms panel that regularly debated government involvement in family issues and her new book was the #1 bestseller on Amazon.ca most of last week. It’s now sold out.

If that doesn’t make Reid a journalist, I’m not sure what does.

The NDP government doesn’t question the legitimacy (nor should it) of online lefty journalists such as David Climenhaga of the NDP-friendly rabble.ca or Dave Cournoyer, a communications advisor for the United Nurses of Alberta, whose daveberta.ca blog is a must-read on Edmonton and Alberta politics.

So why single out Reid?

It couldn’t be, could it, that Reid’s bestseller is entitled The Destroyers: Rachel Notley and the NDP's War on Alberta,or that Reid and her boss (Levant) were among the first journalists to out the radical, out-of-province pasts of many senior political staffers in the NDP government?

But it gets worse.

When an NDP staffer learned that Reid’s Rebel colleague, Holly Nicholas, was already in the royalty briefing, the staffer entered the lock-up and kicked Nicholas out.

Later that day, Marcella Munro, the premier’s “outreach” director in Calgary (and a former campaign aide to anti-pipeline Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and anti-pipeline NDP leader Adrian Dix), kicked Reid and Nicholas out of the common area of a downtown Calgary hotel where they were waiting to interview an oil industry spokesperson.

The next week, the NDP placed The Rebel on a “no-go” list and had the mild-mannered, very polite Reid escorted out of the legislature by a sheriff to prevent her from attending a news conference given by Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. She was not making a fuss; she was simply trying to check in at the security office.

When Levant hired highly respected Edmonton media lawyer Fred Kozak to have the Rebel bans lifted, the NDP had Justice department lawyer, Jason Fung, provide a curt, one-sentence response: “Our client’s position remains that your client and those who identify as being connected to your client are not journalists and are not entitled to access media lock-ups or other such events.”

Levant has been a journalist for more than 20 years forAlberta Report, the National Post and the Suns.

It is very dangerous in a free society to give politicians, bureaucrats or government lawyers the power to determine who is and isn’t a journalist. That could lead to censorship, or at least to holding accreditation over the heads of reporters who are critical of the government.

Prior to the Premier-PM news conference, legislature press gallery president, Darcy Henton of Postmedia, recognized Reid’s legitimacy to attend. That should be more than good enough for the Notley government.

Imagine the news you’ll get if Notley and her staff decide who can and can’t do the reporting.