Restricting press access to lawmakers

Of all the horrors of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent changes in the ways all of us do business, governments moving their meetings online has not been without problems for the public and the press — but at the same time, it has probably not been disastrous.

A bonus side effect is that pandemic restrictions on inperson attendance at meetings in city halls and statehouses around the nation have spurred technological innovations by governments that actually increase access to important meetings, at least for citizens with good computers and the savvy to use them to watch the sausage-making online.

But a recent story in Editor & Publisher, the longtime bible of the newspaper industry, contains some troubling reports of American politicians using the lockdowns as an excuse to distance themselves from pesky reporters trying to get the news to their readers.

Some of the problems are simple matters of logistics in the new era, reports Gretchen A. Peck: “A phone call or even a video interview with a legislator can never wholly substitute a conversation had in person, even during a press gaggle, or by way of a chance encounter in the hallway.”

True, that. But there are some more insidious situations brewing. In Iowa, after more than 140 years of good press access to lawmakers, “the state Senate decided that the 2022 session would begin with a new rule for journalists: They’d be moved from the ‘press bench’ and relegated to the upper-level gallery, reserved for the public. Reporters can still see and hear the proceedings down below, but they no longer have the opportunity to ask immediate follow-up questions of debating legislators.”

Same thing in Kansas, where reporters were also given the boot from the legislature’s floor, with the excuse that new access to livestreaming made it easier, not harder, to cover state government. But “access to lawmakers immediately, whether it’s during a vote or debate, allowed our reporters to make things even more transparent, to get clarification, to make their reporting even better,” says the director of the Kansas Press Association.

In Sacramento, reporters have never been allowed on the legislative floor. That’s our bad. But new restrictions elsewhere are still a bad sign.