Hey, we’re as tired of this as many of you are. It would be easier for the governor and us if he’d simply restore routine press privileges he once granted the Arkansas Times. (And stop lying. Case in point: He told KUAR Thursday that he hasn’t excluded the Times from anything. He distributed a news release yesterday about clemency decisions. We did not receive it but other media did. We have asked under the FOI for such public documents. It is not, a day later, on his website or in our in-box.)
So, the issue bubbles on. Today, Stephens Media reports on the letter from the national alternative papers group urging the Huckabee to stop being petty. The Arkansas chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists should be sending the governor a message on this before long as well. Here, on KUAR, UALR law prof Rick Peltz offers some encouraging words about our claim of unconstitutional discrimination by the governor.
John Brummett also weighs in on the matter today. Beyond the core principle of free speech and press is the political misjudgment implicit in the affair. He concludes:
It is hard anymore to determine exactly what falls beneath our presidency, what with Clinton’s oral-sex receipt in the Oval Office and George W.’s lying incompetence.
But picking a fight with a lowly liberal weekly tabloid in Little Rock clearly seems to qualify.
Just picking it, not losing it. To pick it is to lose it.