Arkansas' prison board has adopted a new policy that affects not only prisoners but those who cover them. For it restricts press coverage to members of the certified "news media." But who's that? And when officials define the term, how long before reporters and editors find themselves testifying in court as witnesses? Beware: To define a term--news media, for example--is necessarily to limit it.
So is now just anybody, that is, any citizen of the United States, free to say what he has seen in a prison once he's allowed in? Just a couple of years ago--in 2014--television reporter Shannon Miller interviewed murder suspect Arron Lewis in the prison system's maximum security unit at Tucker. Sure enough, the reporter was later required to testify at Arron Lewis' trial.
There have been other notable instances of the press making the news in this state and not just reporting it. Remember when a gossip mag interviewed a former Arkansas state trooper and current inmate of its prison system about the prolific Duggar family? Its latest additions always interest people interested in other people's business.
It is these less than respectable news-and-opinion outlets that provide the best test of First Amendment freedoms. And an early warning that they're under attack. They perform much the same useful function as canaries do in coal mines, providing an early warning that something is amiss. Or soon will be.
So far most of the state's press is proving fairly nonchalant about this threat to its or rather the people's First Amendment rights. What, them worry? Certainly not now, when the threat is only budding. Which is what folks tend to say before they're engulfed by the threat, when it may be too late to survive it.
Tom Larimer, executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, said he had no problem with the prison board's new rule so long as it doesn't interfere with the state's Freedom of Information Act, which makes public documents--or at least many of them--available to the public. Mr. Larimer does recognize that, when "you start to define media, that's a slippery slope." What he may not recognize is that the state already has begun to slide down it, and that he's issuing this warning not at the top of the slope looking down, but somewhere along its descending route.
So who will defend freedom of the press when the press won't? Sorry to break it to y'all, but that leaves the job up to We the People. For it is not the law that in the end must provide the best shield for the rights of the people, but the people themselves. Or as this state's motto still holds, Regnat Populus, or The People Rule. Or had better.
Editorial on 10/25/2016