Iowa Republican Party kicks press out of state Senate

In another of many signs of neo-fascist Republican hostility toward the press and crackpottery, the Republican Iowa state senate voted to bar journalists from the chamber floor. That ended a 140-year tradition of allowing the press to be present for Senate work. Journalists will be allowed to sit in a public gallery above the floor. As usual, the excuses for this are nonsense. They rely on almost the same sophistication of ‘reasoning’ that accompanies Republican arguments that the 2020 election was stolen, i.e., crackpot. The Washington Post writes:

Republican leaders in the state Senate told journalists last week they will no longer be allowed to work on the chamber floor, a change that breaks with a more than 140-year tradition in the Iowa Capitol. 

The new rule denies reporters access to the press benches near senators’ desks, a proximity current and former statehouse reporters told The Washington Post is crucial for the most accurate and nuanced coverage. The position allows reporters to see and hear everything clearly on the Senate floor and to get real-time answers and clarifications during debates.

“When you take journalists and restrict their access and then you couple that with changes that have occurred in the past couple of years with procedures in Iowa, it makes it that much harder for the public to know what’s going on,” said Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a government transparency watchdog.

In an email to statehouse reporters obtained by The Washington Post, Senate Republican spokesperson Caleb Hunter said the new rule arose from the “evolving nature and definition of ‘media.' ” 

“As nontraditional media outlets proliferate, it creates an increasingly difficult scenario for the Senate, as a governmental entity, to define the criteria of a media outlet,” the email said. Hunter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.  

To critics of the new rule, including members of the Iowa Capitol Press Association and Democrats in the state Senate, the change is little more than a thinly veiled retaliation against news outlets for unflattering coverage of the Republican-controlled legislature. Longtime statehouse reporters also called the justification specious and said there are no instances of nontraditional media causing disruptions.

The Republican excuse seems to indicate that most likely either the Republicans are too inept to recognize legitimate media outlets, or they just do not want transparency as they advance their anti-democratic neo-fascist agenda in Iowa. They can handle disruptive presences by banning them.

Questions: Does the Republican excuse make any sense or carry weight? Why couldn’t any media outlet, traditional, untraditional or otherwise, that caused a disruption be banned (with or without a prior banning warning like Dissident Politics sometimes employs on disruptive miscreants, pissants, insulters and hooligans)? How stupid do Iowa state Senate Republicans think everyone is, or are they just virtue signaling to their significantly deceived, echo-chambered base and do not much care what anyone else thinks?