Missourinet

Folks, today we have a contribution from Missourinet News Director Bob Priddy … who makes it clear … VERY clear … he doesn’t really care too much for how next week’s Showdown at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau is being staged and controlled. Enjoy …

Steve

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"It is grating to even tell you that former National Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will be at Southeast Missouri State University in a few days “debating” healthcare.

These two people who used to be in positions of importance are making tidy sums by trotting throughout the country “debating” this issue. Neither will vote on the issue. Neither is responsible to any voter or other special interest constituency for their positions. But because they used to be somebody important they get lots of good money from the places where they put on their shows.

But there’s a problem with stuff like this.

These two do not want you to hear what they say during their show if you are not in the auditorium.  SEMO says the contract with them bars the news media from audio or video taping of the event. If you hear or see excerpts from their show elsewhere, they will be provided by SEMO’s video services department. Any electronic journalist wanting to use excerpts of this show will get only what the university’s video services people decide is important enough to make available.

You will not hear any of these excerpts on the Missourinet. We do not use what we call “canned material,” stuff that we or our affiliates do not gather ourselves and make our own independent editorial decisions about.

These two guys are not the first to play this silly game. The silliest practitioners of this censorship are Justices of the United States Supreme Court.

The Missourinet doesn’t think much of public figures who go to taxpayer-supported institutions to speak on issues of public importance who decide they can limit, control, and censor what the public gets to hear of their presentation. There are some barnyard epithets that apply to those attitudes but there also is a perfectly good word that is even more appropriate.

Arrogance.

That’s what it boils down to. Just plain arrogance.

But we reporters suspect there’s another, deeper-seated reason.

Insecurity.

We suspect the real reason they don’t want organizations such as the Missourinet to record their entire show or their entire speech and put it on the website is because they only have one script to follow. And if everybody can go to our webpage and hear their remarks, nobody will show up for their shows and speeches and all these big bucks they can get for additional performances will dry up. And then where would they be?

Well, maybe they’d have to think up something original to say.

Public figures appearing in public places discussing public issues have no business limiting what the public can hear.

If Newt and Howard want to debate that with us, we’ll be glad to do it. But you better believe it will all be on the record and you’ll be able to hear the entire conversation."

- Bob Priddy, News Director