CHEYENNE — A legislative committee took a surprising action this week by siding for once with the news media.
As a result, the fourth estate will keep the one fragile scrap it has left of journalist privilege: photojournalists will still be allowed to shoot photos from the corridors or halls outside the Wyoming Legislature’s senate and house.
The push to end that practice came in September from a committee acting on the recommendation of the current leadership of the house and senate. The leaders were spurred by a complaint from a legislator.
During a committee meeting last week, the lawmakers reversed their earlier decision, thus allowing the eye-level still photo shoots from the corridors or hallways to continue.
According to stories in the Cowboy State Daily, Wyofile, and the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, the committee received some blowback from the initial vote recommending the management council close off the corridors to photogs, too.
The committee’s unanimous vote against the new ban will go to the legislative leaders on the management council next month for a final decision.
The legislative floor and corridors have been off limits to Wyoming reporters for decades.
According to the online Freedom of the Press Foundation, this decades-old movement to restrict legislative news coverage was revived beginning in 2022. In that year, four states — Iowa, Kansas, Texas and Utah, adopted policies that limited journalists’ access to their legislatures.
The Mississippi senate currently has a pending resolution to bar journalists from the senate floor with limited exceptions and also would abolish the press office in the Capitol.
Wyoming was ahead of the pack. The ban on legislative floor and corridor access is decades old but the press room wasn’t moved out of the Capitol building until a few years ago. It is now in the basement of a corridor connecting the Capitol Building to the Herschler Building.
The argument in favor of the restrictions is that modern technology gives journalists all the information they need to cover the legislature.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation doesn’t buy that argument. Instead it blames the anti-press attitude as the major motivation for these restrictions.
I don’t buy the argument totally, either.
The technology is good and appreciated but the coverage isn’t the same as having a journalist with a seat at the table, reporting on the floor action and on what is going on behind the scenes.
There have always been legislators who chafed at the presence of reporters and photographers and wished they would go away.
When I first started covering legislative session in the 1970s, one of the most powerful and respected senate leaders told me he would like to see the galleries closed to the public; if that happened the lawmakers could get a lot more work done.
Which is true but it is also contrary to the principles of a democratic (small d) institution.
The press is called the fourth estate of government because it's a watchdog for the first three branches — executive, legislative and judicial.
It’s been a wild ride. Legislative leaders said the first ban on the news media —access to the break room —was because of the increase in the number of reporters covering the Legislature.
The Legislative Service Office now issues credentials each year to 40 to 50 journalists.
But only six to 10 cover the session in person, according to Wyofile.
That’s like the 1970s. But all the barriers to reporters’ access remain.
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Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
